But they weren’t all winners. In fact, quite a few ’50s monster movies were extremely rough around the edges. But, of those lesser films, some of them continue to hold a compulsively watchable charm.

Classic sci-fi movies produced a plethora of memorable monsters, but the very best have become fixtures in popular culture all these years later.

Monster movies have been a staple of cinema for over a century. The genre has evolved from silent-era films like Nosferatu to the iconic Universal Monsters of the 1930s-50s and to CGI blockbusters ...