There are four of those “Big Bug” movies from the 50s I saw on TV when I was a kid I was (and still am) a fan of: Them! (1954), Tarantula (1955), Earth Vs. The Spider (1958), and The Deadly Mantis (1957). I’ve managed to review Tarantula only, from Umbrella Entertainment’s DVD. The Deadly Mantis will be my second, and hopefully I’ll be able to score Scream Factory’s upcoming blu of Tarantula as well. All four of them are hardcore memory movies and The Deadly Mantis was one me and my brother saw during the wee hours of the night. It’s strange sometimes to compare movie viewing as a kid to me as an adult. When I was a little kid in the 70s there were no VCRs (except in schools), or DVDs, or cable that re-ran flicks over and over. Nope, when me and/or my brother saw a great movie, we experienced it in the moment, right there on TV, and then went outside to play it. If it was a giant insect movie, we got out our toy guns and pretended we were one of the many soldiers sent to take on the “bug.” And when that was out of our systems, we only had our memories of the movie to keep us entertained afterwards.
And then came the late night movies. When we spotted one of these “must-see-films” it was up to either me or my brother to ask my mother if we could see it. Most of the time she said, yes, and then this entailed asking our grandmother, who lived with us, if she could wake us up when it came on. Most of these late night flicks came on at three in the morning too. We were into studying insects and spiders and we found the praying mantis to be quite a cool and happening ‘sect. Eventually, through the various monster movie books we also read, we discovered a monster movie was made about it and it just about sent us into instant conniptions of joy. Generally, during late night viewings I was one who woke up first when my grandmother peeked her head into our room and announced it was about to come on. I remember this night, shaking my brother awake, and creeping silently out to the family room, cautious not to wake our mother, and put the TV on. And like always my brother fell asleep, while I managed to stay awake and see the entire film.
Dawn was breaking by the time The Deadly Mantis was over. I could see the sky getting light out back through the big picture window. My brother was stretched out on the couch underneath it and I was in the easy chair across the room. I woke him up and we went back to bed. When we woke later that morning I filled him in on the parts of the movie he missed. I do believe he ended up seeing it many years later through another airing this time during the day.
Another great memory I have from the early 70s, right around the time I saw The Deadly Mantis, are the “Gigantics” model kits from Fundimension! There were four of them, a tarantula, scorpion, mantis and wasp! I remember coming across them at a local retail store in the toy department. I so wanted them, but my mother wouldn’t buy any model kits that had to be glued together, because that meant my father would have to put them together, apparently he didn’t like the ones that needed glue, and wouldn’t you know it these Gigantics required glue. The two that made the most impression on me were the scorpion and the mantis due to the artwork. Famed artist, Syd Mead, designed the art for those two. His original design is below the retail box covers! Every time we went to the store I would spend some time in the model kit aisle looking at the boxes. Click photos to enlarge.
The plot for The Deadly Mantis is nothing to write home about, and there’s a ton of stock footage (14 minutes), what this movie has going for it is the mantis itself. The puppet used is pretty dead on accurate to what a real mantis looks like. The only differences are no antennas, the mandibles that make up the mouth have been replaced with a feature that looks like an actual mouth, and it roars. Real mantids don’t roar, but you probably already knew that. The best scenes are any where the mantis is on screen wreaking havoc. There is one split second shot where a real mantis was used, when it lands on the Washington Monument.
The success of Warner’s giant ant movie Them! is what kick started all these other “Big Bug” flicks and the beginning is a little reminiscent of that film. After the opening credits in Them!, two cops find a little girl, then a destroyed motor home, and a destroyed general store. The movie starts off as a mystery, and since the title doesn’t give away what it’s about, you wonder what did all this? The Mantis filmmakers try that with their movie, but with the movie’s title being, The Deadly Mantis, and the opening credits showing the actual mantis frozen in an iceberg, there’s pretty much nothing left to the imagination, at least for the audience, when two military men find one of their compounds in the North Pole mysteriously destroyed and wonder what the hell did it? This is a case where we the audience are already one step ahead of the characters in knowing what the culprit is.
This giant, prehistoric mantis was frozen in ice until an erupting volcano on the other side of the world triggered an earthquake in the arctic releasing it, and then it’s off flying around and eating anyone it can find. It’s also looking for warmer digs, moving the film farther South as the insect follows the warm air. Along the way it continues to eat people, finding some food in a bus it flips one foggy night, and ending up in the Lincoln Tunnel for its swan song after a jet pilot crashes into it and forces it down in the Big Apple.
The humans tracking and taking on the mantis are paleontologist Dr. Nedrick Jackson (William Hopper), museum magazine editor Marge Blaine (Alix Talton), and Colonel Joe Parkman (Craig Stevens). Parkman and Blaine are the ones who hook up.
More military men are dispatched into the tunnel to gas it, shoot it, and then blow it up. Some of the best mantis scenes are here as it goes about flipping vehicles and roaring, but the scene that always made the most impression on me was when it attacks an Eskimo village early on. You hear it buzzing, and buzzing, signifying it’s fly around, then the buzzing suddenly stops, the poor Eskimo who was too damn slow getting his canoe out looks up and there it is poised over him ready to snatch him up! That shot of the mantis was played many times during the beginning of Science Fiction Theater during a collage of random scifi clips during the opening.
The TCM channel runs this movie on occasion and its gotten released by Universal in DVD form as part of The Classic Sci-Fi Ultimate Collection: Volume 2 and as a solo DVD-R through their Vault Series MOD (manufacture-on-demand) program. It’s taken a while but it’s now poised to hit blu-ray through Shout! Factory’s genre sub-label, Scream Factory, on March 19th! Get it on Amazon or on Shout’s site!
REVERSE COVER ART
Video/Audio/Subtitles: 1080p 1.85:1 high definition widescreen—2.0 English DTS;HD Master Audio—English subs only
The new 2K scan Shout has done isn’t bad. The huge amount of stock footage, however, makes the movie look like it hasn’t been remastered at all, but the movie around that looks good. The main selling point for this blu, however, is it’s finally being seen widescreen for the first time! All of Universal’s previous DVDs have it full frame and even the TCM airings were full frame too.
Extras Included . . .
- Audio Commentary With Film Historians Tom Weaver And David Schecter
- Mystery Science Theatre 3000 Episode “The Deadly Mantis” (02/22/97) (1:32:16)
- Still Gallery (7:56/83 photos)
- Theatrical Trailer
The audio commentary doesn’t kick in until the six minute mark and Weaver has a couple of guests lined up, his buddy filmmaker Larry Blamire shows up for a very brief talk about William Hopper (he and Weaver are fans) and David Schecter will spend some time talking about the movie’s score. All in all it’s a great commentary, but like I’ve said before Tom Weaver generally does great commentaries.
The second best extra is the MST3K episode of “The Deadly Mantis.” I caught it when it first aired and it’s simply hilarious!
PHYSICAL MEDIA LIVES AT . . .