I thought I’d wrap up my series on the Salton Sea by mentioning my favorite movie about the Salton Sea.
No, it ain’t The Salton Sea starring Johnny Depp.
It’s a film called The Monster That Challenged The World starring . . . well, nobody, really.
It does have the weaselly-voiced Hans Conried (below), better known for playing weaselly-voiced characters on Rocky & Bullwinkle (he was Snidley Whiplash) and other cartoons, but he ain’t the star.
The star, as in any 1950s sci-fi B-movie, is the monster (left).
The premise is that some kind of prehistoric snail eggs buried below the bottom of the Salton Sea have been exposed to . . . (are you ready?) . . . atomic radiation and hatched and released semi-snail monsters of unusual size who may well . . . (are you ready?) . . . CHALLENGE THE WORLD!
Though in the film they never really get past challenging part of Imperial County.
The flims was made in 1957 when they were trying to pass the Salton Sea off as a resort area for wealthy tourists.
Why wealthy tourists weren’t attracted to the area by tales of giant radioactive snail monsters, I don’t know.
That’s certainly one of the reasons that I went there!
The movie was filmed on-location (for the most part), though in one scene they do try to pass off the beach on Catalina Island as the beach for the Salton Sea (that dog won’t hunt!). They also go to the destert town of Brawley, but most of the action is filmed right there at the wondrous, slime-filled Salton Sea!
YEE-HAW!!!
It’s ’50s sci-fi camp in all its black-and-white glory!
