The Trollenberg Terror [The Crawling Eye] ** (1958, Forrest Tucker, Laurence Payne, Janet Munro, Jennifer Jayne, Warren Mitchell) – Classic Movie Review 2,370

In 1956, British TV viewers thrilled to a serial called The Trollenberg Terror, in which a remote mountain resort in Switzerland is invaded by horrible alien creatures who enjoy decapitating humans. 

In 1956, British TV viewers thrilled to Peter Key’s six-part ITV Saturday-night serial called The Trollenberg Terror, with Glyn Owen, Laurence Payne and Sarah Lawson, in which a remote mountain resort in Switzerland is invaded by horrible alien creatures who enjoy decapitating humans. Its success meant a big-screen transfer was inevitable, and the movie version hit the big screen in 1958.

Director Quentin Lawrence’s 1958 Swiss-set, British-made low-budget chiller film The Trollenberg Terror follows the same TV story of a series of grisly decapitations on a Swiss mountainside. The aliens are in telepathic communication with people and inhabit a mysterious radioactive cloud at the base of the fictional Trollenberg mountain. The plot details the battle between a one-eyed space monster – The Crawling Eye of the American title – freed in the Alps by the mystery mist.

The characters include a United Nations trouble-shooter scientist called Alan Brooks (Forrest Tucker), clairvoyant sisters Anne and Sarah Pilgrim (Janet Munro, Jennifer Jayne) and Warren Mitchell‘s Professor Crevett. Laurence Payne repeats his TV role as the investigating journalist Philip Truscott and so does and Stuart Saunders as Dewhurst. Brooks suspects the new deaths are related to a series of similar incidents that happened three years earlier in the Andes mountains, which involved an unexplained radioactive mist and cloud formation.

The cardboard sets, the cheap, pathetically dated special effects (by Les Bowie), lumpy acting and clunky direction fail to produce a film worthy of the title, letting down an intriguing horror story that boasts a decent script by Jimmy Sangster at its basis. Despite all the problems, there’s still some considerable sneaky fun to be enjoyed here, though, and it does convey the authentic flavour of 50s British horror.

Also in the cast are Warren Mitchell, Andrew Faulds, Stuart Saunders, Frederick Schiller, Colin Douglas, Derek Sydney, Richard Golding, George Herbert, Ann Sharp, Caroline Glaser, Gerard Green, Jeremy Longhurst, Anthony Parker, Leslie Heritage and Theodore Wilhelm.

It is produced by the team of Robert S Baker and Monty Berman, with Berman as cinematographer.

Ah, yes, Peter Key’s six-part ITV Saturday-night serial called The Trollenberg Terror? Well, yes and no. In fact the 1956 British ITV Saturday Serial television programme The Trollenberg Terror was written by George F Kerr, Jack Cross and Giles Cooper under the collective pseudonym of ‘Peter Key’.

With the magic of the movies, the real Trollenberg is located neither in Switzerland nor in the Alps but in Germany’s Black Forest nearly 400 kilometres away. Well, yes and no. In fact the highest elevation in the Ankum Heights [Ankumer Höhe] in Lower Saxony is the Trillenberg, 140 metres high.

Mitchell was a last-minute choice after the original actor Anton Diffring went on holiday.

John Carpenter says this film, with its creatures hidden in the clouds, was the inspiration for The Fog (1980).

The film is mentioned in Stephen King’s 1986 horror novel It as having been watched by one of its protagonists, and The Crawling Eye monster later appears when the children run into the creature in the sewers during a 1958 segment of the book as a manifestation of the It monster.

The American version is cut from 84 minutes to 75 minutes to get to the monsters faster but the movie is fully restored on the DVD release.

It is the last film produced by Southall Studios, one of the UK’s earliest pioneer film studios. The studio was in Southall, Middlesex, and operated between 1924 and 1958.

Hammer Films asked American actor Forrest Tucker back to Britain to star in The Abominable Snowman (1957) and he stayed on for The Strange World of Planet X (1958) and The Trollenberg Terror (1958). The six feet, five inches tall Tucker was a sight reader who needed only one take.

The film was released on 7 July 1958 (United States) and 7 October 1958 (United Kingdom) as The Crawling Eye in the US by Distributors Corporation of America and as The Trollenberg Terror in the UK in October 1958 by Eros Films in a Forrest Tucker double bill with the British science fiction film The Strange World of Planet X (retitled Cosmic Monsters in America).

The Trollenberg Terror is directed by Quentin Lawrence, runs 84 minutes, is made by Tempean Films, is distributed by Eros Films. is written by Jimmy Sangster, based on the 1956 TV series story The Trollenberg Terror by ‘Peter Key’, is shot by Monty Berman, is produced by Robert S Baker and Monty Berman, and is scored by Stanley Black.

The cast are Forrest Tucker as Alan Brooks, Laurence Payne as Philip Truscott, Jennifer Jayne as Sarah Pilgrim, Janet Munro as Anne Pilgrim, Warren Mitchell as Professor Crevett, Frederick Schiller as Mayor Klein, Andrew Faulds as Brett, Stuart Saunders as Dewhurst, Colin Douglas as Hans Derek Sydney as Wilde, Richard Golding as first villager, George Herbert as second villager, Anne Sharp as German woman, Leslie Heritage as Carl, Jeremy Longhurst as first student climber, Anthony Parker as second student climber, Theodore Wilhelm as Fritz Garard Green as pilot, and Caroline Glaser as little girl.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2,370

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