Surf Avenue had three big movie theaters back in the '50s. It was there I had a traumatic experience when I was a kid. I saw "Bambi" there when I was about six years old and it devastated me when Bambi's mother died. That stuck with me for years. But I digress. Years later my draft board was on Surf Avenue and I was really lucky that I came from that "poor" section that had lots of guys available for the draft. (I also had a high number, by birthday, in that first lottery (1969).

Anyway, if you've never seen "The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms" you should check it out. Great FX for the time (Ray Harryhausen) and the local tie-in (the monster comes from the North Pole down the Atlantic current into NYC and comes ashore in lower Manhattan and then eventually back to Manhattan Beach and Coney Island (although it was really filmed in California). Look for a very young Lee Van Cleef as the marksman who kills the monster with a uranium dart).

The '50s had tons of these Grade B sci-fi flicks and some of them were quite memorable. One of my favorites was "Them", a REALLY good movie. The FX were terrible (giant ants) BUT the buildup to the story was absolutely terrific. The first 30 minutes of the movie (especially the scenes in the desert) were hauntingly suspenseful and as good as any movie I've ever seen. Stars James Whitmore (the poor man's Spencer Tracy) and James Arness who played "The Thing" in 1951 and later became famous on tv as Marshall Dillon in "Gunsmoke". Even more cheesier as far as FX went was "The Crawling Eye" which basically looked like a skeevy egg omelet but it had a decent story and starred Forest Tucker, later of tv's "F Troop".