The TROLLENBERG TERROR

   1) UK tv serial (1956-7) ITV. Prod/dir Quentin Lawrence, written Peter Key, starring Sarah Lawson, Rosemary Miller, Laurence Payne. 6 25min episodes. B/w.

   This is set mainly in an Alpine Hotel where intimations of doom received by a woman with ESP are followed by the revelation that ALIENS are on the mountain.

   2) Film (1959; vt The Crawling Eye; vt TheCreature from Another World). Tempean Production/DCA. Dir Quentin Lawrence, starring Forrest Tucker, Laurence Payne, Janet Munro, Jennifer Jayne, Warren Mitchell. Screenplay Jimmy Sangster, based on 1. 85 mins. B/w.

   The film version is more full-bloodedly unpleasant than 1, especially in scenes where the aliens animate their dead human victims telepathically and turn them homicidal in a not very sensible scheme for conquest. The aliens themselves cannot come off the mountain, because they can survive only where it is very cold. Special-effects man Les Bowie worked hard on a shoestring budget, but the octopoid alien, with its one big eye, is ludicrous and the cloud beneath which the aliens lurk on the mountain was a piece of cotton wool pinned to a photograph. Loose ends of plot dangle everywhere, perhaps as a result of a 3hr story being reduced to half that length, but the film is not as bad as legend has it.

   JB/PN