Written by Old Bluffer 5th Jun 2009

Written by Kooshmeister

Fishing in Cornwall has gotten quite bad recently. However Tom Trevethan, already possessing something of a reputation amongst the locals as being the best fisherman in town, has managed to catch a boatload of fish nonetheless, ably assisted by his plucky daughter, Jean. As they come ashore, Tom tells Jean to go ahead without him, as he wants to stay behind for...some reason. Considering that all he ends up doing is cleaning one of the fish he caught off in the surf I guess he just has a few last-minute fisherman related duties to take care of.

However after his daughter has departed and Tom is in the surf cleaning off his catch, he hears a very bizarre sound. A kind of high-pitched whirring sound (not unlike the kind that would later be made by the aliens in Night of the Big Heat). Then he reacts to something offscreen as a weird spiral effect fills the screen, followed by a blinding white light which envelopes Tom. Anyone watching this film without knowing the title would likely come to the conclusion that Mr. Trevethan is experimenting with some kind of mind-expanding narcotic, a year before the 1960s officially began.

Sometime later, night (or day-for-night) has fallen. In an admittedly creepy and ominous moment, the Trevethans' front door, presumably left unlocked by Jean for her father, slowly bangs open and closed repeatedly as it's blown in a gentle wind. This awakens Jean who was sleeping and who upon noticing her dad's absence naturally heads out looking for him. This being a 50s monster movie, there's stereotypes aplenty as the first place Jean thinks to search for her father is the local pub, but none of the patrons have seen him. Visibly worried, Jean manages to convince one barfly to accompany her to search for dear dad.

The two wander down to the shore where they find Tom's boat still moored where Jean last saw it. Then the barfly notices something opposite a large cluster of rocks and reacts with visible horror. In a nice touch, he attempts to prevent Jean from going over (because it's too horrible and she's, like, a girl and stuff) but she just shoves past him to discover her father laying on the ground covered in what is meant to be third-degree radiation burns but which just kind of looks like oatmeal.

Jean is understandably hysterical over what has befallen Tom, who by the way is still (barely) alive, but manages to compose herself enough to inquire about what happened. Now considering that the title menace of this film winds up being a kind of irradiated dinosaur, and it attacked Tom in broad daylight, it's pretty plain that he got a good look at the thing.

However this being so early in the film, Tom's last words to his daughter have to be cryptic. So instead of saying, for example, "I was attacked by a big sea monster that burned me with some kind of blinding white light!", all that Tom manages to blurt out before expiring is, "From the sea! Burning, like fire!" And when Jean asks for some clarification, he dad simply says, "Behemoth!" and then, his cryptic plot point delivered, croaks.