THE CRAWLING EYE (1958), aka THE TROLLENBERG TERROR

Director: Quentin Lawrence

Writers: Jimmy Sangster adapting the original teleplay by “Peter Key” (pseudonym for George F. Kerr, Jack Cross, and Giles Cooper)

Producers: Robert S. Baker, Monty Berman

Cast: Forrest Tucker, Janet Munro, Jennifer Jayne, Laurence Payne, Walter Mitchell, Andrew Faulds, Frederick Schiller, Stuart Saunders, Colin Douglas, Derek Sydney, Jeremy Longhurst, Anthony Parker, Richard Golding, George Herbert, Leslie Heritage, Anne Sharp, Theodore Wilhelm, Caroline Claser, Garard Green 

UN investigator Alan Brooks (Forrest Tucker) visits the Swiss mountain village of Trollenberg. Although he is supposed to be on holiday, he is arriving at the invitation of his friend Professor Crevett (Warren Mitchell). The scientist has asked Brooks to come to Trollenberg due to a phenomenon similar to one Brooks tried to investigate in the Andes Mountains. There is a stationary, radioactive cloud high up on the Trollenberg Mountain, and climbers that enter that cloud disappear or are found decapitated. 

The Flashback Fanatic movie review

The Crawling Eye followed in the footsteps of Hammer Films that had recently made hit sci-fi horror films adapted from British television serials. This independent British production tried to repeat that success by adapting the serial The Trollenberg Terror. They also had Hammer Films’ scripter Jimmy Sangster write the screenplay. The movie retained the TV serial’s director Quentin Lawrence and star Laurence Payne.

This film’s weird menace and especially its US title The Crawling Eye are remembered by many sci-fi and horror buffs. The film also draws more than its fair share of special effects nitpickers. To be sure, the effects range from effective to some obvious and too small miniatures. I find the creatures to be wonderfully disgusting and the strange sounds they make are just as disturbing. 

Others will quibble that the science fiction aspect is not fully realized in favor of the gruesome bits. To that I say, “So what?” Ripping off human heads is truly nasty monster behavior. The monsters here are so inhuman that to believe they will behave in a manner that is rational in our terms is ridiculous. Just because they can travel from outer space to Earth does not mean that they will be above performing acts that we think are barbaric. Humans are capable of landing on the Moon and sending robot probes to Mars, yet we still boil screaming lobsters alive just before dining on them in fancy restaurants. Lobsters are so different from our species that many of us are indifferent to this cruelty. These invaders from space have no more sense of kinship to us than we do with that poor lobster in the pot. For movie purposes, the aliens are first and foremost monsters. Even if we did understand their space travel ability or their penchant for tearing off human heads, they would still be extraterrestrial badasses that need to be destroyed before they overwhelm us. 

Leaving a lot of questions about these "crawling eyes” unanswered also probably irritates those who think that a sci-fi menace about to overwhelm the heroes should be thoroughly explained. To that I scream, “Who the hell has that kind of time?!” The characters in this story are about to be killed! Killed by things never seen by any still living human on this planet! The aliens in this story do not have all of their mysteries explained by the heroes. However, the main characters in this film do hypothesize about the motives, behavior, and possible vulnerability of these creatures, and that should be sufficient. Our heroes being able to explain everything about them would be unrealistic. I agree that totally arbitrary fantasy is bad fantasy. But having pat answers and scientific gobbledygook that contrive to make a fantasy seem rational can often just tie itself up in fake logic that contradicts itself. This is a trap many more recent and supposedly sophisticated sci-fi flicks step into. 

Now let’s get down to business: This is one cool movie, dammit! 

The film has a unique setting in the small Swiss town at the base of the Trollenberg Mountain and on the mountain itself. After a gruesome opening scene, there is a slow build-up to the increasing danger the Trollenberg community faces, which could eventually threaten the rest of the world.

Forrest Tucker, as UN investigator Alan Brooks, makes an interesting and believable hero. He is mature and rugged enough to be intelligent, experienced, and pack a mean punch. This guy is resourceful and ready for anything. He travels with a loaded revolver and a hip flask to revive beautiful girls that faint and fall into his lap. He is a take-charge kind of guy, yet he is not some snarky know-it-all, and sometimes admits that he does not know what to do next. His character also has the unaffected humanity to react with shock when discovering grisly human remains. 

Janet Munro and Jennifer Jayne play Anne and Sarah Pilgrim, the sexy sisters that meet Alan Brooks on the train to Trollenberg. The Pilgrim sisters have a mind reading act that is not a trick but the real thing. Anne has true psychic ability and provides a lot of creepy anticipation for the audience when she tunes into the minds of the monsters. 

This is one of those movies that continued the under-siege brand of horror movie probably begun by The War of the Worlds (1953), and which continued through the '50s and '60 with films like Invisible Invaders (1959), The Birds (1963), and Night of the Living Dead (1968). In the aftermath of World War II and the ongoing Cold War fear of Russia overcoming the free world in one way or another, America and Britain were wary of being threatened not by lone monsters, but by an army of them. Movies like The Crawling Eye helped to vent such anxieties by confronting fictional stand-ins for our real world concerns. As the years passed, these films offered less solace by having fewer total and lasting victories as their conclusions.