The Trollenberg Terror

{{Short description|1958 film by Quentin Lawrence}} {{Use dmy dates|date=June 2016}} {{Use British English|date=June 2016}} {{Infobox film | name = The Trollenberg Terror | image = The Trollenberg Terror film poster.jpg | caption = Theatrical release poster | director = Quentin Lawrence | screenplay = Jimmy Sangster | story = Peter Key | based_on = ''The Trollenberg Terror''<br/>1956 TV serial | producer = {{Plainlist| * Robert S. Baker * Monty Berman }} | starring = {{Plainlist| * Forrest Tucker * Laurence Payne * Jennifer Jayne }} | cinematography = Monty Berman | editing = Henry Richardson | music = Stanley Black | studio = Tempean Films | distributor = Eros Films | released = {{Film date|df=y|1958|7|7|United States|1958|10||United Kingdom}} | runtime = 84 minutes | country = United Kingdom | language = English }} '''''The Trollenberg Terror''''' (U.S. title: '''''The Crawling Eye'''''; also known as '''''Creatures from Another World'''''<ref name="BFIsearch">{{Cite web |title=The Trollenberg Terror |url=https://collections-search.bfi.org.uk/web/Details/ChoiceFilmWorks/150044196 |access-date=29 February 2024 |website=British Film Institute Collections Search}}</ref>) is a 1958 British science fiction horror film produced by Robert S. Baker and Monty Berman and directed by Quentin Lawrence (in his directorial debut). The film stars Forrest Tucker, Laurence Payne, Janet Munro, and Jennifer Jayne.<ref name="BFIsearch" /> The special effects are by Les Bowie.<ref name="Warren">{{cite book |last=Warren |first=Bill |author-link=Bill Warren (film historian and critic) |year=1986 |url=https://archive.org/details/keepwatchingskie00iiwarr/page/736/mode/2up |title=Keep Watching the Skies! American Science Fiction Movies of the Fifties: Volume II, 1958–1962 |location=Jefferson, North Carolina |publisher=McFarland |pages=736–737 |isbn=978-0-8995-0170-3 |url-access=registration}}</ref> The story is based on a 1956 British ITV "Saturday Serial" television programme written by George F. Kerr, Jack Cross and Giles Cooper under the collective pseudonym of "Peter Key".

The film was first released as ''The Crawling Eye'' in the United States on 7 July 1958 by Distributors Corporation of America, and released later in the United Kingdom as ''The Trollenberg Terror'' on October 7, 1958 by Eros Films.<ref name="Warren"/> It played on a double bill with the British science fiction film ''The Strange World of Planet X'', which was retitled ''Cosmic Monsters'' for its U.S. release.

''The Trollenberg Terror''{{'}}s storyline concerns United Nations troubleshooter Alan Brooks, later joined by journalist Philip Truscott, investigating unusual accidents occurring in the area of a resort hotel on the fictional Mount Trollenberg in Switzerland. Brooks suspects that these deaths are related to a series of similar incidents which occurred three years earlier in the Andes Mountains, which involved an unexplained radioactive cloud formation believed by locals to be inhabited. {{TOC limit|limit=2}}

==Plot== On the Swiss mountain Trollenberg, one of three climbers is suddenly killed, his head ripped from his body. Two sisters, Anne and Sarah Pilgrim, a London mind-reading act, are travelling by train to Geneva when Anne faints as the train passes the mountain. Upon waking, Anne insists that they must get off at the next stop.

UN troubleshooter Alan Brooks, in the same train compartment as the sisters, is going to Trollenberg's observatory to meet with Professor Crevett. Crevett goes on to explain that, despite a series of climbing accidents, no bodies are ever found, and an always-stationary radioactive cloud is regularly observed on the mountain's south face. Brooks mentions similar incidents that took place in South America in the Andes three years earlier, just before a similar radioactive cloud vanished without a trace. Local rumors circulated that something was alive in the heavy mist of the cloud.

Anne is giving a mind-reading demonstration at the nearby hotel when she "sees" two men in a base camp hut on the mountain. Dewhurst is asleep when the other man, Brett, under some kind of mental compulsion, walks outside as the cloud envelopes the hut. Anne suddenly faints again. Brooks phones the hut, Dewhurst answers, screams, and then the connection suddenly goes dead.

A rescue party, including Brooks, climbs up to the camp hut looking for both men. Anne, in a trance-like state, urges the rescuers to stay away. Inside the hut, the rescuers discover that everything is frozen solid, despite the door being locked from the inside. Dewhurst's body is found under a bed with its head missing. A spotter plane arrives and circles overhead, and a man is spotted a half mile away. The first rescuer finds a rucksack at that location with a severed head inside. He is set upon and killed by Brett, who also kills the second rescuer when he arrives.

Later at the hotel, Brett suddenly staggers in, claiming that he had been lost on the mountain. Soon after, he attacks Anne with a knife, but Brooks manages to subdue him. Brett sustains a severe head gash during the struggle, but no blood flows from the wound. He is heavily sedated and locked away. Brooks recalls to journalist Philip Truscott a similar incident in the Andes that followed a similar pattern: a man murdered an elderly woman who allegedly had psychic abilities like those displayed by Anne. The killer's body was discovered to have been dead for at least 24 hours prior to his murder of the old woman. Brett escapes his improvised cell and resumes his hunt for Anne, this time armed with a handaxe. Before he can reach her, Brooks dispatches him with a pistol. Brett's flesh appears crystallized upon inspection and rapidly decomposes in the heat.

The cloud has begun to move down the mountainside towards the hotel, so the guests retreat up to the fortified observatory. A mother realizes that her young daughter is missing as they enter the cable car. In a thickening mist, a giant tentacled alien creature with a single huge eye appears at the hotel, smashing down the front door. Brooks manages to rescue the child from the lobby, both of them narrowly escaping. They return to the cable car, but the delay gives the mist a chance to reach the car platform. The transport motor begins to freeze, starting and stopping, the cable slipping, but the cable car arrives safely. The single cloud has now split into five while converging on the observatory.

Hans, who left the hotel by car, suddenly turns up at the observatory. Once inside, he begins exhibiting the same obsession with Anne. Hans tries to strangle her, but Brooks and Truscott stop him as Brooks stabs him. As the aliens near the observatory, everyone makes Molotov cocktails to combat them. By radio, Alan orders an aerial firebombing raid against the observatory, which has reinforced walls and concrete roof that can withstand the assault.

Truscott strikes one of the creatures with a Molotov cocktail, setting it ablaze. He is caught by a tentacle from another monster now atop the observatory's roof. Brooks sets that one ablaze with another Molotov cocktail, forcing it to drop Truscott. Later, Truscott firebombs another creature that manages to breach a portion of thick wall to get at Anne. The aerial firebombing assault with an English Electric Canberra begins and successfully torches the remaining aliens.

==Cast== {{Cast listing| * Forrest Tucker as Alan Brooks * Laurence Payne† as Philip Truscott * Jennifer Jayne as Sarah Pilgrim * Janet Munro as Anne Pilgrim * Warren Mitchell as Professor Crevett * Frederick Schiller as Mayor Klein * Andrew Faulds as Brett * Stuart Saunders† as Dewhurst * Colin Douglas as Hans * Derek Sydney as Wilde * Richard Golding as first villager * George Herbert as second villager * Anne Sharp as German woman * Leslie Heritage as Carl * Jeremy Longhurst as first student climber * Anthony Parker as second student climber * Theodore Wilhelm as Fritz * Garard Green as pilot * Caroline Glaser as little girl }}

† Reprising role from TV version.

==Production== ''The Trollenberg Terror'' was the final film shot at Southall Studios, one of the earliest pioneer film studios in the United Kingdom, and was one of the last films released by Distributors Corporation of America.{{citation needed|date=October 2015}}

Mitchell's role was originally meant to be played by Anton Diffring, but Diffring pulled out of the part at the last minute.<ref name="x cert">Hamilton 2013, pp. 48–51.</ref> It was an early film role for Janet Munro.<ref name="munro">{{cite magazine|magazine=Filmink|first=Stephen|last=Vagg|date=6 January 2024|access-date=6 January 2024|url=https://www.filmink.com.au/girl-next-door-or-girl-gone-bad-the-janet-munro-story/|title=Girl-next-door or girl-gone-bad: The Janet Munro Story}}</ref>

==Release== ''The Trollenberg Terror'' was released in the United States on July 7, 1958. It received an October 1958 release in Britain.<ref>{{cite book|title=Keep Watching the Skies!|volume=II|last=Warren|first=Bill|ISBN=0-89950-170-2|year=1986|publisher=McFarland & Company, Inc.|location=Jefferson, North Carolina|pp=736-737}}</ref>

==Reception== ''The Monthly Film Bulletin'' wrote: "Several sequences in this Alpine science fiction production are genuinely alarming, although much more could have been made of the dramatic moments. The film gives the impression of having been shot and edited in a great hurry and the characteristic addiction to close-ups of such details as severed heads and melting flesh is more in evidence than in most science fiction pieces. More accomplished direction might have resulted in a film as effective as the ''Quatermass'' film series".<ref>{{Cite journal |date=1 January 1958 |title=The Trollenberg Terror |url=https://www.proquest.com/docview/1305820071 |journal=The Monthly Film Bulletin |volume=25 |issue=288 |pages=145 |id={{ProQuest|1305820071}} }}</ref>

In the 1 January 1959 issue of ''The New York Times'', film critic Richard W. Nason reviewed the double feature starring Forrest Tucker and opined that "...''The Crawling Eye'' and ''The Cosmic Monsters'' do nothing to enhance or advance the copious genre of science fiction".<ref>{{cite news |title=Screen: Science-Fiction Bill at Local Theatres|work=The New York Times|last=Nason|first=Richard W.|date=January 1, 1959|access-date=December 1, 2019| url=https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1959/01/01/83432420.html?pageNumber=38}}</ref>

''The Radio Times Guide to Films'' gave the film 2/5 stars, writing: "Efficiently suspenseful British cheapie marred by awful special effects. Two bits of cotton wool stuck on a mountain photo make do for the cloudy snowscapes in veteran Hammer scriptwriter Jimmy Sangster's screen version of the BBC [sic] TV series. Forrest Tucker is miscast as the hero, but Janet Munro is affecting as the telepathic heroine the aliens seize as their mouthpiece."<ref>{{Cite book |title=Radio Times Guide to Films |publisher=Immediate Media Company |year=2017 |isbn=9780992936440 |edition=18th |location=London |pages=960}}</ref>

Film historian and critic Leonard Maltin considered ''The Trollenberg Terror'' as "ok, if predictable", a feature that showed its humble origins, being adapted by Jimmy Sangster from the British TV series (also called ''The Trollenberg Terror'') about cloud-hiding alien invaders on a Swiss mountaintop. Maltin noted that the film was "hampered by low-grade special effects".<ref>Maltin, Leonard. [https://web.archive.org/web/20220518093359/https://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/71718/the-trollenberg-terror "Leonard Maltin Movie review."] ''Turner Classic Movies''. Retrieved: 21 January 2015.</ref>

==In popular culture== The main title music from ''The Crawling Eye'' was featured on the album ''Greatest Science Fiction Hits V'' by Neil Norman and his Cosmic Orchestra, released in 1979 on GNP Crescendo Records.<ref>Norman, Neil. [https://www.amazon.com/Greatest-Science-Fiction-Hits-IV/dp/B00000FYJS/ref=ntt_mus_ep_dpi_1 "Greatest Science Fiction Hits IV Soundtrack Neil Norman and his Cosmic Orchestra."] ''Amazon''. Retrieved: 21 January 2015.</ref>

''The Trollenberg Terror'' was one of the inspirations for writer/director John Carpenter's 1980 horror film ''The Fog''.<ref>[https://comingsoon.net/horror/news/745741-beginning-end-john-carpenters-village-damned/amp Coming Soon. The Beginning of the End: John Carpenter’s Village of the Damned (2015)]</ref>

In Stephen King's 1986 horror novel ''It'', one of the protagonists, Richie Tozier, watches the film and it terrifies him. A crawling-eye creature later appears as a manifestation of Pennywise, the novel's title monster.<ref>King 1986, p. 12.</ref>

A scene of the film was briefly seen in the 1998 film ''Small Soldiers''.

The ''Freakazoid'' episode "The Cloud" spoofed the film's opening credits, as well as key elements of the plot, though with the victims being turned into clowns instead of being killed.<ref>Lenburg 1999, pp. 637–638.</ref>

A song called "Crawling Eye" was featured on American horror punk band the Misfits' 1999 album ''Famous Monsters''; the song's lyrics directly reference the plot of the film.<ref>Blush 2001, pp. 201–202.</ref>

The film was shown on the MeTV show ''Svengoolie'' on 26 November 2022.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2023-02-01 |title=MeTV.com - Svengoolie |url=https://www.metv.com/svengoolie/blog/in-case-you-mist-it-before-set-your-peepers-on-the-crawling-eye-tonight |access-date=2023-05-27 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230201193920/https://www.metv.com/svengoolie/blog/in-case-you-mist-it-before-set-your-peepers-on-the-crawling-eye-tonight |archive-date=1 February 2023 }}</ref>

In the 2023 ''Riverdale'' episode "Betty & Veronica Double Digest", a 4D screening of the film is held to increase popularity of a financially struggling movie theater.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.imdb.com/title/tt27232929/|title=Chapter One Hundred Twenty-Six: Betty & Veronica Double Digest|via=www.imdb.com}}</ref>

===''Mystery Science Theater 3000''===

Under the title ''The Crawling Eye'', the film was featured in the first episode of the TV series ''Mystery Science Theater 3000'' after the series moved from KTMA to The Comedy Channel. The episode aired on November 25, 1989.<ref>{{cite web |last=sampo |title=Episode guide: 101- The Crawling Eye |url=https://www.mst3kinfo.com/?p=8122 |website=Satellite News |date=October 23, 2014 |access-date=November 9, 2025}}</ref> ''The Crawling Eye'' was also briefly mentioned at the end of the season 10 finale (the second series finale) covering ''Danger: Diabolik''.<ref>{{cite web |last=sampo |title=Episode guide: 1013- Diabolik |url=https://www.mst3kinfo.com/?p=6395 |website=Satellite News |date=April 5, 2018 |access-date=November 9, 2025}}</ref> Because the Comedy Channel was not available in the Twin Cities, the cast and writers watched the episode at a bar in Bloomington, Minn., the only town in the area that offered the channel.<ref name="auto">{{cite book|author=Beaulieu, Trace|display-authors=etal|title=The Mystery Science Theater 3000 Amazing Colossal Episode Guide|date=1996|publisher=Bantam Books|location=New York|isbn=9780553377835|page=4|edition=1st}}</ref>

As is the case with all the first season ''MST3K'' episodes, writer Jim Vorel rated the episode poorly, ranking it four spots from the bottom at #193 in his evaluation of the show's first twelve seasons. "The film itself is nothing too special or memorable," Vorel writes, and not as painful as some others. However, the "uninspired riffing" by Joel and the 'bots bring the episode down, and they contribute "more low-energy or awkward moments" than later in the series.<ref>{{cite web |last=Vorel |first=Jim |title=Ranking Every MST3K Episode, From Worst to Best |url=https://www.pastemagazine.com/comedy/best-mst3k-episodes/ranking-every-mst3k-episode-from-worst-to-best | website=Paste |date=October 25, 2017 |access-date= November 5, 2025}}</ref>

The episode featuring the film was released on the ''Mystery Science Theater 3000: Volume XVII'' DVD collection by Shout! Factory on March 16, 2010. The ''Crawling Eye'' disc includes the film's original theatrical trailer. Other episodes in the collection include ''The Beatniks'' (episode #101), ''The Final Sacrifice'' (episode #910), and ''The Blood Waters of Dr. Z'' (episode #1005).<ref>{{cite web|last=Salmons |first=Tim |url=https://thedigitalbits.com/reviews/item/mst3k-vol-xvii-dvd |title=Mystery Science Theater 3000: Volume XVII (DVD Review) |date=August 3, 2015|publisher=The Digital Bits|accessdate=November 7, 2025}}</ref>

==References== {{Reflist}}

===Bibliography=== {{Refbegin}} * Blush, Steven. ''American Hardcore: A Tribal History''. New York: Feral House, 2001. {{ISBN|0-922915-71-7}}. * Hamilton, John. ''The British Independent Horror Film 1951–70''. Hailsham, U.K.: Hemlock Books, 2013. {{ISBN|978-1-903254-33-2}}. * King, Stephen. ''It''. New York: Viking, 1986. {{ISBN|0-670-81302-8}}. * Lenburg, Jeff. "Steven Spielberg Presents Freakazoid!". ''The Encyclopedia of Animated Cartoons'' (third edition). New York, New York: Checkmark Books, 1999. {{ISBN|0-8160-3831-7}}. * Maltin, Leonard. ''Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide 2009''. New York: New American Library, 2009 (originally published as ''TV Movies'', then as ''Leonard Maltin's Movie & Video Guide''), first edition 1969, published annually since 1988. {{ISBN|978-0-451-22468-2}}. * Warren, Bill. ''Keep Watching the Skies: American Science Fiction Films of the Fifties: 21st Century Edition''. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2009 (first edition: ''Volume 1'' (1982), ''Volume 2'' (1986)). {{ISBN|0-89950-032-3}}. {{Refend}}

==External links== {{Wikiquote}} * {{IMDb title}} * [https://web.archive.org/web/20201125150126/https://www2.bfi.org.uk/films-tv-people/4ce2b6b9068c0 ''The Trollenberg Terror''] at the British Film Institute{{better source needed|reason=Help request: a live link can be searched for at https://collections-search.bfi.org.uk/web/search/expert - if available, replace the archive URL with the live link. Or if none found, remove this 'better source needed' template. | date=October 2023}} * {{TCMDb title}} *[https://archive.org/details/variety212-1958-10/page/n161/mode/1up? Review of film] at ''Variety'' * {{Rotten-tomatoes|id=crawling_eye|title=The Trollenberg Terror}} * {{mojo title|tt0052320}} * [https://web.archive.org/web/20060509234403/http://www.action-tv.org.uk/guides/trollenbergterror.htm ''The Trollenberg Terror'' episode guide] at Action TV * ''Mystery Science Theater 3000'' ** {{IMDb title|id=0756960|title="Mystery Science Theater 3000" The Crawling Eye (TV episode 1989)}} ** [http://www.mst3kinfo.com/?p=8122 Episode Guide: 101- The Crawling Eye]

{{Quentin Lawrence}} {{Jimmy Sangster}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Trollenberg Terror, The}} Category:1950s monster movies Category:1950s science fiction horror films Category:1958 British films Category:1958 directorial debut films Category:1958 English-language films Category:1958 films Category:1958 horror films Category:1958 science fiction films Category:British black-and-white films Category:British monster movies Category:British science fiction horror films Category:English-language science fiction horror films Category:Eros Films films Category:Films about alien invasions Category:Films about mind control Category:Films based on television series Category:Films directed by Quentin Lawrence Category:Films scored by Stanley Black Category:Films set in Switzerland Category:Films set in the Alps Category:Films shot at Southall Studios Category:Films with screenplays by Jimmy Sangster Category:Giant monster films