The Bomb, though, was not the only issue that SF screenwriters used to develop their plots. Like the literature, SF cinema tends to address the existing ills of a period, even if you have to look closely to find that address.
For example, it wasn't atomic overkill but the best of intentions that created Tarantula (1955). In this film, which borrowed a bit from H.G. Wells's novella The Food of the Gods, a scientist develops a formula that increases the growth rate of just about everything. His plan is to use it on food plants and livestock, thereby ending world hunger. Why he chose to test his formula on a spider is anybody's guess; but, inevitably, the creature escapes. This time, the A-bomb is the "good guy," bringing the rapacious arachnid to a fiery end. Or is that the bomb blast that irradiated the grasshoppers? Oh, well, however it is presented, there is no question that the underlying theme of all of these films is the potential misuse of scientific knowledge. The 1950's and 1960's saw a growth in technology and information rivaled only by that of the early days of the Industrial Revolution. SF cinema for this era took the natural fears that growth engendered and gave it concrete form. Here, it said, is what can happen if we aren't careful. At the same time, it gave reassurance that, whatever mess we made, we could find the means to clean it up if we just work together and learn from our mistakes.
There were several other films made during this period, however, that suggested other underlying themes. One that seem to foreshadow the coming environmental movement, warning that arrogantly exploiting nature for personal profit had its down side, was The Creature From the Black Lagoon (1954). Like Kong before it, the Creature responds to encroaching civilization as it would have done to any other territorial violater. Its eventual downfall is an eerie allegory of the fate of creatures whose habitats were being arbitratily destroyed to feed the rampant postwar economic growth.
In Forbidden Planet (1956), a space-age Prospero attempts to use alien technology to create Paradise without waiting to be sure he knows all there is to know about it. His Eden is destroyed by a monster from the snake-brain all humans carry around, brought to reality by that same technology. The warning speaks directly to the many voices of the time that touted the arrival of a new, technological Utopia filled with labor-saving devices and unprecedented economic security without taking the time to learn what effect that technology might have on human society.
