Two well-financed films of 1951, "The Thing from Another World" and "The Day the Earth Stood Still", are often mentioned as vanguard examples, but scholar Richard Hodgens argues that they are beasts of a different sort: "The Thing" "proved that some money could be made by 'science fiction' that preyed on current fears symbolized crudely by any preposterous monster." Its fellow traveller was a thriller with a simplistic moral: "Earthlings, behave yourselves." The era's most provocative and unsettling fantasies were made for B-level money. Director Don Siegel's "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" (1956), produced by Walter Wanger for $300,000 and released by Allied Artists, treats conformist pressures and the evil of banality in haunting, allegorical fashion. Even the majors' genre mills at times came out with challenging films. Produced on a "trifling budget" by Katzman, "The Man Who Turned to Stone" (1957), "uses the physical transfer of the life force from one class to another as a metaphor for economic expropriation." Among the most disturbing was "The Amazing Colossal Man" (1957), written, directed, and produced by Bert I. Gordon. A ""King Kong" for the atomic age", it is both a monster movie that happens to depict the horrific effects of radiation exposure and "a ferocious cold-war fable spins Korea, the army's obsessive secrecy, and America's post-war growth into one fantastic whole."