During the 50's everyone jumped on the monster movie bandwagon. There were killer trees, giant spiders, enormous ants, and then there was this.... You can guess the plot even before you see the film...volcanic activity unleashes a horde of huge mutated scorpions on New Mexico, and the square jawed scientist and his faithful pal must save the world. Quite how they managed to drag this out over nearly two hours is a minor miracle in itself, and the original film poster is a joke...a big fangy head with pop-eyes and a bikini girl looking over its shoulder. It does have some compensations though, among them the beautiful Mara Corday (she was in Tarantula and The Giant Claw, as well as several Clint Eastwood films) as the love interest for Richard Denning who plays 'Hank the geologist'. In fact most of the cast is Hispanic, which fits in well with the locations. Highlights include a death battle between two of the monsters, and a scene where a bunch of the giant creatures attack a blatantly obvious toy train! I'm being a little unfair perhaps, as this tale is a lot better than some of the stuff released at the time, and the action flows pretty well.Special effects were handled by Pete Peterson and supervised by the great Willis O'Brien, the man who brought the original King Kong to life. So kick back and enjoy...THE BLACK SCORPION! More monstrous moments from Sneaky Elephant's movie mountain SOON!
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