Turns out bullets worked great.

#monsterdon

That little girl is the great grandmother of this little girl.

#Monsterdon

The moral of the story here is DON'T TOUCH THE GODDAMN THERMOSTAT.

#Monsterdon

I'm sad for the bunnies, and the ladybug, and the prehistoric giant molluscs

but thanks to @Taweret for hosting, @cherizilla for bingo, and @JoeWynne for the trivia!

Most importantly, thanks to all my fellow Monsterdonians for making it fun!

#Monsterdon 🏜️☀️🌵🫨🦪🐚🐌🦐😱

Watch out for oversized tartigrades

#monsterdon

Seeing a lot of criticism of Mr. Dobbs but look sometimes the flavor of autism you get is archivalism, there's no shame in that, it's an important mechanism of society

#Monsterdon

Kiddo won’t watch #monsterdon with me most Sundays and today was no exception. He popped out of his room during the science lesson on mollusk. I started laughing and could not stop. He tried to ask what I was watching and I could not tell him due to fits of giggles. He then wanted to know what was so funny. To him, it looked like I was watching a 1950s mollusk documentary.

#TheMonsterThatChallengedTheWorld #ChallengedTheWorld1957

"The monster that was easily overcome with conventional small arms fire" #monsterdon

RE: https://timeloop.cafe/@bunnyhero/116355288445115632

and proposition 14A PASSES!!!

#monsterdon

#Monsterdon
Upon reflection, gotta give the 50's credit for understanding that a creature eating the entire global ecosystem is a problem, even if you *can* shoot it.

Instead of poking out its eye, how about some scritches #monsterdon

I give

#TheMonsterThatChallengedTheWorld

5/5 in the abrupt ending category. They didn't even fuck off into the Salton Sea.

For a #Monsterdon there was an unusually high proportion of likeable people in this movie, especially the women. My favorite is Sandy the Ladybug Girl.

The monster costume/puppet was kind of neat looking. As a procedural, the plot kind of plodded, with the inevitable pause for a risible attempt to science out of the audience questions about what was going on

Thanks to all!

I hung out in a university biology lab with my father who was working on his Masters when I was a kid and I managed to never unleash a monster upon the place.

#monsterdon #TheMonsterThatChallengedTheWorld #ChallengedTheWorld1957

In the 50's everyone ate at their desks because they didn't have keyboards to spill crumbs on

#Monsterdon
#TheMonsterThatChallengedTheWorld

I'm logging in late and the #Monsterdon posts are like: "They killed a snail with a gun! An ordinary gun? How shocking!"

😆

Did we ever find out what happened to the one-eyed monster? Seems like he should've had some revenge motivation.

Maybe the sequel features a monster tartigrade with an eye patch.

#monsterdon

Actually, one more thought. A lot of what reduced the threat of the monsters is that this is a 50s movie. The authorities are helpful to random civilians and cooperate with each-other.

A 70s version of this movie where people hate one another and institutions are dysfunctional would give the monsters actual room.

#Monsterdon #ChallengedTheWorld1957

That's it‽ They bomb one monster nest and ventilate one hatchling and the world is safe‽

And that's a wreck! We can only assume that a bunch of radioactive mollusics have fucked off into other parts of the Salton sea and probably a bunch of other places as well. The neurodivergent polyglot with charts and a facilities requisition problem is never seen again. No lessons were learned and no characters were grown.

Thank you for hosting, @Taweret ! Classic monster movie mayhem!

#monsterdon

whew what a payoff to the romantic subplot, thank god we never had to see that crying blonde woman again, her yearslong lawsuit to get the navy to pay for damages after it fed her husband to a snail would have really brought down the romantic vibe #monsterdon

Big thanks to @Taweret for our special has-nothing-to-do-with-Easter Monsterdon Easter movie. Classic 1950s radioactive mutant animal(s) film.

We had smoking. We had coffee. We had a lot of exposition, little stock footage, and more than one monster. Monster(s) generated large amounts of spunk. Death count of nine. Minimal subplots. Reasonably dramatic final battle.

Aside from the titular monster, most memorable actor was the museum curator.

#Monsterdon #TheMonsterThatChallengedTheWorld1957

And now we fuck off into the Salton Sea, where we definitely will not die of pollution.

The creature effects were surprisingly good, though I am unconvinced anything that chitinous could be a mollusk, and also I don't know what it has to do with the cray-kin.

Goodnight #monsterdon, give a nod to @Taweret for hosting and I'll see y'all next week!

That was everything I expected it to be.

But what I wasn’t expecting was for the Bechdel test to be passed multiple times.

Thank you everyone for your toots, and as always thank you @Taweret for hosting and thank you @cherizilla for the bingo cards.

Till next week’s #monsterdon it’s now safe to go swimming.

I give the movie a 👌 on the scale of #Monsterdon -ness

You can go swimming again. Right after we play in traffic.

#monsterdon

wow, nobody tried GUN until the last minute of the movie, and it was instantly effective against the beastie.

two surprises in one!

#Monsterdon

He's gonna go to the fire axe, take it down, then slowly unscrew the mounting hook from the wall and throw it at the creature.

#monsterdon #challengedtheworld1957

The movie has even established that there is no dad in the picture whose Dad Senses will be activated by this adjustment of the thermostat

What craft!

#Monsterdon

one can only dream of the version of this movie with a budget where they could have gone for the colorado river aqueduct to LA instead of coachella canal and had a whole LA river/canal terminator shootout with the bug
#monsterdon

Water flowing underground!

#monsterdon #TheMonsterThatChallengedTheWorld #TheMonsterThatChallengedTheWorld1957

"I don't want to alarm you unduly, but we're all gonna die."

#monsterdon #challengedtheworld1957

Color version of a tiny percentage of the film. https://www.chisholm-poster.com/posters/CL2879.html
#Monsterdon

#Monsterdon
"Challenged" is a strong word. "Concerned," maybe.

SUDDENLY, THE END™

#Monsterdon

I won't call that a great movie, but honestly it wasn't *that* bad. "The monster that was a moderate annoyance that required some degree of cooperation to defeat" doesn't have the some ring, though.

#Monsterdon #ChallengedTheWorld1957

RE: https://mastodon.social/@devilgirlbot/116355305464900047

#monsterdon

There's an alternate version of this movie where they stop for breakfast and it's just 30 minutes of them eating pancakes with extremely faint screaming in the background.

#monsterdon #challengedtheworld1957

Don't blame *me*, I voted for Proposition 14A

#monsterdon #TheMonsterThatChallengedTheWorld #TheMonsterThatChallengedTheWorld1957

#monsterdon Wow, it's the outlet to a secret underground river!

It's so subtle, you can tell why nobody spotted it before.

huh ok interesting #monsterdon

"This knob here? This is knob that releases the Kraken"

#Monsterdon

#monsterdon Well, it's a good looking monster, but so far all it's done is bow at us.

If we're not getting a giant radioactive ladybug out of all this, I will be very disappointed

#Monsterdon

Bingo! Just barely.

#Monsterdon #MonsterdonBingo #TheMonsterThatChallengedTheWorld

FUN FACT: the character Gail was played by Audrey Dalton, who was born in Ireland and guest-starred in a lot of TV episodes from the late 50s thru the early-to-mid 60s. Apparently she's still alive (91 years old!)

#monsterdon

www.imdb.com/name/nm0198241/

Good job, Dobbs, at looking genuinely, creepily excited about your documents

#Monsterdon #TheMonsterThatChallengedTheWorld

see, if you would have taped up a sign that said "don't change knob or else monster" then the knob would have become little girl proof #monsterdon

#Monsterdon keeping an eye out for creatures.

$0.65 in 1957 money is apparently $7.63 in 2026 money.

That's an expensive pen.

#Monsterdon

dating was so easy in 1957, just have your husband be killed horribly, and then tell that to another man whenever someone else's husband gets killed horribly #monsterdon

“The species could threaten the entire world.” Yes, but could it challenge it? #Monsterdon

#monsterdon I can't decide what joke would be the funniest caption for this screenshot.

"We believe it's in the same family as the Kraken. Maybe a second cousin of Cthulhu"

#monsterdon

That’s *got* to be a Chekhov’s this-knob-has-to-remain-at-this-temperature. #Monsterdon

A+++++++ monster and camerawork, how is this movie managing to be actually good, it has everything going against it #monsterdon

yeah i'm gonna need a supercut of all these drained guys stat #monsterdon

#Monsterdon
I WOULD LIKE TO NOTE THAT RADIOS HAVE PROBLEMS UNDERWATER THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION

Something with a proboscis could have killed them. Like, maybe a GIANT LADY BUG. 👀
#Monsterdon
EDIT: lady bugs do NOT have a proboscis. (kicks rocks) bummer.
2nd EDIT: But a monster ladybug just might.

Heck yeah giant mutant ladybug incoming

#monsterdon #TheMonsterThatChallengedTheWorld #ChallengedTheWorld1957

while it is possible to get a technical bechdel pass according to the letter of the law, the spirit of the bechdel pass is locked tight behind the protective vault door of "all the women are secretaries or children" #monsterdon

#Monsterdon Oooh! There's a fire axe on the wall!

I too am extremely salty.

#monsterdon #TheMonsterThatChallengedTheWorld #ChallengedTheWorld1957

Ok, I don't need to sign any waivers or anything to watch this? #Monsterdon #TheMonsterThatChallengedtheWorld

This looks intense.

@klu9 @JoeWynne @paco That scientist man explaining the mollusk reminded me a bit of The Giant Claw, where Dr. Noymann explains anti-matter-birds using a pen and two junk piles. Slight ASMR vibes too. Would make for a good double feature, free on YT: https://youtu.be/7NxcJfzLAh0?si=c8S4jkktYcxzgP8C&t=2433

But, not for me, the sun is coming up soon here. #monsterdon

I think the director was messing with us in that "everything but the axe" scene. lol

Axe? No I continue throwing small bits of glassware at the monster.

#monsterdon

Addendum: there was, in fact, no point to the kid with the ink pens.

#Monsterdon

The best characters were Ladybug Girl, the tragic heroine of this #monsterdon, and Mr. Dobbs who put all of his character points into skills that were irrelevant to the plot.

The worst characters were um... the main characters I guess? But they were not bad so much as they were generic.

@chris #Monsterdon

I assume the title refers to the monster going into online spaces and 'just asking questions'

#monsterdon

I don't understand why these snails are so chitinous.

#monsterdon #TheMonsterThatChallengedTheWorld #ChallengedTheWorld1957

Were phones really that big back then? Or is she small?

#monsterdon

"I read 18 foreign languages."

"Okay C3PO keep your trousers on."

#monsterdon #challengedtheworld1957

of all the guy kinds in the world, why did they make the only guy with a character this guy #monsterdon

Deus Ex Cartographa

#monsterdon

Mr. Dobbs is my favorite character.

#monsterdon #TheMonsterThatChallengedTheWorld #ChallengedTheWorld1957

No one in film history has ever watched a canal more. #Monsterdon

"I always cooperate with the authorities!" - a very unsuspicious person

#monsterdon #TheMonsterThatChallengedTheWorld #ChallengedTheWorld1957

“You’ll find me very cooperative, just call me anytime night or day. I’m definitely not coded as homosexual!” #Monsterdon

Why is the museum curator from Maine? #Monsterdon

ACAB (All cops are brunch)

#monsterdon

The rest of this mollusk reel is available via my patreon

#Monsterdon

"No, the temperature is just low enough to prevent it from hatching. As long as no stray photons enter this room, we should be just fine."

#monsterdon #challengedtheworld1957

red flags that are somehow also green flags: smiling and flirting with you while describing the death of her prior husband and the attendant trauma #monsterdon

Using Connie's trauma to explain to this guy that you’re single, that's pretty crafty

#Monsterdon
#TheMonsterThatChallengedTheWorld

YES! YES! YES! LIVE ACTED MONSTER NO COSTUME JUST A BUG #monsterdon

technical bechdel pass in the child handoff what the fuck #monsterdon

@apLundell it was carrying plot gas #monsterdon

@deadtom A dad made this movie.

#Monsterdon

#monsterdon So what WAS that hose our hero pulled up from the floor, anyway?

At first I thought it was the gas line for the bunsen burners, and he was going to make a flame-thrower, but I guess it was just really cold water or something?

I mean, I have to say.....that Monster really didn't challenge the World, it barely challenged California.

#Monsterdon

And so the world was thoroughly challenged. Thanks @Taweret for hosting, @ryan for the stream, @cherizilla for Bingo, @joewynne for the trivia and drinks, @paco for the stats, @ohiofi for @devilgirlbot and everyone for everything 🐌
#monsterdon

Not terrible, but not good either. Just right for #Monsterdon.

As always, thanks to @Taweret for hosting, @cherizilla for the bingo card, @JoeWynne for the drink recipe and trivia, @ryan for the live stream, @paco for data analysis at https://gallery.don.monster, @combatwombat for the replay, and all of you for making it awesome!

#monsterdon Another fakeout, this time there's a giant axe RIGHT THERE and the guy goes for every tool in the lab EXCEPT that. Huge props to the movie for that

(Real talk for just a second though, that bit with the mother saying "close your eyes, baby - don't open them for a little while" feels like a direct inspiration for Ripley's bit at the end of Aliens (1986) when she sees that Bishop has flown the drop ship away from the terraforming reactor gantry, leaving her and Newt no hope for escape)

(I know, I know, spoilers)

#monsterdon

It’s JOHNNY!

#Monsterdon

#monsterdon Come on, Fire Axe!

That's a shell of a good time

#monsterdon

Shout out to Mr. Dobbs for being a likeable weirdo who hands the main characters quest items.

#monsterdon

#monsterdon If only the city had approved Proposition 14-A! Then none of this would have happened!

Oh no, the precocious child is going to disable the egg chiller and BRING ABOUT LAB DOOM BY WAY OF HATCHED CREATURE which is why you never build even a stopgap apparatus to hold a dynamic system at artificial stasis without an outer monitoring loop AND one or more defined error conditions AND a tested alert system AND a duty roster for alert response

#monsterdon

"Just say no to prop 14A! Map storage? In this economy?"

#Monsterdon