10 B-Movies From The ’50s That Are Actually Pretty Good

Creeping monsters. Alien invasions. Screaming crowds. Massive and unpredictable robots. These are just a few of the standard scenarios depicted in B-movies from the ’50s. These low-budget flicks offer up campy and entertaining alternatives to the blockbuster affairs they were usually released alongside.

B-movies rose in popularity during the ’50s, especially as moviegoers craved silly sci-fi stories and creature features. Many of these films highlight the political paranoia of the times, where the never-ending Cold War left most Americans believing World War III was just around the corner. While that fortunately never happened, the decade certainly produced many kitschy cult classics.

10 Fiend Without A Face (1958)

A cheaply-made British creature feature, Fiend Without a Face contains all the quintessential B-movie elements. This film about a brain-eating monster that attacks people in and around a US military base in Canada employs great sound effects and ghoulish kill scenes.

What it lacks in a cohesive plot, Fiend Without a Face makes up for with immersive action sequences. The movie ends with an unforgettable climax, one that won’t disappoint fans of the genre.

9 Creature From The Black Lagoon (1954)

The highlight of this shoestring budget Universal Monster movie is its gorgeous underwater sequences wherein the title creature swims in his natural habitat. Shot in Florida, Creature from the Black Lagoon follows a group of scientists as they track down an ancient, amphibious being who lives in the Amazon River.

Gill-Man, as the creature has come to be called, starts to fight back against those who want to study and imprison him. Relying on practical effects, real stunts, and off-the-wall costuming, The Creature from the Black Lagoon is a B-movie whose look and plot have been recycled over and over again by subsequent directors.

8 Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959)

Directed by Ed Wood, the king of schlock, Plan 9 From Outer Space is a thrashing, bombastic satire that incorporates zombies, aliens, and doomsday bombs into its plot. The film centers around extraterrestrials who travel to Earth in hopes of halting humankind’s efforts to make a universe-destroying weapon of mass destruction.

These aliens implement “Plan 9,” which involves reanimating the undead — referred to as ghouls in the film. Plan 9 From Outer Space is also known for being the final movie Bela Lugosi ever acted in. The film has been universally panned by has since gained a cult following.

7 Kronos (1957)

Paranoia, massive robots, and UFOs reign supreme in this cult classic from sci-fi filmmaker Kurt Neumann. In Kronos, a meteor that lands off the coast of Mexico turns out to contain a massive machine sent from another galaxy to drain Earth’s natural resources.

This skyscraper-tall apparatus harnesses all of the planet’s energy, including any weaponry or force used to destroy it. Kronos melds wartime hostilities, scary environmental horror, and giant monster movie vibes to present a well-developed and elevated B-movie story.

6 Godzilla, King Of The Monsters! (1956)

Not be confused with the original 1954 kaiju film directed solely by Ishirō Honda, Godzilla, King of the Monsters! is an Americanized adaptation that brings together footage from the original film with new scenes managed by filmmaker Terry O. Morse. It’s this 1956 film that introduced Godzilla to the world.

Morse made the film for just over $100,000 dollars, and it’s rife with economical yet effective artistic elements that made it one of the most eminent monster movies of all time. The success of this feature launched a franchise that is still going strong to this day.

5 The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms (1953)

A Warner Bros. monster movie, the eponymous entity in The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms is a scaly, hungry dinosaur woken up after centuries spent trapped in Arctic ice. What’s responsible for thawing this beast out? An atomic bomb test, of course.

The angry behemoth makes its way to New York City, its home long before Homo sapiens arrived. Creature effects maverick Ray Harryhausen worked on the film, and his towering lizard later influenced Ishirō Honda’s Godzilla.

4 House On Haunted Hill (1959)

William Castle’s House On Haunted Hill doesn’t take itself too seriously. This campy, entertaining caper stars Vincent Price as a mysterious and affluent man who pays a group of disparate people $100,000 each to spend the night in a haunted house.

Audiences ride along with the houseguests here, who are exposed to the many terrors that lie within the old mansion. Whoever survives the night will find their pockets lined with dough come morning.

3 Not Of This Earth (1957)

There’s a real agency for the main character in Roger Corman’s silly, spectacular alien invasion flick. The humanoid ET in Not of this Earth has embedded himself within Earth’s population for one vital reason: he needs human blood.

The alien, who adopts the pseudonym Mr. Johnson, is on assignment from his home planet — which is being devastated by a fatal blood disease. Using mind-control powers, special weapons, and an interstellar transmitter, the Martian hunts down one earthling after another in order to save his species.

2 The Blob (1958)

Yes, The Blob is literally about a giant, gelatinous blob from another planet that grows larger as it consumes everything in its path. After arriving via a meteor, the ball of jelly rolls its way around a small town in rural Pennsylvania, where a few teenagers are tasked with convincing locals they are dealing with a deadly invader.

Steve McQueen stars in this “late-night at the drive-in” romp, which was made independently for $110,000 dollars. With its colorful effects, hokey one-liners, and car chase scenes, The Blob turned out to be a theatrical success when it was released.

1 It Came From Beneath The Sea (1955)

Hoping to capitalize on the cornball creature features doing well with younger audiences, Columbia Pictures hired Robert Gordon to make It Came From Beneath The Sea. One in a long line of Cold War movies about normal animals that become savage, oversized monsters when exposed to radiation, this flick centers around the escapades of a giant octopus off the coast of California.

Impressed with his work on The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, producers hired Ray Harryhausen to create the stop-motion techniques used to animate the creature. Watching the tentacled sea beast ascend San Francisco’s recognizable Golden Gate Bridge is the climax of this B-movie.

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