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 113 - THE BLACK SCORPION
Genre: ’50s
Monster (1957, B&W)
Synopsis: This
experiment features one of those cheesy monster movies
from the ’50s that can be so enjoyable to turn your brain
off and watch. This one is about a volcano erupting
in Mexico so two geologists are sent to study the
eruption. While there, they find a rock with a live
scorpion in it. They take it back to their lab and
discover that it is a species previously thought extinct.
Meanwhile, the little scorpion’s bigger brother is busy
killing people and causing a lot of destruction.
After witnessing the large scorpion’s destruction, the
geologists find a large hole from which the scorpion
emerged, so they go down in a small basket to see what’s
down there. Down there, they find a lot of giant
scorpions and some giant worms with claws too. And
ruling over all of the scorpions is an even larger, black
scorpion. The scientists screw up their plan to kill
the scorpions with poison gas, so the army instead just
closes up the opening (that’ll solve the problem – yeah,
right...). Of course, the giant scorpions soon find
another way out and immediately take out a train and eat
all of the passengers (I guess they really like Mexican
Food). The large black scorpion flips out, though,
and kills all of the other giant scorpions and then heads
for Mexico City. There, the army traps it in a
stadium and blast it repeatedly, with no effect. But
the scientists have a plan to inject poison into the
throat of the scorpion and they use some sort of spear gun
to do this and finally kill the giant monster.
Don’s Review:
This was a fairly enjoyable ’50s monster movie, mainly due
to the great stop-motion effects by Willis O’Brien (the
man who did the original King Kong). Although
the roar of the scorpions is a rather poor mix of animal
sounds and the ant sound effect from Them!, even it
adds to the cheesy fun of this movie. The riffing is
also pretty good in this feature – it’s a lot less
sparse than in most Season One episodes, plus a lot of the
riffs are very funny. This is definitely one of the
better episodes of Season One and is highly recommended,
particularly for Monster Movie fans.
Don’s Rating: 
Related Links:
(1) Mighty Jack’s MST3K Review (Episode Review)
(2) BadMovies.org
(Movie Review)
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