The Deadly Mantis (1957) – Review

While space explorers were tangling with Cat-Women of the Moon and Leslie Nielsen was off seducing Anne Francis on the Forbidden Planet back on good ole planet Earth scientists and their stalwart gal-pals were doing their best to save humanity from giant insects, whether it be a giant Tarantula or the colossal ants from Them! these rather large pests made up a rather good-sized slice of the science fiction pie of the 1950s, and as the decade drew to a close we were treated to another startling insectoid threat in the form of The Deadly Mantis.

How can you make a science fiction movie on a low budget? The answer to that question is two simple words “stock footage.” All you have to add to this some nice expository narration and you can shave thousands of dollars from your budget, and for The Deadly Mantis Universal Pictures saved plenty of money in their production using these techniques, unfortunately, this sometimes resulted in the use of stock footage that didn’t even match previous shots, but who’s going to notice? This film not only relies on the heavy use of such footage but the audience is hit over the head with it right from the outset as the film opens with a ponderous narrator giving us a lengthy lecture on the importance of radar and the construction of the DEW Line (Distant Early Warning Line) that was put in place to protect all of us from a sneak attack across the North Pole, of course, this film isn’t about those nasty commies over in Russia but of a more dire and terrifying threat, and when one of these outposts goes offline it’s up to our heroes to investigate.

“Hey Mike, either Santa Claus is really early or that’s a giant mantis heading our way.”

Over at military-base Red Eagle One Commanding Officer Colonel Joe Parkman (Craig Stevens) is sent to investigate this lack of contact and is shocked to find the post destroyed, the men gone, and the giant slashes left in the snow outside are the only clues.  Later on, an Air Force plane is attacked by “something” and Joe is once again tasked to investigate, this time his search of the wreckage turns up what looks to be a giant claw – sadly not from the Sam Katzman film – and when a group of “top men” are unable to identify what creature this appendage belongs to the Pentagon calls upon Dr. Nedrick Jackson (William Hopper), a paleontologist at the Museum of Natural History, and along with the museum’s in-house magazine editor Marge Blaine (Alix Talton), is hired to figure out just what kind of menace they are dealing with. Going by the title of this movie I’m betting it’s a mantis of some kind, sadly, it’s halfway through the film’s running time before we actually see the damn title monster.

“If I don’t get home soon my wife is going to bite my head off.”

As is the case with many of the giant monster films of the 50s there isn’t a lot of plot or character development to speak of and The Deadly Mantis is no exception in that area, not only are we subjected to an inordinate amount of stock footage the bulk of the film is mostly people standing around discussing what is or is not going on, that is when they aren’t endlessly staring at radar screens, and without much action to keep the audience awake. With maybe the exception of William Hopper, the cast of this film is so wooden that they could have been stored next to the prop of the deadly mantis, and things are definitely not aided by Nathan Juran’s direction which is as dull and listless as possible and is only partially saved by Ellis W. Carter’s nice cinematography.  As for the title creature, the well-designed and operated puppet of the mantis needed to get a better agent as it deserved more than to be in this sad film. The Deadly Mantis has absolutely no forward momentum as each scene seems to drift into the next with no sense of urgency or peril, despite what the film’s tagline implies that the world is “engulfed in terror” This is clearly not the case, and the film comes to its “exciting” conclusion with Col. Parkman flying his plane into the creature – it’s debatable if this was on purpose or another example of his incompetency – and then him marching into the Manhattan Tunnel to toss a bomb into the face of the already mortally wounded creature. Yeah, that was superheroic.

It wasn’t beauty that killed this beast, it was bean counters and studio execs.

Stray Observations:

• Unlike the giant ants in Them! the threat here wasn’t created by atomic testing, instead, the creatures are woken from a prehistoric slumber, much like the Rhedosaurus from The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, but where that monster’s nap was interrupted by atomic testing the “Deadly Mantis” was freed by a volcanic eruption thousands of miles away.
• As is the case with all insects, the Praying Mantis is a cold-blooded creature, so how it was able to walk around let alone fly up in the frigid air of the Arctic is beyond me.
• Dr. Jackson states that “Grasshoppers and crickets aren’t flesh eaters like the mantis” which is completely false as they are both just as carnivorous and deadly as the mantis, clearly this film has a very anti-mantis agenda.
• Why exactly is Col. Parkman tasked with hunting down the giant mantis? Is this some kind of military protocol of “I call dibs” because the commander of a radar installation wouldn’t be my top choice for the position of monster hunter.
• Actor William Hopper, who plays Dr. Nedrick Jackson, is no stranger to giant monsters as he fought the Ymir in 20 Million Miles to Earth the same year this film was released.
• I’ll grant that a giant mantis would be a threatening creature, with its giant claws and mandibles, but when it comes to the safety of the film’s heroine I found the wolf-whistling sex-craved soldiers of the DEW Line to be a more clear and present danger to this poor woman’s safety.
• When the mantis arrives in Washington D.C. its first stop is to visit the Washington Monument because even a giant insect can’t resist a good tourist attraction.

“Quick, someone call in the biplanes, I think it has Fay Wray.”

One of the key problems with The Deadly Mantis is that despite being told about all these attacks and horrifying tales of people being eaten it is only one giant bug, it certainly doesn’t come across as some kind of world-conquering menace, because, unlike the giant ants in Them! this is a singular threat and not a swarm of giant beasties.  And while monsters like Godzilla and Rodan were nigh invulnerable and caused citywide destruction, that is not the case here as the giant mantis is driven off by rifles and flamethrowers and is eventually dispatched after a single unfortunate collision with the hero’s plane. This is not a monster to instill fear into the populace and that is where this film fails big time as we never once feel that our cast of characters is in any real danger, mortal or otherwise, despite Alix Talton’s shrill screams to the contrary, and when the mantis’s last pathetic moments unfold we pity both it and ourselves for sitting through this thing.

Note: The plot of this movie is very similar to that of The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, with a creature waking up from the ice to then cause death and destruction as it marches south, so if you haven’t seen that Ray Harryhausen classic, do yourself a favour and check that one out instead.

Director Nathan Juran would helm the much superior 20 Million Miles to Earth, as well as the amazing fantasy film The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, but the successes of those films I credit to the wonderful stop-motion animation work of Ray Harryhausen and not Juran’s directing skills, a man who would later give us such classics as Attack of the 50 Foot Woman and The Boy Who Cried Werewolf, which goes to show you how important the special effects men are when it comes to this genre. It should also be noted that if one were to remove all of the stock footage from The Deadly Mantis you’d probably only have enough left for a decent episode of The Outer Limits, and what we are stuck with is an incredibly tedious and monotonous film whose only highlights would be those very brief monster attacks, and while the puppet looked great those moments are barely enough to keep even the most avid monster movie fan awake.