This giant-eye monster film began as a six-part British TV serial

The Trollenberg Terror was made in 1958 by Quentin Lawrence, a British director, and it is a monster film that began as a six-part television serial broadcast on ITV in 1956. Some write-ups call that serial a BBC production. The broadcaster was ITV, Britain's commercial network. Reviewers have measured it against the Quatermass serials, the BBC science-fiction thrillers written by Nigel Kneale, and one reviewer says the serial was trying to replicate what Kneale had been doing.

The story is a mountain mystery. A series of decapitations has struck a Swiss mountainside, and a radioactive cloud seems to be connected. Alan Brooks, a United Nations troubleshooter played by Forrest Tucker, an American actor, goes to investigate. Anne Pilgrim, a young woman with psychic powers, played by Janet Munro, senses what is inside the cloud.

How did a TV serial become a film?

The serial was credited to Peter Key, which was not one man. It was a shared pen name for three writers: George F. Kerr, Jack Cross and Giles Cooper. The film keeps the credit, and the British Film Institute's script record for it reads "Based on the TV serial by Peter Key".

Jimmy Sangster, a screenwriter for the horror studio Hammer, who had just finished X the Unknown, adapted it for the screen. Robert S. Baker and Monty Berman, the producers, made it for their company Tempean Films, and Eros Films released it in Britain. Laurence Payne, who played the reporter Philip Truscott in the serial, played him again in the film.

Some of the casting came late. Warren Mitchell took the part of Professor Crevett after the first choice of actor, Anton Diffring, dropped out at the last minute. Munro, who plays Anne, went on to sign a Disney contract and appear in Darby O'Gill and the Little People, Third Man on the Mountain and Swiss Family Robinson.

What do the effects look like?

The effects were by Les Bowie, working on a very small budget. The Science Fiction Encyclopedia, a reference work, says the cloud on the mountain was cotton wool pinned to a photograph, and it calls the octopus-like alien ludicrous. The critic Derek Winnert calls the effects cheap and dated and gives the film two stars, but says there is still some sneaky fun to be had.

Not every reviewer was dismissive. The Monthly Film Bulletin, a British film journal, found several sequences genuinely alarming. It also said the film looked as if it had been shot and edited in a great hurry, and it compared the film unfavourably with the Quatermass films.

How did a 1958 film reach a 1989 audience?

In the United States the film opened in July 1958 as The Crawling Eye, released by Distributors Corporation of America. That is the title most viewers know. In Britain it came out the same year under its original name.

It found a second audience on cable television. The Crawling Eye was episode 101 of Mystery Science Theater 3000, a comedy show in which a man and his robot puppets talk over bad films. It aired on The Comedy Channel in November 1989, and episode guides and reviews describe it as the first fully scripted episode of the series. The show's earlier run on a Minneapolis local station had been improvised.

Where it sits on Relay

Relay lists 126 horror films made between 1920 and 1959, 50 of them from the 1950s. Among them, this one began on television, and its cast includes a future Disney star.

The film suits viewers who like 1950s science-fiction scares, anyone curious how British television serials fed the cinema, and people who want to see the monster that opened Mystery Science Theater 3000 on The Comedy Channel.

Horror