Scream Factory bring us the "most dangerous monster that ever lived" with their Blu-ray of THE DEADLY MANTIS.

A volcano explosion on the far side of the world sends ripples up the North Pole and splits an iceberg, waking a giant mantis from millions of years of suspended animation. Its first feeding on a weather station is spotted by surveillance jets of Red Eagle One, a radar observation facility monitoring the arctic for early signs of a possible Soviet attack. When the plane of the search party sent out to investigate crashes with the men missing, the only clue is a giant broken off bone-like appendage that the Continental Air Defense scientist (Florenz Ames) is unable to identify. General Mark Ford (Donald Randolph, TOPAZ) then recruits the Washington D.C. Museum of Natural History paleontologist Dr. Nedrick Johnson (William Hopper, THE BAD SEED) who travels up to Red Eagle One accompanied by museum magazine editor love interest Marge Blaine (Alix Talton, THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH) to liaise with Colonel Joe Parkman (PETER GUNN's Craig Stevens) just as another of a large scale attack has been reported on an Eskimo village. Johnson identifies the specimen as the spur of a praying mantis which would have to be over two-hundred feet long. It is not long before skepticism gives way to belief when the creature attacks the radar facility and Johnson surmises from that the mantis is heading south in search of a tropical climate which requires him to pass through the United States. Johnson, Blaine and Parkman return to Washington D.C. where Ford takes to television and radio to rally the civilian Ground Observer Corps to aide their pursuit of the creature.

Although not without plenty of entertainment value, THE DEADLY MANTIS is truly the nadir of Universal's run of 1950s sci-fi films. Producer William Alland had started exploiting the possibilities of extending a film's visuals cost-effectively with stock footage on THE MOLE PEOPLE when it came to depicting a mountain hiking expedition. With THE DEADLY MANTIS, it feels like almost a third of the film is composed of stock footage that never passes for anything but. This approach would be the norm for ambitious much lower-budgeted exploitation films in the years to come, but the contrast between the stock footage and the high quality studio footage is so extreme that one wonders what theater audiences of the time might have thought. Much more egregious, however, is the lackadaisical storytelling with the expected love triangle between the three leads never develops after being set up. Hopper's paleontologist fades into the background for chunks of the second half of the film while Stevens and Blaine happen upon mantis attack sites in between flirtations. All of the human actors are easily upstaged by the praying mantis which is alternately creepy and laughable (flying shots of the puppet appear to be shot through a sheet of glass smeared with Vaseline just over the edges of the wings to make it appear that they are flapping rapidly). The close-ups of the creature's head are convincing and even manage to strangely elicit a sense of pity when seen in its death throes. Radio and television star Marvin Miller provides the film's narration.

Released theatrically by Universal-International, THE DEADLY MANTIS was shown on television with much of the prologue lopped off and did not arrive on VHS until the early 1990s. The same digitally-mastered fullscreen transfer appeared on DVD as part of Universal's second volume of THE CLASSIC SCI-FI ULTIMATE COLLECTION with CULT OF THE COBRA, DR. CYCLOPS, and THE LAND UNKNOWN and then later as a solo title as part of Universal's Vault Series DVD-R line. While some of the Universal-International sci-fi titles have already appeared on Blu-ray in Germany, THE DEADLY MANTIS makes is high definition debut here in a 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.85:1 widescreen transfer. Like the HD transfer of THE MOLE PEOPLE – offered by Scream Factory with a choice of viewing options in 1.85:1 and the SuperScope matted ratio of 2.00:1 – the heightened resolution of THE DEADLY MANTIS makes more apparent the difference between the stock footage and the original shooting; however, the worst of the stock footage is a bit grainier and contrastier compared to the worst of THE MOLE PEOPLE which was 16mm color reversal footage duped to monochrome and blown up to 35mm. Most of the effects, on the other hand, hold up quite well in high definition including some composite shots and forced perspective bits. The DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono track seems free of damage with little hiss evident (crucial for the impending attack scenes as the mantis buzzing fades up). Optional English SDH subtitles are included.