The Hideous Sun Demon (1958) on Netflix
A radiation accident changes research scientist Dr. Gilbert McKenna. Sunlight turns him into a reptilian creature, so he hides indoors by day and comes out only at night.
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- Netflix2.2/5
- IMDb4.4/101,765 votes
- Rotten TomatoesNot available
Trailer
Plot summary
Research scientist Dr. Gilbert McKenna absorbs radiation in a laboratory accident with a new isotope and is rushed to a hospital. Dr. Stern finds none of the burns that five minutes of exposure would normally leave, and keeps the patient under observation. Taken to a solarium for the sun's healing rays, Gil naps and changes into a reptilian creature, terrifying the other patients. Stern's theory is that the radiation reversed his evolution, and that daylight will trigger the change again. Gil stays in the dark, sends in his resignation, and keeps to his house and grounds, coming out at night. He drives to a bar where pianist Trudy Osborne performs.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Hideous Sun Demon (1958)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The scene where the transformed McKenna crushes a rat with his bare hands was improvised on location and was not in the script: ketchup was put on the rat, and Robert Clarke gently squeezed it so the ketchup oozed from his fingers. The scene was cut from prints released on television but later restored.
- Singer Marilyn King of The King Sisters, Robert Clarke's sister-in-law, was originally cast as the bar pianist Trudy Osborne but dropped out because she was pregnant at the time of production; she still wrote and performed "Strange Pursuit" for the bar scene, providing the vocals for Nan Peterson's character.
- The film's gas-tank climax was shot on a tank over 300 feet tall that the Southern California Gas Company made available; the cast and crew had trouble hearing each other, and Clarke tried to direct them while on top of the structure.
- The film was shot over 12 consecutive weekends on rented equipment, the only time Clarke, busy acting in other films on weekdays, and his student crew from the University of Southern California were both free; cast and crew were paid $25 per day.
- Production designer Richard Cassarino built the title monster's suit for $500 and made it over a diver's wetsuit. It was so hot inside, combined with humid weather, that Clarke, who performed his own stunts, sweated profusely.
- Seven years after the original, student filmmaker Don Glut made the unauthorized sequel Wrath of the Sun Demon, a three-and-a-half-minute black-and-white short, after finding the Sun Demon mask in archivist Bob Burns' collection; Burns played the monster.
- Clips from the film appeared in It Came from Hollywood, and part of its soundtrack was used during the cemetery chase scene in Night of the Living Dead.
