“A freak of nature.”
A decent ’50’s horror, the Trollenburg Terror or as it was known in America, The Crawling Eye, featured a humongous cranium monster with tentacles and a single giant menacing eye that stalked its victims in the Swiss Alps.
While not a classic, the film inspired countless other works including John Carpenter’s The Fog and served as one of the earliest Mystery Science Theater victims. While a British film, unlike other UK horror classics like Peeping Tom, Trollenburg Terror is just a basic and functional creature feature whose major drawback is that it never fully reveals its main antagonist – the titular crawling eye.
While the film’s special effects were handled by Les Bowie, who worked on several low-budget Hammer Film productions, the lack of a threatening onscreen baddie really hampered the tension of this slow-burn black-and-white. But perhaps more importantly for our purposes, the crawling eye, while hardly intimidating in the movie, are interesting creatures for the D&D table. Possessing an impressive suite of abilities, including a freezing mist, the ability to create zombies and decapitating tentacles, the crawling eye is a neat addition to any fantasy world.
Like music? Me too – Why not go with a UK song, from the War of the World (BBC) film soundtrack featuring a similar otherworldly monster – Deranged by Russ Davies.
Full Movie
