Re: Drive in Sci-FI: The Crawling Eye (1958)

The crawling eye. We already had The Crawling Hand. Whats next, the talking brain? Well we had that too!
We start with something killing an alpinist in the mountain top. Other two go away from there. then we get titles and look here, the movie is called "the trollenberg terror" for some reason. maybe they though it wont work and changed it. but they clearly were trolling us there. Though Trollenberg is a real village in Germany, no mountain around it though. Throughout the movie they do have a word or two in German and generally show that it is Germany so they haven't just imagined it. However they seem to call the mountain Trollenberg but we will let that slide. Two sisters that look like twins arrive at the mountains for undisclosed reason. one is clearly sick and faints in the train, the guy passenger cures it with whiskey. good logic. the three gets off in trollenberg although the two woman didn't plan it. Apparently the sick girl knows everything there is to know about trolls resort even though she never was there. they check with local hotel driver and what she knows is true. the director plays with us again by naming the main characters "pilgrim". Noone seems to realize that one of them is half-crazy really.
Though a unimportant conversation we find out that Ann is actually a mind reader. Whole the guy meets a local doctor studying cosmic rays that has a lab like a bunker. to protect from avalanche he says. the doctor tells there is a cloud at the top of the mountain where there should be none and it remains static. also there are many "Accidents" of alpinists disappearing. they also find out that the cloud is actually radioactive. They figure it could be like something they found in Alpes, but never say what it is. The conversation is pretty smart though and doesn't get boring and pretty much gives entrance to whole premise. hum this looks very promising indeed.
In the evening they do a test of Ann Pilgrim mind reading abilities and it works very well. She then mindlinks to a guy in a cabin up the mountain and find out that he is dieing. The only person to get it is the doctor but he waits till she gets around it and then drugs here with sleeping pills. Tells to take her away from the place in the morning because of what happened. yet again it amazes me how logical this is coming. The laboratory finds out that radioactivity is increasing and the cloud is moving. It all falls together perfectly. The monster in the cloud eats the two people in the cabin, well or so we are to think since we never actually shown the monster.
They climb up the mountain to find out what is actually happening there. They find the fat person in the hut without a head. Thy theorize that its aliens acclimatizing to earth's atmosphere and bystanders simply get hurt because they are where aliens don't want to.
The lost person from the cabin returns acting strange. He thinks that everything is way too hot. And he is not able to move rationally. cant hold a glass and so on. The he tries to kill the Psychic and they hit him cold. They see there is a scar on his forehead where we can assume alien took control of him. They figure it out too and they also figure that the body is dead for 24 hours before coming home and that alien controls it. He once again wakes up but he is locked in a room. manages to attack a person still. and also escape. Thats one determined alien. So basically we got a alien-zombie who tries to kill the psychic. Shooting the alien in the back works though, so its not a true zombie. It also is afraid of heat. They retreat to the bunker like observatory. they even refer to it as a fort.
We finally get to see the monster, its a giant biomass with an eye in it. pretty well done one for a low budget sci-fi flick. They are all in a bunker but one of them returns late and is actually an alien. it show all signs they dont recognize it. They once again manage to save it in time and hurt Hans. Ann gets hurt in the process.
They find fire hurts them and use home made Molotov. they also call in a plane to bomb the heck out of those things. the plane bombs the monsters out and they all burn. hurray for bombs.

Story: 10/10. well it was wild and awesome.
Acting: 8/10. good acting it was.
Sound: 6/10. isnt awesome but its different and that's always welcome.
Sci factor: 8/10. well with what little they had they done well.
Lasting Appeal: 10/10. i will remember thins as a movie that trolled me into liking it.
Overall rating: 8/10.