Movie Review: The Trollenberg Terror (1958)

Synopsis: When climbers are found beheaded on Mount Trolleberg in Switzerland, the official explanation is it is a series of accidents. However, a team of scientists and a visiting psychic expect there is something more going on, especially since there is an unexplained stationary radioactive cloud.

Who's in it? The movie stars Rosemary Miller, Sarah Lawson, Ronan O'Casey, Laurence Payne and Frederick Shrecker.


Review: I started watching this movie (also known as The Crawling Eye) a couple weeks ago but didn't get an opportunity to finish it until earlier today, when I was waiting for my daughter to get done with her driving lesson. While the premise of the film was OK, it ended up not being anything particularly memorable.

I think the biggest problem with this film is it is just too predictable. The movie makes an effort to create some sort of mystery regardng the happenings up on top of the mountain but it just was too easy to figure out the truth. In fact, I'm not sure the movie even needed the psychic, Anne (Miller) to move the plot along considering most of the non-psychics seemed to realize things were amiss.

To be fair, I did think the monsters, once revealed were kind of cool looking despite the limited special effects. However, I the movie really does a poor job of explaining exactly what they are, why they were in Switzerland and their obsession with beheading climbers. Without a firm understanding of their motivation, it was kind of hard to really care what they did.

I also feel like the movie dropped the ball a bit by not fully utilizing the creature's ability to reanimate dead people. That seemed like it had a lot more potential than the whole floating alien concept (it's hard to be too scared of something if you can see it coming) but the movie opted not to spend a whole lot of time on it and, by the time it was actually even used in an effort to kill Anne, it was already kind of late for that plan to even make sense (why not kill her before everyone knew about the creatures?).

Final Opinion: It's an OK movie that might be good to watch on a rainy day but  fails to be anything overly special. The filmmakers spent a little too much time on the monster and not enough time on the overall plot.

My Grade: C

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