Man was still typically to blame for the carnage, but rather than mutating the beasts through radiation, we were authoring our own slaughter through our mistreatment of Mother Earth. The animals were just taking a breather, though, as the 1970s saw them balloon in size and return with a vengeance. As busy as these years were, though, the decade that immediately followed is pretty much a dead zone for the sub-genre as fictional beasts found favor in the '60s instead. From the lows of The Deadly Mantis (1957) to the highs of The Black Scorpion (1957), overgrown beasts were enjoying a human-flavored buffet on a regular basis. The 50s was an incredibly busy decade for films exploring the idea of animals – often viewed as inferior subjects to man – fighting back after growing in size, strength, and attitude. Sometimes nature grows tired of waiting for mankind to trigger their own demise and gets things rolling without our input, and the resulting films are every bit the same mixed bag. Slightly bigger than normal just isn't good enough, and this leaves me with a few judgment calls to make including having to decide if a Great White shark off Martha's Vineyard measuring a mere five feet beyond the species' previously thought maximum length counts as giant. (And no, this rule wouldn't eliminate The Meg as megalodons are definitely 100% still swimming around today.) Two, they need to actually be "giant" in relation to their normal size. All due respect to dinosaur classics from The Lost World (1925) to Jurassic Park (1993), but they're out. One, they need to be current, real-world animals changed only in size, meaning no fictional monsters or extinct beasts. Technically speaking, that could include films as diverse as Godzilla (1954) or Tremors (1990), but in an effort to avoid the usual suspects, I'm going to narrow the field a bit with three simple qualifications if they're going to be mentioned here.
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