The Crawling Eye

When we were discussing the to 20 great Science Fiction Movies, I forgot this one. It was syndicated to one of the New York City TV stations (probably WPIX) in the late 50s. I watched it one Saturday morning and it scared the hell out of me. There was a shadow of tree branches on the window one night that looked exactly like tentacles coming down from the roof. I had a vivid imagination when I was 8 years old.

The movie stars Forest Tucker who later starred in F-Troop. The effects are cheesey, but when you are a little kid, you don't notice things like that. It has been called an under appreciated gem. John Carpenter said that this film, with its creatures hidden in the clouds, was the inspiration for his film The Fog (1980). It has been suggested that the E.S.P summoning of the characters to the swiss mountain was, in part, inspiration for Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

It was released in England as The Trollenberg Terror. It was actually a TV serial that was turned into a movie. It would be fun to find the original TV show.