Rating summary

Movie		0.5
Video		4.0
Audio		3.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		2.0

The Black Scorpion Blu-ray Movie Review

Anyone Have a Giant Bug-Zapper?

Reviewed by Michael Reuben March 26, 2018

The Warner Archive Collection has added one of the schlockiest globs of cheese in Warner's library to its collection of creature features on Blu-ray. The Black Scorpion was an attempt to capitalize on the success of the 1954 giant ant feature, Them!, and it has the distinction of having stop-motion animated effects by the legendary team of Willis O'Brien, who created King Kong and The Lost World, and Pete Peterson, who worked with O'Brien on Mighty Joe Young. What Scorpion didn't have was a decent script or a budget sufficient to sustain its effects work. In the climactic sequence where the granddaddy of all giant scorpions attacks Mexico City, the stop-motion creature is replaced by a so-called "traveling matte", projecting the monster as a shadow chasing hordes of extras. It's a laughable conclusion to a laughable movie.

Volcanic eruptions in the Mexican desert have opened deep fissures from which giant prehistoric scorpions emerge at night to ravage the land and its rural population. U.S. scientist Hank Scott (Richard Denning) joins Mexican scientist Arturo Ramos (Carlos Rivas) to investigate. A love interest for Hank is provided by local rancher Teresa Alvarez (played by California-born Mara Corday, who doesn't look or sound the least bit Mexican). An annoying kid name Juanito (Mario Navarro) plays the requisite innocent-in-peril who routinely mucks up the scientists' efforts by popping up wherever he's been told not to go. A lengthy descent into the scorpions' underground lair is one of many plot elements obviously borrowed from Them!, but it does lead to some of Scorpion's most memorable effects, as the scientists encounter not only the beasts they expected to find, but also several other species of mammoth prehistoric insects.

Scorpion is so ineptly plotted that it doesn't even try to let Drs. Scott and Ramos develop an intelligent and credible plan to deal with the threat. Their first idea—gassing the nest, as the Army did in Them!—is tossed away as soon as it becomes difficult, and their second—burying the beasts underground with dynamite—is undertaken with so little planning or analysis that it plays like a header for the third act: "The effort fails, and the scorpions return." Lengthy scenes of uninspired dialogue, including a seemingly endless klatch of scientists and government officials arguing, alternate with the O'Brien/Peterson effects, some of which were no doubt memorable for their time, but they've aged poorly, especially in shots that combine humans and scorpions. There are rumors that the entire film began as a test reel by Peterson and O'Brien. Maybe it should have stayed that way.

The Black Scorpion Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Despite being a low-budget B picture, The Black Scorpion had the advantage of being shot by an A-list cinematographer, Lionel Lindon, who had just won an Academy Award for the color photography of Around the World in Eighty Days, and who would go on to create the expressive black-and-white imagery of The Manchurian Candidate for John Frankenheimer. The Warner Archive Collection's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray has been derived from a fine-grain master positive, newly scanned at 2K by Warner's Motion Picturing Imaging, color-corrected by MPI and subjected to WAC's usual thorough cleaning.

The resulting Blu-ray image accurately replicates the film, but it's wildly inconsistent, varying from the sharply defined textures of live-action shots to the indistinct mush of optically achieved effects involving creatures, models, miniatures and rear projection. (And let's not forget the grainy and indistinct newsreel footage, which WAC has cleaned up as best it can.) There was little a cinematographer could do to overcome the limitations of pre-digital effects technology, and there's little more that can be done today by a facility of even MPI's considerable skill without introducing digital artifacts that would be a greater eyesore than the original source's limitations. On Scorpion's original release prints, the abrupt transitions in image quality would have been attenuated (though not eliminated) by the progressive loss of resolution as the fine-grain was used to generate a dupe negative, which was then used to strike release prints. Here, with MPI working just one generation away from the camera negative, there is no hiding the rough edges as Scorpion cuts back and forth between (relatively) crisp live action and blurry effects. The experience may be jarring, but it's true to the source.

WAC has saved a few pennies by placing Scorpion on a BD-25, but with an 88-minute running time and most of the extras in standard definition, it has still achieved a relatively high average bitrate of 29.99 Mbps.

Please note: The Video score on this title is for accuracy, not quality. Scorpion was a cheaply shot creature feature, and that's what it looks like.

The Black Scorpion Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Since the magnetic sound master has not survived, the mono soundtrack for The Black Scorpion has been taken from an optical track, cleaned of clicks, pops and age-related distortion, and encoded on Blu-ray in lossless DTS-HD MA 2.0. It's an undistinguished mix, and it's so basic that it doesn't differentiate between the surface environment and the caverns into which the scientists descend in search of the scorpion nest. The sounds of destruction during the final rampage in Mexico City are minimalist. The track's most notable feature is the roar of the giant beasts, which was reportedly repurposed from the chirping ants in Them! The dialogue is consistently intelligible, and the generic "they're coming to get you!" score is credited to Paul Sawtell (Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea).

The Black Scorpion Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The extras have been ported over from Warner's 2003 DVD of The Black Scorpion. Omitted is the trailer gallery for other stop-motion works, including The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms. However, Scorpion's trailer is included, and it has been remastered in 1080p.

• Stop Motion Masters (480i; 1.33:1; 3:16): A short interview with Ray Harryhausen.



• The Animal World (480i; 1.33:1; 11:33): As explained by an opening text crawl, this sequence was created by Harryhausen and Willis O'Brien for Irwin Allen's 1956 documentary, The Animal World.



• Las Vegas Monster and Beetleman Test Footage (480i; 1.33:1; 4:34): According to the opening text crawl, these tests were found among the effects of Pete Peterson after his death. The tests date from the 1950s and are based on story concepts that appear to have been abandoned.



• Trailer (1080p; 1.78:1; 2:05).

The Black Scorpion Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The Black Scorpion has an established fan base, which is why WAC is releasing it on Blu-ray. Most of those fans remember the film fondly from childhood viewings, either in the theater or on TV. For them, this Blu-ray is a gift from WAC, because the movie has never looked this good and it's unlikely ever to look better. But for curious newcomers, I suggest streaming Scorpion on Amazon or Vudu and saving the price of the disc. I'll bet you won't watch it more than once.