The Black Scorpoion 1957
Richard Denning and Mara Corday

Willis O'Brien master animator of King Kong (1933) was also animator on other films such as The Black Scorpion. If you remember seeing this film as a kid, you'll recall the giant deadly scorpions that tended to druel at you in close up over and over again.

Trouble begins when an earthquake opens up passageways to subteranean underground lairs of these giant scorpions. Richard Denning, (who also played lead in The Creature from the Black Lagoon) is the hero of the day who must find ways to fight off these deadly scorpions.

The Scorpions bring devastation on the town in scenes where they take on helicopters, trains and finally each other in the creepy underground lairs. Towards the end of the film there are scenes where the budget must have been running out as you'll notice O'Brien does take a few short cuts in not putting in the level of detail He had created in King Kong. Animating all those legs and claws had to be real time consuming, so there are scenes where the audience is seeing the black scorpions from above the knees to cut production costs. Also the traveling mats were not too convincing near the end. But despite a couple of short cuts, the animation was excellent.

The film was creepy in spots, particularly the underground sequences which I will not go into detail on. Still a favorite of mine with the highest respect to Willis O'Brien, he was some years older here, but still had more films that he worked on after this one, such as the 1960's Dinosaurus. Obie's animation was still good there but the acting was horrible.

I recommend viewing The Black Scorpion 1957 if you are an animation fan and better yet, see the original version of Mighty Joe Young.