Movies: A sci-fi monster-movie summer

In a special free summer edition of Science on Screen, the Bell Museum of Natural History on the University of Minnesota East Bank campus is hosting a look at the science in sci-fi monster movies of the 1950s.

The films in the series focus on monstrously enlarged creepy-crawlies from the animal and insect kingdoms. Bell Museum staffers will be on hand before each screening to display live animals and explain the real biology and behaviors of the featured Creature Feature creatures.

Thursday's offering is 1959's "The Killer Shrews" ("They had to eat 3 times their body weight each day ... OR STARVE!") Stranded on a remote island, ship's captain Thorne Sherman encounters a scientist working to shrink humans, thus easing overpopulation ("If we were half as big as we are now, we could live twice as long on our natural resources"). He's thrown into a life-or-death struggle with the deadly byproduct of the deranged researcher's experiments -- ravenous giant shrews (played by dogs wearing rugs).

Aug. 30's program is "The Wasp Woman" from 1960 ("A beautiful woman by day -- a lusting queen wasp by night.") Cosmetics entrepreneur Janice Starlan is in dire straits, as her company is failing and she -- an aged hag in her late thirties -- is losing her sex appeal. She experiments with a wasp-based youth serum that has stinging side effects.

On Sept. 6, it's 1959's "The Giant Gila Monster" ("Only Hell could breed such an enormous beast. Only God could destroy it!") Succulent Texas motorists are picked off by a voracious 50-foot lizard, but they are merely hors d'oeuvres. The bulletproof beast's main course will be a small town, unless resourceful teen Chase Winstead can devise a plan. Say, would a hot rod full of nitroglycerine do the trick?

In the spirit of these drive-in chillers, they'll be presented at dusk on an outdoor screen, moving into the auditorium in the event of rain. For more information, call the museum at 612-624-7083 or visit www.bellmuseum.org.