TCM gets a jump on the Halloween programming season with six sci-fi films featuring over-sized bugs on September 18 beginning at 8:00 pm ET with 1954’s Them!.
Spiders directly follow those loudmouth screeching ants in Them! in 1955’s Tarantula (10:00 pm ET) starring Leo G. Carroll, who was forever immortalized in the opening number of the Rocky Horror Picture Show.
One of the first official Japanese Kaiju creatures, Mothra (1962), flies in at 11:30 pm ET, followed by the the cosmetics-gone-wrong Roger Corman extravaganza from 1959 entitled The Wasp Woman, starring Susan Cabot as the first human/insect hybrid of the night.
The night wraps up with the rare The Black Scorpion (1957) involving earthquakes, a volcano, and giant, smiling scorpions down Mexico way at 3:00 am ET and 1958’s The Cosmic Monster (also known in Great Britain as The Strange World of Planet X) detailing how risky experiments with cosmic rays can eventually lead to giant roaches, centipedes, grasshoppers and salamanders at 4:30 am ET for all of you insomniacs (or early risers) out there.
Check out Kim Luperi’s in-depth article about the six insect films at TCM.com and stay tuned to Conskipper for all of your classic sci-fi and horror news.
