Alright folks, grab your RAID and your popcorn; I’m going to tell you about you a movie from the golden era of Sc-Fi at Universal Studios. The film is called “The Deadly Mantis”. “The Deadly Mantis” is a 1957 monster movie about a giant praying mantis which broke out of the Antarctic, and how the U.S. army and a paleontologist try and stop it from going to South America. Already you can tell a major plot hole in the description I just gave you but I won’t spoil it, because that is one of the reasons why this is a fun film, but I’ll come back to that.
The film stars Craig Stevens as the army commander who, while top billed, is not in it as much as maybe he should be. William Hopper stars as the paleontologist who, in my opinion, is the main star mainly because we spend more time following him throughout the movie than Craig Stevens’ character. Finally we have Alix Talton, who is supposed to be a photojournalist but barely takes a photo throughout the entirety of the film. By the way, have you noticed a trend with the stars I just listed? I did not mention the name of the characters that they play. Well, you don’t really need to know them as they are pretty one note characters. Even on the VHS box of the film, the characters names aren’t listed, just what their jobs are. There are other characters like the general, who is funny, watching as he is on the brink of a nervous breakdown while everyone else in the film is perfectly in control.
Now that we have that out of the way, we can talk about the fun stuff. This movie came out in 1957, which in my opinion was the best time for Sci-Fi monster movies, because we were in the cold war with Russia at the time. The mantis itself is a pretty good puppet with better movements than what people would expect from the budget and time period. I love when the mantis roars when destroying buildings, it’s that cheesy monster noise that all people would expect from monster movies. When the mantis is walking and destroying buildings, it looks really good, but when it flies, it really reveals itself as a cheap movie prop.
Overall, while the movie doesn’t give back story for any of the characters and there are moments of slow pace, the mantis is fun to watch while it destroys buildings. Listening to the classic movie science logic is entertaining. This is a bare bones monster movie which should bring joy to people wanting cheap entertainment. This film is recommended for people who love the 50’s, monster movies, and Universal Studios. I would give it a 5 out of 10.