The special effects in 1950s science fiction movies featuring insects ranged from the good to the bad to the ugly,During the mid- to late 1950s (1954 through 1958), Hollywood produced a plethora of "Big Bug" science fiction movies, including Them (1954), Tarantula (1955), Beginning of the End (1957), The Deadly Mantis (1957), The Black Scorpion (1957) and Earth vs. The Spider (1958). These movies in some fashion were designed to take advantage of the audience's natural or innate fear or distaste forarthropods (insects and spiders) with the goal of both entertaining and making a profit (Mertins 1986).The "Big Bugs" of the movies generally came into being through exposure to radiation (Them, Tarantula and Beginning of the End); being awakened by some disturbance, such as a volcanic eruption (The Deadly Mantis and The Black Scorpion); or were unleashed for some other unknown reason (Earth vs. The Spider) (Rovin 1975, Naha 1975, Schoell 2008, Warren 2010).
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