TO BE OR NOT TO BEHEMOTH

With the new Yank version of Godzilla opening tomorrow, my mind just naturally turns to the subject of sea monsters. So…

Monster-of-the-Week: …this week let’s honor a vintage movie menace from the deep, the radioactive title character, one of the last stop-motion creations of the great Willis O’Brien of King Kong fame, from the 1959 British shocker Behemoth, the Sea Monster…

…or, as the movie was called in its American release, The Giant Behemoth. This was necessary, I guess, to differentiate it from all those small or midsize Behemoths one sees.

Biblical scholars may note that the “Behemoth” referenced in the Book of Job is a land creature—and is specifically classified as a vegetarian. Wouldn’t it have made more sense to call the movie Leviathan, the Sea Monster? Or, for the gratuitous-adjective American market, The Giant Leviathan?