Topic of Discussion: Most gruesome ’50s death scenes…

Updated on November 10, 2010 By Ken Begg 27 Comments

When we think of ’50s sci-fi, we usually think of the deaths happening offscreen, or at least in a pretty discrete fashion. However, occasionally I am shocked by one of them, probably because I just don’t expect much nastiness. Here are some examples:

The doctor who dies in the lab in X the Unknown; exposed to the radioactive monster, the fingers on his hand swell up like sausages, and then his face melts off. Gross!

The forest ranger who takes a hatchet to the face in Monster on the Campus.

The torn off heads in Monster of Piedras Blancas.

The guy who gets microwaved to death (another face-melting!) in Atomic Submarine.

This one is more conceptual than explicit, but the mechanic under the car who has the Blob roll onto his head.

Hmm, also several gross deaths in Caltiki. That’s three blob movies right there. A pattern!

What ones stick in your mind?

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  • Ericb

    This one is, like the Blob example, more conceptual than explicite but the scene from Beast From Hunted Cave where the beasty sticks its mouth parts into a girls’ throat and starts feeding as she screams is pretty dusturbing.

  • Boris Karloff is explicitly skinned alive in the Black Cat and that dates clear back to 1934.

    In Night of the Demon you actually see the demon tearing at the form of the final victim, like he’s toying with it and doesn’t want him to die too soon.

    The slow-descending steam press of The Fly still gives me the willies.

  • fish eye no miko

    Sandy Petersen said: “Boris Karloff is explicitly skinned alive in the Black Cat and that dates clear back to 1934.”

    Wasn’t ’34 before the Hayes Code, though? I mean, Maniac was made in ’34 or thereabouts, and it has a cat’s eyeball get gouged out and eaten.

  • Brandi

    I’d call the skinning in The Black Cat semi-explicit (it’s all shadows on the wall, but pretty strong meat for the era).

    Moving away from SF, how about Christopher Lee crumblng and disintegrating in the Hammer Dracula (1958)?

  • I always thought the extras running around with radiations burns in THE GIANT BEHEMOTH were disturbing.

  • Oh, and the fluid-drained bodies in THE MONSTER THAT CHALLENGED THE WORLD also unnerved me as a child.

  • Ericb

    It’s a stretch but if, culturally speaking, you can consider the early 60s as part of the 50s then the scene in the Flesh Eaters where the beatnick eats a flesh eaters has to be one of the most disturbing scenes ever.

  • roger h

    Burned down to your skeleton in “Teenager from Outer Space” creeped me out as a kid, particularly the dog and pretty girl in pool.

    Can’t remember if it killed him but, seeind Hollywood veteran Leo G. Carol mutated in “Tarantula” was creepy.

  • BeckoningChasm

    Roger H beat me too it. I always thought skeletonizing was pretty bad way to go. The one is “War of the Worlds” doesn’t really have the same impact.

  • Rock Baker

    Sandra getting her arm caught in the flesh-eating plant in Konga freaked me out as a kid (1960, but close enough? Way off decade was the guy getting his head shoved into a sink full of the Son of Blob, that one actually gave me nightmares as a kid).

    More on point, but still off a little: Not a death, but knowing Beverly Garland had actually been raped by The Neanderthal Man was pretty shocking.

    The Hayes Code was put in place in 1933 (hence the scenes edited out of King Kong prior to release). Tarzan and His Mate (1932) is largely belived to be the main catylist for the Code being developed. Maniac was marketed as an educational film, and thus not subject to the code. These ‘Social Warning’ films therefore tend to be rather shocking, given the era they were made in.

  • Rock Baker

    By which I mean they could get away with nudity and violence, so they would play it up big. Such films were meant to have an impact on their audiences, and shocking them was usually a good way to do it.

  • I think what was queasy about the Sandra thing is that this is still when film deaths were often ‘punishment’ for some sort of sordid behavior. Sandra gets nearly raped by Michael Gough (and maybe she is in the notorious softcore novelization), and THEN gets eaten by the plant. Since she was seen fighting with her boyfriend earlier, there’s a sordid air of “well, she got what she deserved, really.”

    Most important take-away from Teenagers from Outer Space: Skeletons are self-articulated.

  • Rock Baker

    Back to the subject at hand,

    Monster That Challenged The World, the guy getting attacked from behind at the canal. Even now, it still makes me jump.

    The Curse of Frankenstein, Frankenstein leading that sweet old man up the stairs, then shouting “Look out!” and pushing him to his death.

    The Cosmic Monsters, a soldier gets his face chewed off by a giant insect.

    The Crawling Eye, “His head’s been torn off!”

    The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, the beat cop who gets picked up by the head and swallowed alive.

    Earth vs The Spider, seeing Carol’s father die and Hugo being eaten while trying to phone for help.

    Beginning of the End, the mute assistant eaten alive, unable to scream.

    Blood of Dracula, girl goes down into the supply room and is attacked in the dark. A scene largely a replay of…

    I Was A Teenage Werweolf, they did a great job of capturing the nervous build to terror experienced by Tony’s first victim, a pal walking through the woods at night.

    The Killer Shrews, the happy sidekick chased up a tree, screaming for help, before dropping into a pack of monsters to be instantly devoured alive.

    A Dana Andrews crime picture with a title that escapes me at the moment, his wife goes out to the car as he tucks his kid into bed. The car explodes and kills her. Was it The Big Heat or something like that?

    Indestructible Man, a cripple is thrown down the stairs.

    Horrors of the Black Museum, the spyglasses witht he spikes, the ice tong killing, the headboard-mounted guillotine.

    The Mad Magician, a head being sawed off is doubly shocking when Vincent Price begins the film as such a timid little man.

    More to come, I’m sure….

  • Rock Baker

    Hand of Death didn’t come out till 1962, but I’m comfortable including under this heading the scene where Joe Besser, who is just doing his job, grabs John Agar’s arm and then dies screaming while bloating up.

  • Actually, it’s border line sci-fi, but the ending of Kiss Me Deadly certainly deserves a mention.

  • The end of ‘The Fly’. First the scientist with the fly’s head has his wife smash his head in a giant press. Then, the fly with scientist’s gets caught in a huge spider’s web (ugh!) and both are smashed with a rock.

  • roger h

    @Rock “The Big Heat” correct but, it was Glenn Ford. Don’t forget two people face burned with coffee in same film.

    @Ken, you also discover that everyone’s skeleton looks exactly alike.

  • Rock Baker

    And skeletons have little brass fixtures at the shoulders!

    Yeah, the coffee scene was quite shocking. I’d forgotten that it was Glenn Ford, but Andrews was sort of like an imitation Ford. I was off topic anyway, since The Big Heat wasn’t a horror flick, but that car bomb scene still left an impact!

  • roger h

    “The Big Heat” may be off topic but, think how many scifi/horror films have borrowed the cliche of giving the audience several minutes of a happy, cheery, perfect, loving family and then whacking one or all.

  • Rock Baker

    True. One of the most frightening scenes I ever saw was from a civil defense short. A pretty young housewife was placing her baby in his crib, then moved to adjust the window shade. Then the Bomb went off! I was in the hospital at the time, just minutes before going in to the operating room to have my gallbladder removed. Somehow I think the situation I was in made that scene all the more disturbing….

  • BeckoningChasm

    When I was a kid, the guy getting eaten by the amoeba in Angry Red Planet was kind of unsettling. And hey, there’s another blob monster!

  • John Nowak

    >Most important take-away from Teenagers from Outer Space: Skeletons are self-articulated.

    Weirdly enough, this same thing crossed my mind when I saw the remains of a leopard seal’s meal in 2007. They have this trick where they bite around the penguin and turn it inside out, getting almost all the flesh and leaving the skeleton almost intact. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it.

    http://bsccollateral.smugmug.com/By-Year/2007/12062606_q9kk5#860075332_27mKx-A-LB

    I warn you, though — it’s an icky picture.

  • monoceros4

    It’s cheating perhaps to cite a 1962 film as an example of a gruesome ’50s onscreen death, but I figure since the film was included in Keep Watching The Skies! I’m not cheating too badly: I’m thinking of the various deaths in The Brain That Wouldn’t Die. You’ve got a decapitation, you’ve got Leslie Daniels staggering around for what seems like years bleeding over everything in sight, and you’ve got Jason Evers getting a chunk of his neck bitten off (and lovingly examined.)

  • The Rev.

    I just saw X the Unknown last night and the melting head’s a definite contender. The burning, disintegrating security guard’s pretty nasty too.

    The death in The Blob that got me was the projectionist. The Blob rears up at the camera, and then the poor guy falls, with it covering his head and chest–no time to scream, no way to fight, nothing to do but be digested alive. Yikes.

    I’m surprised Fiend Without a Face hasn’t come up.

    Implicit: Living victims’ central nervous systems sucked out, implying the monsters are injecting something to make them suckable…

    Explicit: The monsters’ deaths surprised me with their level of gore when I first saw it.

  • Rock Baker

    I’d have to see it again, but I’ve always understood Brain That Wouldn’t Die was actually filmed in 1959, but unreleased until 62 (when it ran an odd double bill with Invasion of the Star Creatures!). If that’s true, no foul.

  • Rock Baker

    In Revenge of the Creature the Gillman picks up that guy and flings him into a tree. If the scene were not so patently phoney in execution, the screaming man slamming into a tree and falling limp would be rather nasty. (The setup for this shot looked incredibly complex, you’re more or less willing to overlook how silly it looks out of sympathy for what must’ve been a nightmare to shoot!)

  • Petoht

    It’s not a 50’s film, but how about the people being turned inside out in the radio drama, The Dark?