'The Mist'-----ripoff of 'The Crawling Eye'.

Good call. I THOUGHT the trailers for "The Mist" looked familiar. Yes, a rip-off.

Thanks to the Gods that be...as soon as the mist and especially the tenticles came from under the loading dock doors I immediately thought of "The Crawling Eye" and paused my 'Blockbuster Exclusive' rental DVD to see if I was the only that thought the same. I will admit that I enjoyed "The Mist", (except for the "surprise ending"), but I know for a fact that I will never watch it as much during my life-time as "The Crawling Eye". which seemed to be on 'Creature Double Feature' every third friday night while I was growing up...in the days long before videos. Now if we can find a real talent to remake "Attack of the Mushroom People"....or better yet, "War of the Gargantuas".

It's funny, that's the exact reason that I'm here. I just rented "The Mist" and I was thinking that it was such a 21st century update of "The Crawling Eye". Brought back memories of Creature Feature and Chiller Theater when I was kid. But with actual gore and an accelerated "Lost" sense of people grouping into factions. But it was certainly the same idea. I liked "The Mist", but yeah I think it should have had some sort of credit given to this movie.

Stephen King was a big fan of 1950's "Creature Features" and many of the elements found in those movies are represented in his books. He often picked out this particular one as one he was especially fond off.. in fact it actually gets a mention in "It", with the Eye making a cameo appearance when Pennywise picks out one of the boys' fear from it after seeing this flick.

So, there's no doubt that this movie could have influenced King when he wrote the novella, but I don't see what the problem is. Noone in his right mind can call it a "rip-off", because one can then pretentiously state that each movie dealing with time travel is a rip-off of Wells' "Time Machine", each movie dealing with alien invasion is a rip-off of "War of the worlds" etc. It's ridicilous. What's worse, in "The Mist" as in many of King's books the terrible things happening are a MacGuffin, and the people and their reaction are the real stars of the show, so one must really be quite obtuse to cry foul and claim plagiarism. The fact that King's horror stories and books usually do not transfer well into cinematic material is another matter entirely, though, and obviously not the subject of this thread.

To get back to my point and try to spell it out more bluntly, for fear that it might actually be needed, tone down the pretentiousness and come up with some real arguments. Every idiot can watch an old movie and find some more recent book/movie wich has certain overlapping elements, however it takes a special kind of one to actually try to boost his self-image by trying to point this out to other people thinking he stumbled upon something devastatingly original and smart.

P.S. In the DVD Commentary of Carpenter's "The Fog", JC openly stated he based the idea for his movie on "The Trollenberg Terror". There, I gave you some more material for your next post. Enjoy.

I strongly disagree.

King actually included the Trollenberg Terror in "It" but I don't see more than superficial parallels to "The Mist."

In "The Mist" a secret government laboratory is the cause of the appearance of a great multitude and variety of creatures. There is a cause and effect relationship between man and monster... Man invites the disaster upon himself. It is not a diabolical invasion by Stalin from another planet. The creatures aren't intelligent and have no plans for global conquest... They just find us tasty.

The mist itself isn't cryogenic or so far as anyone says, radioactive. No mountain. No fortress-like observatory for an Alamo type last stand. No mind-control zombies. There is a laboratory, but it is the source of the monsters (or at least their portal to this universe) rather than a bastion against them. The creatures don't generate the mist, it is simply an artifact of some sort resulting from the laboratory accident leading to the creatures' arrival.

In The Trollenberg Terror, the creatures have no specific origin other than "space somewhere." It is an invasion by one type of alien with an agenda. It is also a "return engagement." This is not the first time they have tried to invade, as conversations between Alan Brooks and Professor Crevett attest.
Man didn't bring the invasion upon himself, like WWII, it was thrust upon the world, and the world (UN) was forced to act... and to prevail.

There is no variety of creatures just five identical ones, they don't want to eat us, they just want to kill us and take our real estate... Typical cold war B monster. The creatures generate the mist as the result of their intense cold.

The moral theme of The Mist is essentially "careful what you mess with," and the underlying message is that in spite of any attempt you make at heroism in the face of peril, human beings can always make things even more horrible then they might otherwise be just by being human.

The moral theme of The Trollenberg Terror is epic cold-war/ post WWII vigilance... There is no evil that can't be overcome by heroism and a refusal to bow to tyranny. "Trollenberg" is "Stalin from Another Planet." ...with creepy eyeballs.

They aren't even close other than in the use of two similar dramatic devices.
Tentacles... Creepy goodness.
Mist... What you can't see clearly might eat you.

I think both are quite good. "Trollenberg" particularly for its amazingly risky diversion away from the "man in the rubber suit" B monster in the absence of any sort of xenobiology reference materials. Sure the monster is schlocky by today's standards, precisely because at the time there were no scientific studies of what biology might be like on other worlds. Marrying psychic powers to gamma ray studies was also risky. Spiritualists and scientists typical detest each other on sight. By doing this it exemplifies a social theme at the time that all talents are essential to win WWII and then the cold-war.

I like The Mist for precisely the opposite reason. It has good technical foundations in some rather cutting edge theory concerning spacial manifolds and alternative universes... It has creatures that aren't impossible, in fact they are all quite plausible. It also carries with it a basic dark truth, that virtue, skill, preparation, and perseverance are irrelevant in combat/survival situations and that luck is usually the only thing that separates causalities from survivors and even then... those who do survive might not feel all that lucky.

There is a lot of stuff lifted from other works and put into THE MIST.
When I first saw it I was reminded of the TWILIGHT ZONE episode MONSTERS ARE DUE ON MAPLE STREET (neighbors turn against neighbors story)
If I recall correctly there is a whole piece of dialogue lifted from that episode. A few words are changed around to disguise that fact.

Your take with THE TROLLENBERG TERROR is a good catch.
Didn't occur to me the first time, mainly because there were a lot more creatures than whatever had those tentacles.

As for THE MIST itself.
I enjoyed it.
A whole lot actually.
Felt like a long TZ episode that actually worked.
Many have tried that before and failed (M. Knight Shamalanglong comes to mind)



A 3-D Spaghetti Western rereleased to theatres cominatyanoir3d.com Comin' soon!

The book was written in the 1980, only 22 years later. this being an inspiration is very possible.

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I've been vandalized by Elvis! -Ernest, Ernest Goes to Jail (1990)

It's not a secret that King likes b movies.

but... King produces a kind of things called books. Do you know how many tales are written with tentacles in?

I never had in my mind what Darabont put in the screen when I read the story many years ago... and I never had in my mind The Crawling eye. My imagination went in other direction.

and... do you know how many stories about things in the mist exist prior to the Crawling eye?


please...