I originally saw this on Saturday afternoon TV when I was in junior high and high school. A local TV station showed it again and again. It scared me silly then. It still works now (to a degree).

People are being attacked and killed by what looks like a giant caterpillar.

They (supposedly) kill it...but there are others.

It's intelligent, quick (82 minutes) late 1950s big bug movie. The acting is pretty bad, but who watches a horror film for acting? The question is, is it scary and deliver shocks? This one does. The monsters themselves are very unpleasant-looking, one attack scene made me jump and there are some very gruesome looks at mutilated dead bodies ... quite extreme for a 1950s movie (this film is NOT for very young kids).

Yes there is a lot of filler, but the dialogue is fairly interesting, everybody keeps a straight face and I was interested. So, it's an entertaining, well-done movie with great monsters and (for the time) good special effects. Well worth seeing.

Why isn't this film better known?

The studios were scratching their heads during those years trying to come up with which creature should be enlarged and terrorize everyone and you have to give them credit for thinking of mollusks and then making them scary looking. Kudos for their effort! Story takes place at the Salton Sea where an earthquake has released the eggs of prehistoric mollusks and with the radioactive testing that the Government has been doing this causes the creatures to be bigger than horses. After some navy personnel disappear Lt. Cmdr. John Twillinger (Tim Holt) from the Navy base is asked to investigate and he finds an empty boat with two dead seamen. He finds some goop on the boat and brings it to be analyzed by Dr. Jess Rogers (Hans Conried) but he also meets his new secretary Gail MacKenzie (Audrey Dalton). They venture out the next day and scuba divers discover a giant egg that they haul on board but the creature emerges and kills one of the divers before they can repel it.

*****SPOILER ALERT*****

Dr. Rogers puts the egg in a temperature controlled tank so that it cannot hatch but later other divers go out and set up underwater explosives to destroy all the eggs and creatures but they discover that the Salton Sea has an underwater river that is connected to canals and if all the creatures are not destroyed they could make their way to other parts of the country. Meanwhile, Gail's daughter Sandy (Mimi Gibson) thinks it's to cold in the lab and changes the temperature which makes the giant egg hatch!

This film was directed by Arnold Laven who does a pretty admirable job but the one criticism is that the film drags during certain stages. The special effects are not bad considering the budget and the creature's itself are downright authentic looking. They look like giant caterpillars with pinchers but we keep getting told that they are mollusks. Holt would only appear in two more films after this before retiring to a life in business and he's best known for appearing in countless westerns. Dalton was a real dark haired beauty and with her beautiful eyes she reminded me of Ava Gardner and Mara Corday. As beautiful as Dalton is I dropped my jaw when young Barbara Darrow popped up on screen as the ill fated Jody. Why didn't some studio executive grab her and make her sign a contract so that we could see more of her? Some well known character actors also have roles in this film such as Max Showalter (aka Casey Adams) and Ralph Moody. Pretty well made 50's sci-fi big bug film does slow down after a bit but the creature effects are above par and the cast is good. If you love the big bug flicks of the 50's than you definitely need to check this out.

This 1950s horror film featured something you don't often see in the genre--good acting. Veteran actor Tim Holt heads the cast and is very ably assisted by Hans Conreid (in a very normal type role for a change) and quite a few other able actors. One of the more interesting supporting characters was played by Audrey Dalton, as she is Irish and had only been in the US a few years--although you can't tell at all from her performance. You detect no hint of her actual accent and she did a nice job.

However, despite very good acting and a good script, this film had one significant problem--the monster itself. The monster was a silly idea--who is afraid of a giant snail?! Heck, I remember the really, really big pink one from the 1967 version of DR. DOOLITTLE and it sure didn't seem very scary! Another silly aspect to the monster is that in their young stage, they look absolutely nothing like snails--but just like enormous caterpillars! How they thought audiences would thing the two creatures were pretty much the same was pretty amazing! Personally, I would have just said they were ugly caterpillars....that somehow lived in the ocean! Hmmm....guess that doesn't work either.

Overall, since it's such a mixed bag, it is both entertaining and laughable at the same time. For fans of the genre, it's well worth seeing, while others will just probably remember the dumb creatures.