Lovesusti The Worst Film Ever

Hadrina The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Anoushka Slater While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Mandeep Tyson The acting in this movie is really good.

davidcarniglia The Black Scorpion has a lot going for it: very horrific scorpions, plenty of mostly well-rendered destruction, and an unusual 'natural' cause for the monsters' appearance. The parallel volcano disaster story puts the police and military on the scene even before encountering the scorpions, so we avoid the awkward 'hmm, there's wrecked cars, dead cows, and some weird murders, should we call the authorities?' debate that occurs in weaker sci-fi films.The remote setting, the intrepid scientists, and 'the girl' supply the expected plot/character devices of the 50s sci-fi film. There's too much romantic subplot junk; Theresa has a key role without having to make-out with Hank. The acting is generally quite good, as everyone seems to pitch-in realistically. The characters are believable types who show fear and courage without exaggeration. Clearly, as in the better films of the genre, it's the monsters that are the stars.The cavern scene is great--sort of an extra goodie that adds more tension, more monsters, and another creepy setting. And all that leads to the best of monster movie scene stand-bys: the false hope that the danger is over. With this device, again achieved within the movie's logic, the story gets to start all over again, promising even greater danger ahead.Then we get the 'how-do-we-kill-it?' conference. The sense of urgency is highlighted by the ensuing train attack. Sure, we see a toy train; but the engineer is suitably astonished seeing a giant scorpion on the tracks, the interior sequence does show traumatized passengers tossed about, with at least one survivor picked off by a scorpion as he tries to flee.Plausibility is maintained by luring the scorpion to the stadium with meat as bait. The climactic battle scene at the end works great. The first shot of the 'miracle weapon' misses, the scorpion destroying tanks, trucks, and helicopters as the soldiers blast away at it. Of course Hank gets to finish it off.We don't get much monster mayhem in the streets of Mexico City as we do in the Godzilla-thrashing-Tokyo tradition. But that's ok, plenty has happened already. No one seems too concerned that there might be other scorpions lurking here and there--we have just seen in the train attack that there's more than one. But we are reminded that it won't be too difficult to kill them, as the army now has a good countermeasure.The Black Scorpion has a well-scripted story allowing our suspension of disbelief to stay intact throughout, even acting, and plenty of creepy monsters running amok. Some of the effects betray the low-budget nature typical of the genre, and the romance eats up screen time better spent on the monster v. mankind theme.This one is well worth checking out.

david-546 It's a good thing that this film also didn't include smell. The drool was bad enough. But I would have loved to have been able to smell their breaths. Unbelievably inadvertently hilarious horror flick from the 1950's when monster horror flicks were popular. Mind you I was impressed with the special effects given that this was 1957 and not 2017. In that respect it is even more impressive. No CGI no 3D just plain old special effects from the people that brought you King Kong. These are monsters that don't want to die. Of course they came as the result of a volcano that blew rather than nuclear mutants a theme that was popular back then. Absolutely hilarious when they grab people and you see their little arms and feet waving about before they are presumably eaten. They attack Mexico City. You are almost cheering for these monsters. The whole thing is a hoot. And of course you have the de rigeur love story in behind. In the end all is well that ends well and the lovers are off to we presume marriage bliss. Them remains the best of the bunch.

poe-48833 THE BLACK SCORPION offers Fright Film Fans a look at the last work of the legendary Willis O'Brien of KING KONG fame and so deserves at least a modicum of Respect. That said, it's only the stop-motion animation featuring the scorpions themselves that warrants mention: the story is about as by-the-numbers as anything you're ever likely to see, although the always durable Richard Denning turns in another solid performance despite the reworked writing. On the DVD that I saw, there was an Extras feature: an animated short featuring a VERY cool monster with ape-like long arms and short legs and tentacles for tusks. It's all-too BRIEF, but was VERY impressive: it would've made an interesting prehistoric Flashback sequence. Come to think of it, it'd STILL make an interesting prehistoric Flashback sequence- even in Black and White (as I'm fairly certain prehistoric cameras were all B&W...)...

Hitchcoc We usually get giant scorpions in old Greek mythology movies (did the Greeks have scorpions?). In this one, the scorpions are pretty cool, but it takes a long time to get to see them. Like so many giant monster movies, we need to wade through the evidence to get down to brass tacks. Farmers go missing, cattle get killed, puddles of venom or some substance is found, or a set of tracks too huge for any land beast. In fairness to the people that can't figure this stuff out, why would one look for a spider, a scorpion, or a praying mantis as big as a barn? The down side of this film is that the dialog is stilted and it is slow moving (we never had a movie called "The Attack of the Killer Snails). When we get around to the arachnid, it is great fun and the efforts to do him in are quite creative. Seeing this movie thirty years or more after the first viewing was quite disappointing. But I still love the stop motion special effects and the post nuclear genre.