Svengoolie’s April Schedule Has Giant Bugs, Deadly Rats, and 50 Foot Women, Oh My!
April showers bring May flowers, but Svengoolie‘s April schedule for MeTV‘s Svengoolie Classic Horror & Sci-Fi Movie brings us some slightly more fiendish signs of spring: lonely boys and deadly rats, super bugs from the deepest Arctic, benevolent aliens, self-replicating mini-monsters and one enormous lady. This month, the thrills and chills are huge … and so are a lot of the movie stars.
Read on to find out what he’ll be scaring up on the show this month, every Saturday night at 8pm ET!
April 5: Attack of the 50 Foot Woman (1958)
This film came hot on the heels of 1957’s The Amazing Colossal Man, as well as The Incredible Shrinking Man and War of the Colossal Beast (both 1958). But this time, it’s the ladies’ turn! Wealthy but troubles heiress Nancy (Allison Hayes) has a freaky desert encounter with a humungous alien — and once she starts growing to enormous proportions herself, her two-timing husband (William Hudson) has huge problems.
Art director-turned-actual director Nathan Juran shot this film on a shoestring budget; it became a cult success, and has been the topic of frequent remake talk ever since. But only one remake has ever actually materialized: a 1993 HBO movie directed by Christopher Guest and starring Daryl Hannah as the gigantic lady with even bigger personal problems.
April 12: The Deadly Mantis (1957)
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Peter Gunn himself, Craig Stevens, stars as Col. Joe Parkman, an Air Force pilot who has the bad luck to be on call the day a volcano explosion awakens a 200 foot mantis who has been enclosed in Arctic ice. Don’t you hate it when that happens? The monster mantis is sometimes represented by a real mantis crawling on model cities, but the production also used a 200 foot papier mache mantis fitted with a hydraulic system.
And guess what? This film was also directed by Nathan Juran! Though it has not proved to become the beloved cult hit that Attack of the 50 Foot Woman did — Deadly Mantis’s greatest claim to fame might be its appearance in a Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode.
April 19: DOUBLE FEATURE! It Came from Outer Space (1953) and Munchies (1987)
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First up! A stargazing date turns bad when a couple watch an alien spaceship crash-land in the desert … and no one wants to believe their tale, even after local townsfolk start vanishing and acting weird.
Though the screenplay was technically written by Harry Essex, it was based on a detailed treatment by the great Ray Bradbury. It was unique among alien invasion films of its era by treating its aliens as benign visitors, rather than vicious attackers; Bradbury said, “I wanted to treat the invaders as beings who were not dangerous, and that was very unusual.” It was also the rare 1950s sci-fi film that led to an awards win: Barbara Rush picked up a Golden Globe for most promising female newcomer based on her performance.
Everett Collection
Next up: Don’t call them “gremlins”! Part of a wave of post-Gremlins films that included Ghoulies and Critters, Munchies might have the most in common with its source material — it was directed by Tina Hirsch, who worked as an editor on the original 1984 Gremlins. Starring Harvey Korman as a scientist and his own evil twin, the Roger Corman-produced Munchies was more of a parody than a knock-off, full of silly set pieces and sight gags. In Munchies, the tiny terrors don’t come from a mysterious old antiques shop — instead, they’re found in a Peruvian cave. And instead of multiplying when they come in contact with water, Munchies multiply after being, uh, chopped into pieces.
April 26: Willard (1971)
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Golden Globe winner Bruce Davison had his career breakthrough with this story of a boy and his rat. The socially awkward Willard struggles in relating to his fellow humans, especially his mean mother (Elsa Lanchester) and evil boss (Ernest Borgnine) — but he makes some friends in the backyard of his home when he decided to have mercy on a group of rats. Willard’s new furry friends enrich his life, especially the white-furred Socrates. But how far can a man and his rats be pushed?!
Though considered by some to be a Birds knock-off, Willard inspired its own host of imitators, including 1972’s Stanley and 1976’s Tarantula. Willard was successful enough to inspire a direct sequel, 1972’s Ben (best remembered for the Michael Jackson-sung theme, which was Academy Award-nominated and Jackson’s first solo #1), and a 2003 remake which starred Back to the Future‘s Crispin Glover as the troubled ratophile.
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