EDITOR’S NOTE: The Giant Behemoth was the second movie to ever be on Chiller Theater on Sunday, September 15, 1963 at 11:10 PM. It also aired on the show on January 11, 1964; June 26, 1965 and December 2, 1967.

While the stop-motion animation special effects by Willis O’Brien — the man who made King Kong alive — were shot in a Los Angeles studio. The rest of the footage, filmed in London, was optically integrated with the effects. The distributor wanted this to be a clone of The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms and they got exactly what they asked for, nearly scene for scene and word for word.

Scientist Steve Karnes (Gene Evans) tries to warn everyone about the dangers of nuclear radiation. Before he even goes back to the U.S., thousands of dead fish are washing up and a fisherman’s last words point to the existence of a giant monster. Dr. Sampson (Jack MacGowran) identifies it as a Paleosaurus, a water-friendly dinosaur that has electrical powers like an eel. Oh Dr. Sampson. That kind of power only exists in this story.

Prof. James Bickford (Andre Morell) and Steve have a plan. You see the dinosaur is already dying from all the radiation, so they decide to give it even more radiation. This is where, as a kid, I would grow enraged at humanity and despise them for the way they have turned the world. I still feel like that as an old man. I wish that the monsters would win in these movies.

One of the reasons that this is so close to The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms is that they share the same writer, Daniel Lewis James, who was blacklisted and wrote this as Daniel Hyatt. Years later, his confidence ruined by the blacklist, he would use the name Danny Santiago. His novel Famous All Over Town won awards and was to be nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. The book became a major work of Chicano literature and Hispanic teens saw its main character, the Danny Santiago who wrote the book about his life, as a role model. They didn’t know that it was really a white man who had grown up in Kansas City and was an assistant director on Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator. His agent, Carl Brandt, had no idea who he was and had never seen him in person. He also wrote Gorgo.