Movie Reviews of the Old, Odd, and Obscure

The creature oozing up the street

The creature flowing over a stone wall

When one gets too close to the creature

Glowing and ready to explode

X - The Unknown (1956) Hammer Studios

The British Army stumbles upon a radioactive creature that resembles glowing mud. Surviving miles beneath the earth's crust, the creature escapes through a crack in the earth and relentlessly seeks out radioactive facilities in order to absorb the radiation, killing anyone in it's path as it creeps across the countryside.

Rarely broadcast on television (at least in the Winona area), few people have seen this movie that I'm aware of. A few years ago, I happened to catch this movie on AMC and was pleasantly surprised. The movie was well directed by Leslie Norman who later went on to direct a long list of British television series through the 60's and 70's (including some episodes of "The Saint" and "The Avengers"). Wonderfully eerie black and white photography adds to a number of well constructed scenes of suspense and terror - including two shockingly graphic scenes depicting people melting when the creature gets too close to them. The acting and dialog are extremely well done for a low budget movie made in 1956 (which was typical of British cinema at the time).

I found this movie on DVD and bought it earlier this year. The sound and picture quality are top notch for a movie of this age. The print shows very few spots or scratches while the light, shadow, and contrasts in each scene look beautiful. All in all, "X - The Unknown" turned out to be one of the best in my science fiction movie collection.