B to Z Movies: The Giant Gila Monster (1959)

Like I said in my review of The Killer Shrews, I may not have learned of that movie until I was in either middle school or high school, but I've known of this, its companion film, ever since I was very young, no more than eight. And as you've probably already guessed (or flat-out knew, if you saw the older version of this post or have read my Killer Shrews review), I first learned of it from that VHS compilation, Fantastic Dinosaurs of the Movies. Its trailer was early on in the tape, following the one for Earth vs. The Spider (or, as it was called there, just The Spider), and it particularly stuck in my head because of how abrupt the cut was between them. The trailer for The Spider seemed to abruptly end in the middle of the narration, and the next thing you knew, you were watching a new trailer that started with a pair of teens sitting in a car, listening to rock and roll, when they got pushed over to their deaths by a monster that was mostly obscured by the hyperbolic text. The first bit of this trailer was also cut off on the tape, as the text abruptly began with, "HAD THEY ONLY KNOWN THE BLACK MONSTER WAITING OUTSIDE..." In any case, as with most of the movies previewed on that tape, I filed that away in my head and wouldn't see the actual film until many, many years later. In the case of The Giant Gila Monster, it was when I bought it, along with a bunch of other such movies (including some others I had seen on that tape), on VHS in the spring of 2001, when I was thirteen years old. Initially, I was a bit put off by the film's cheapness, particularly when it came to the special effects, and how it mainly focused on the residents of the town. Also, it wasn't until the third act that they realize a monster is lurking in the nearby woods, and he's destroyed not long after, which is something that never fails to annoy me in these types of movies. And I've sense realized that VHS was of a rather chopped up print that resulted in some sudden and fairly confusing edits.

 

But, over the years, as I've watched it more and more, I've grown to not just like but genuinely love The Giant Gila Monster. While I find The Killer Shrews to be talky and rather dull for the most part, there's something about this flick that I find endearing. I think it's because, like The Blob the previous year, it acts as something of a window into small-town life during the 50's, particularly of the teenagers (even though, also like The Blob, the lead and much of the cast are among the oldest "teenagers" you'd ever hope to see). Moreover, the setting reminds me a lot of the place where I grew up and have lived all my life, making it feel all the more special. And, while there's nothing scary about the title monster himself, the movie does manage to have instances of a creepy atmosphere, helped by its surprisingly spooky music score. But, as a reviewer on IMDB said, above all else, it has a lot of heart and is very sincere, instead of acting like something of a smarmy putdown of its genre or like it's smarter than its peers.

Near a small, rural Texas town, teenage couple Pat Wheeler and Liz Humphries are parked near a ravine, listening to music, when their car is suddenly sent crashing over the edge. Later that day, their friends meet up at a small diner, planning to go to the drive-in, and are puzzled when they don't show up. The next morning, Jeff, the local sheriff, is called to Pat's home by his father, a local industrialist. He tells Jeff that Pat and Liz never came home, and when Jeff suggests that they may have eloped, Mr. Wheeler is furious. He blames Chase Winstead, a young mechanic who's one of Pat's closest friends, saying he's a bad influence. Jeff goes to visit Chase at his garage to get his opinion, and Chase tells him that he isn't sure what could've happened to Pat. He does tell Jeff where he can find some other members of their inner-circle in order to ask more questions. That night, Chase learns of a call to the sheriff about a car that's been found in a ditch and, knowing it means a tow-job, heads out to the scene. There, he and Jeff notice that the car's skid marks go at a direct right angle to the direction it was traveling. Later, Chase finds an abandoned suitcase sitting on the side of the road and, a few days later, meets a drunken man who claims he was run into a ditch by a "big pink and black thing." When Jeff comes to Chase for help again when Wheeler demands he search the entire area, Chase and his friends pitch in and eventually find Pat's car at the bottom of the ravine in William's Wash, battered but with no sign of them. That night, another accident occurs, this time involving an oil truck owned by Chase's employer, Mr. Compton; like the other accidents, the skid marks are at a strange angle, and he's nowhere to be found. Saturday night arrives and with it comes not only a disastrous train wreck but also reports of a giant lizard, by both the drunken Old Man Harris and survivors of the crash. After talking with a zoologist about possible giantism in animals and how such a thing could happen, the sheriff begins to believe that there is indeed an enormous lizard prowling around William's Wash, specifically a Gila monster. Not only is he right but, now that it's found a plentiful food source, the monster has decided to emerge from the woods and heads straight for town.

As I said in my review of The Killer Shrews, the main man behind both of these movies, Texas-based radio tycoon Gordon McLendon, did them purely because he knew how potentially profitable such low budget monster flicks often were. Along with actor Ken Curtis, his time as a film producer was very brief, as after this double-feature, he and Curtis produced a family film, 1960's My Dog, Buddy, which almost no one remembers. Curtis would then focus on acting for the rest of his life but McLendon, decades later, decided to try his hand at movies again. He produced the 1981 film, Escape to Victory, directed by John Huston and starring Michael Caine, Sylvester Stallone, and Max von Sydow, as well as a number of professional footballers. It didn't do that well, but it did little to hurt McLendon's net worth, which was said to have been around $200 million. He died of cancer in 1986, at the age of 65.

When he came down from Hollywood to direct both The Killer Shrews and The Giant Gila Monster, Ray Kellogg not only brought his years' worth of visual effects expertise with him (his having been involved with Fox's big budget adaptation of Journey to the Center of the Earth, which featured some normal lizards made to look like giants, likely served him well with this particular film), but also some friends who were industry veterans. Among them was screenwriter Jay Simms, who penned both screenplays (Kellogg himself came up with Gila Monster's initial story), and would go on to have a successful career writing for television, notably for The Rifleman and Have Gun, Will Travel. Again, while Kellogg's own directing career didn't really pan out (he did also direct My Dog, Buddy, and an episode of the TV show, The Monroes), he was hardly hurting for work afterward. He worked on John Wayne's The Alamo, Cleopatra, and the 1966 Batman movie with Adam West, among many others, in various capacities. Most notably, he co-directed 1968's The Green Berets, along with John Wayne, and was a second unit director on Tora! Tora! Tora!, as well as 1972's The Revengers, with William Holden and Ernest Borgnine. Kellogg also died of cancer, in 1976, at the age of 70.

One thing that elevates The Giant Gila Monster above The Killer Shrews and most of the really cheap, B-monster movies of the time is that a good majority of the characters are not only quite likable but also reasonably well-developed. Like The Blob, I'm sure this is one of the first horror/sci-fi flicks that not only focused on teenagers, but also had one as the main character and hero. In this case, it's Don Sullivan as Chase Winstead. Chase is your typical 50's teenager (though, like Steve McQueen, Sullivan was much older than his character's age at the time; specifically, thirty), a lover of hot-rods and rock and roll. But instead of attending school, he works as a mechanic at a local garage, while taking a correspondence course in engineering. As his employer, Mr. Compton mentions, Chase also works every angle, right down to listening in on calls to the sheriff's office to see if there's a wreck that he can get a tow-job out of. He tells Compton that he has to do this, and that's no exaggeration, as you learn early on that, for a while now, he's been working hard to support his mother and disabled little sister after his father died in a drilling accident. He's someone who genuinely cares about his friends and family, as well as, especially his little sister, Missy, working hard in order to put a down payment on some walking braces for her. Being older than the others in his inner-circle, he has the reputation of acting as something of a big brother figure for them, trying to keep them out of trouble. As such, he's rather concerned when his friend Pat Wheeler, who clearly has a troubled home life that Chase has been helping him get through, disappears without a trace, along with his girlfriend. As Pat's domineering father says, Pat seems to be much closer to Chase, as Chase knows all about his fairly large savings and that he doesn't use a bank to keep his father from learning about it. And Chase also suggests that Pat and Liz Humphries may have have indeed eloped, despite how furious his father would be. In any case, he's more than willing to help Sheriff Jeff find Pat any way he can, as well as help when things keep getting weird. In fact, the two of them are so close in this regard that Jeff tells Chase about his idea that there's a giant Gila monster roaming the area before anyone else.

Sullivan may not have had the same kind of charisma that McQueen did but, as I've said, he's so damn likable and earnest, and his acting isn't bad at all (it's a shame he didn't act much after this film because, as he himself admitted in an interview; he was improving with every job during this time). And, if nothing else, unlike McQueen's character in The Blob, Chase does kill the monster, and in a way that's just believable enough. Unfortunately, Sullivan is at the center of one of the movie's most derided aspects: the songs that Chase, an aspiring singer, tends to perform.

I'll go more into it later but these songs, which Sullivan was allowed to come up with himself, are somewhat notorious for being considered either dated or just plain bad. While I myself don't mind a couple of them, and I think Sullivan had a pretty decent voice, I'll say for now that I would rather he didn't sing.

Equally likable is Sheriff Jeff (Fred Graham). (I don't remember them calling him anything other than Sheriff, but IMDB and other sites claim his name is Jeff, so I'll go along with it). As the only bit of law enforcement in a rather quiet little community (he doesn't even seem to have a single deputy), he probably doesn't have much to do most of the time, except maybe make sure that Old Man Harris stays sober. But when mysterious accidents and disappearances begin happening, he's determined to find out what's going on, although he quickly finds himself overwhelmed. While he can be stern towards the teenagers (when he hears that there's going to be a platter party, he tells Chase to warn the others that there better not be any drag racing going on that night), overall, he's very friendly towards them. When he goes by the Humphries home, and Mrs. Humphries apologizes for the trouble that their missing daughter is causing him, he warmly says, "It's never any trouble looking after kids." He especially sticks up for Chase, whom he thinks a lot of, when Pat Wheeler's bullying father accuses him of being the reason why Pat's missing. He lets Wheeler know that Chase is a great guy and helps Pat a lot more than he himself ever does. Because of his respect for Chase, and also because he has virtually no one else, Jeff turns to him for help in finding out what happened to Pat and Liz, be it locating the other members of their inner circle so he can talk to them or covering the area to find Pat's missing car. As things get stranger, culminating in his hearing claims of a giant lizard, Jeff looks into it and, after talking with a zoologist, starts to realize that there might be something to these claims. Sure enough, he's proven right when the Gila monster attacks the barn where the platter party is being held, before rampaging across the countryside.

Lisa (Lisa Simone, who was in the Miss Universe contest of 1957), Chase's French girlfriend, doesn't have much of a role, but she does come across as a nice, caring person, going as far as to pay for Missy's leg braces with her own money and refusing to let Chase pay her back. There's also a sad aspect to her character, as you get the impression that Mr. Wheeler, who happens to be her sponsor, verbally abuses her, especially since she's Chase's girlfriend and he despises him. At one point, Chase meets up with her in secret and she tells him that Wheeler threatened to send her back to France if she ever sees Chase again, blaming him for Pat's disappearance. Chase assures her that he won't be able to do that, but there's a feeling that Wheeler has so much influence that he could make it happen. That said, though, Lisa does do something during the climax that I find kind of annoying: Chase tells her to wait in the garage when he goes to carry out a plan to kill the Gila monster, but she insists on helping him, not caring that he's going to be driving across the bumpy road while carrying a bunch of nitro-glycerin. Right there, she comes off like a person who means well but kind of gets in the way when trying to help. Fortunately, it doesn't go on long enough to be of any real consequence.

As you can guess, Pat's father, Mr. Wheeler (Bob Thompson), is the closest the film comes to having a human antagonist. From the way everybody talks about him, and the way he himself discusses his son, it's clear that he's a domineering, bullying father. Chase says at one point that he gives Pat a good allowance, "When he's not mad at him," suggesting he's almost always on Pat's back about something, likely because he doesn't live up to his expectations. As I've already gone into, Wheeler is quite mean to Lisa, whom he's sponsoring, due to her relationship with Chase, and despises Chase himself (what makes him even more loathsome in that regard is when you learn that Chase's father died on one of his oil rigs). He thinks Chase is a bad influence on the teenagers, including Pat, saying, "Why, he's got more influence on Pat than I have." While he does have a point when he says Chase disrupted a potential crime scene when he moved Pat's car before it could be investigated (Sheriff Jeff even tells Chase that), as well as when he says Chase's taking the tires off one of the wrecks and putting it on his own car likely destroyed evidence, it just seems like Wheeler is looking for any excuse to have Chase arrested. In fact, after spending the whole movie talking down to Jeff, holding his wealthy status over his head, criticizing him for his friendship with Chase, and accusing him of not doing his job well, he tries to force him to arrest Chase at the platter party. However, the Gila monster's appearance stops this from happening, and after he's fled into the countryside, Jeff deputizes Wheeler, telling him to keep the kids at the barn for the time being. He then learns just how hard the sheriff's job is, as he's unable to keep them all there, and later admits as much. After the Gila monster has been killed, Wheeler, having a change of heart, offers to give Chase a job, seeing as how Mr. Compton is dead.

The funniest character is Old Man Harris (Shug Fisher), the town drunk. While definitely a friendly guy, he's not the most responsible, as he often causes headaches for Sheriff Jeff with his drunk driving. Even more annoying for Jeff is how, when he needs important information, Harris tends to go way off topic, often talking about his 1930's Model A. At one point, Jeff tells him, "I ask you what time it is and you tell me how to build a clock. Just the facts about the accident." Speaking of his Model A, Chase is interested in buying it off Harris, saying it's ideal to be converted into a bomb. Harris, however, refuses, telling him at the beginning of the movie, "Paid $695 for that car 26 years ago. Ten years ago, wasn't worth a dime. Last month, I turned down $100 for it. When it gets back up to $695 again, I'll sell it." And like Mayberry, this seems like the kind of town where the local alcoholic is civil enough to lock himself up in the jail, which Harris does, albeit after Jeff tells him to, and he's so drunk that he has to be pointed in the right direction (although, he apparently broke out in order to go to the platter party). One of his funniest moments is when he's driving and drunkenly singing about divorcing an overbearing wife, which may be a reflection on his own life given how, at the jail, Jeff tells him, "You can call your wife, if you want to, Harris," and he drunkenly says, "Wife? Are you crazy, Sheriff?" Significantly, it's while he's driving drunk that he sees the Gila monster cause a train wreck, and while Jeff would normally not listen to him, the people who survived the crash talk about having seen the monster as well, making him wonder. When the monster attacks the platter party, Harris runs upstairs in the barn, while everyone else runs outside. He's never seen again afterward, and he was originally supposed to die after running upstairs, but they decided not to shoot that.

Another character I like is "Steamroller" Smith (Ken Knox), a popular disc jockey whom Chase first meets when he drives into a ditch after the Gila monster crosses the road in front of him. Driving up alongside him, Chase asks him if he's alright and he gets this as an answer: "Alright? Dad, I'm superb. Seven to a box, no corners. I'm a round hound!" Chase responds, "Sorry I asked, Mr., uh...", and when Smith answers, "Smith. Horatio Alger Smith," Chase goes, "Sorry I asked that too." After Chase gets his car out of the ditch, Smith tries to drive off, even though the fender is cutting into the wheel, but soon realizes that he needs a tow. He later wakes up in a room at the garage, hearing Chase's hammering and singing in the next room. Hung over and not even remembering how he got there, he's grateful for Chase's help, and when Chase gives him a cup of coffee, suggesting he pay him just two bucks for the tow, Smith says, "Man, this coffee's worth two bucks all by itself." He gives him his card, telling him to look him up the next time he's in town, and also gives him two dollar bills... as in, two $20s. It's only when Smith leaves that Chase realizes who he is, and he later goes and gets him to DJ the platter party. Smith announces this on his radio show (the station he mentions, KILT, was a Houston-based station that Gordon McLendon owned, and where Ken Knox himself worked as an actual disc jockey), saying, "Drop in. I'll flatten you." When he shows up at the party, his presence immediately gets everyone excited, and he later plays a demo of a song that he says somebody did for him at the station, adding, "By the way, the first person who identifies the singer on the record gets two free rides on my elephant in Bangkok, Siam... But you gotta pay your own way over there and back." He plays it for a little bit, then stops the record, much to everyone's displeasure, and says, "Don't get your tar and feathers, yet. I'm gonna play the rest of it." He then asks if they can guess who the singer is, and when nobody can, he threatens to leave them hanging by saying they can wait until it comes out officially. It's then revealed that Chase was the singer.

Among the other memorable characters, Missy (Janice Stone), Chase's little sister, is a cute, sweet girl who adores her brother, always looking up to him, and when she gets her leg braces, she wants to walk across the room to him, but falls twice. She's upset about this, saying she'd been practicing all afternoon and wanted to do it for him, but Chase cheers her up by singing one of his songs. She adapts to the braces, though, as during the climax, she's running from the Gila monster, although she does fall again. Chase's mom (Gay McLendon) isn't in the film 

much but comes off as a really nice lady. The same goes for Mr. Compton (Cecil Hunt), the man who employs Chase, and who almost unknowingly kills himself when he drives to the garage carrying four quarts of nitro glycerine, without keeping them in their nitro cases. This horrifies Chase, who tells him that he's lucky to still be alive. Unfortunately, Compton later falls victim to the Gila monster when he causes him to crash while driving an oil tanker. Going back to Chase's mother, if the actor's name

caught your attention, well, you're right: she was Gordon McLendon's wife at the time. His daughter, Jan, appears briefly as one of the teenagers, Jenny, who's the girlfriend of Chase's friend, Gordy (Don Flournoy). Their most notable moment is when they help Chase and Lisa look for Pat's car at William's Wash, and are actually the ones who find it. And just as he did for The Killer Shrews, McLendon himself provides the opening narration. Finally, when Chase listens in on the call that Sheriff Jeff gets about the car that's run into a ditch, the man who tells him of it is Ken Curtis..

The setting is, again, a big reason why I really like this film. We never actually learn what state this is, although it's a safe bet that it's Texas (some sources have said New Mexico), nor do we see the entire town, suggesting it's actually more like a small community in the backwoods, with a few houses and farms here and there, and some scattered establishments like the little diner where the movie opens, Mr. Compton's garage, the police station, and so on. That, in particular, reminds me of the place in

Tennessee where I've lived all my life, which makes me like it all the more. Like the main set of The Killer Shrews, the interiors, like the Winstead home, the garage, and the sheriff's office, are very sparsely decorated, and often feel fairly small and intimate. Even in the bigger locations, like Mr. Wheeler's large plantation house and the barn where the platter party takes place, you almost never see more than one room. While this, again, is indicative of the very low budgets they had to work with while making both of

these films, I think, in this case, it helps reinforce the notion that this is a very blue collar neighborhood in the country, with many of the residents just scraping by. Speaking of which, I feel that most of the townspeople are fairly believable characters, with some of them, like Old Man Harris, as well as Ed and Agatha Humphries, reminding me of people I've personally known. But what I like most are the exterior locations of the surrounding area, specifically William's Wash, the area that happens to be the Gila

monster's home, which has an eerie quality to it. The opening narration all but tells you that it's a barren, uninviting place, "Bleak and desolate. Where no human ever goes, and no life is ever seen. It is as though the land had been pelted by God," and Mr. Wheeler later says, "That area is so choked with underbrush, it isn't even good hunting ground." In short, it makes for the perfect hiding place for a monster.

Believe it or not, this film does have a genuine creep factor about it. It's not actually due to the Gila monster but, rather, the mystery of what's going on. Again, until the third act, all the characters know is that strange accidents are happening and people are disappearing without a trace, and if you put yourself in their shoes, it would be quite an unnerving mystery. Obviously, the movie's very title tells you what's behind it, and you get a glimpse of the Gila monster right at the beginning, but if it had been played as 

more of an actual mystery the audience, the eerie moments would've worked even better than they already do. For instance, the scenes where Sheriff Jeff and Chase investigate the wrecks take place at night, on lonely roads in the middle of the woods, and they do have a spooky atmosphere to them. Each time, they both notice the unusual direction of the crashed vehicle's skid marks, and during one of these scenes, Jeff tells Chase, as they stand out there in the dark, that there have been a lot of reports of missing 

livestock lately, adding, "One here, one there. That doesn't make headlines, but now, it's people." Further adding to this feeling of creepiness is how the woods around come across as a strange and eerie place. During the scene where they're preparing to haul Pat's car out of the bottom of William's Wash, Lisa and Jennie hear a loud crash nearby. While the latter says it was probably just a rock-slide, Lisa, who was already spooked while she and Chase were walking along the bottom of the wash, says, "For some reason, this place gives me the creeps. It always has." That

statement struck home with me because, if you live in a very rural area, you know that there are some places that, day or night, make you feel uncomfortable, but you can't put your finger on why. It all comes down to that idea of something lurking in the woods, and the eerie music score, especially the main theme, adds to it all the more. 

As we've seen over the past few days, despite what you may personally think of them, public domain movies like this, The Killer Shrews, and The Screaming Skull have really suffered from the poorly transferred, chopped up prints that have been widely available on the home video market over the decades. In the case of The Giant Gila Monster, when you look at a really good, HD print of it, like the one that Film Masters put out on Blu-Ray, you can appreciate Wilfred M. Cline's crisp cinematography. Not only 

does it do a lot of good for the actual shooting locations in those shots where you can see them in all their glory, but as I talked about up above, those nighttime exterior scenes with Chase and Jeff are effectively dark and creepy. If any of those were done day-for-night, then it's among the best I've seen. Speaking of which, there are many more obvious instances of day-for-night shooting, and it sometimes switches back and forth between it and actual nighttime shooting, like when Chase drives off after 

the scene at the first car wreck, but this is an instance where it doesn't bother me as much as it usually does. Instead, I feel the day-for-night kind of adds to the atmosphere, in a strange way. And while the movie certainly doesn't have any auteur direction or camerawork about it, the driving scenes feature some well-executed shots done over the hoods of the cars, which don't look like they were done in front of any kind rear-projection. May seem like a strange thing to compliment but those feel like impressive set-ups for a movie with this kind of budget. Finally, even though

the Gila monster himself is ultimately the movie's weakest link, some shots of him are effective enough, including a close-up of his foot coming down on the camera, which you see a couple of times when he attacks someone.

While not as egregious or jarring as the choppy editing in older prints of The Screaming Skull or The Killer Shrews, that old VHS I had of The Giant Gila Monster had some awkward cuts that I didn't realize were mistakes until I first saw it on DVD. It started up in the middle of Gordon McLendon's opening narration, skipping the first bit of credits; it suddenly cut from Chase kissing Lisa to the next scene, where Chase meets Steamroller Smith; and it also unexpectedly cut from the Gila monster's attack on 

the train after it crashes to Sheriff Jeff on the phone at his office, with some of the sounds of the passengers screaming briefly bleeding into it. It's because of this that I'm really glad companies like Film Masters are now out there, giving these often neglected movies quality releases. Even if I think some of them suck, they deserve to be seen and heard in the best version possible so people can judge them fairly.

Again, like The Blob, The Giant Gila Monster acts as a time capsule of small town American in the 50's, albeit in a much more rural manner. You've got the classic cars, some from generations past, like Harris' Model A, and others that were more contemporary for the time, like Chase's Deuce Coupe, made from a 1932 Ford, which were very popular among hot-rodders; rock-and-roll music, and the popularity of various radio shows; and the slang that the teenagers tend to use (although I think that could be more of a 

case of an adult screenwriter at the time imagining how young people talked. I could be wrong, though). And, also like in The Blob, there's this notion of certain adults seeing the kids as troublemakers with no respect for authority, like Mr. Wheeler, while others, like Sheriff Jeff, are willing to cut them some slack and understand that they really are good kids at heart.

Here's something that I never, ever expected to discuss about this film, and I'm willing to bet you didn't either: according to author Jeffrey Dennis, in his book, Queering Teen Culture: All-American Boys and Same-Sex Desire in Film and Television, it's fraught with homosexual subtext. Now, I've never read that book myself, as that's not the kind of stuff I go looking for in media to begin with, and I only know about it because author Don Stradley discusses it in an essay he wrote about the film in a booklet that 

came with that Film Masters Blu-Ray. According to Stradley, Dennis devotes an entire chapter of that book to The Giant Gila Monster, talking about Chase being "suspiciously close" to all of his male friends, including Sheriff Jeff... never mind how Chase, one, has a girlfriend, two, is no closer to the local guys of his age group than I or any other heterosexual guy was at that age, and three, the sheriff comes to him because he's in over his head and has nowhere else to turn. Now, admittedly, the moment where Chase tells Steamroller Smith that, when he got him to the

garage, he carried him to the bed in the next room and, "Sat on you until you fell asleep," and Smith responds, "That must've been quite a chore," can be a bit eyebrow-raising when you first hear it, but I've always felt it was just meant to be a funny moment, showing how drunk Smith was. I agree with Stradley when he equates Dennis' observations to, "One of those Weekly World News zealots seeing the face of Elvis in every discarded bar napkin and baked potato peel."

As I've alluded to, the weakest aspect of the movie is, ironically, the giant Gila monster himself. For one, despite being a huge, venomous lizard, he never comes off as much of a threat as he's supposed to; in fact, the Killer Shrews were far more ferocious and dangerous. Even though the Gila monster does kill a fair amount of people, attacking and devouring anyone he comes across, as well as sends Pat Wheeler's car tumbling down a ravine and causes a train to wreck, he never comes off as overtly aggressive. He mainly just slowly crawls around (so slowly that it's hard to believe anybody would fall prey to him), and watches the characters from afar, as well as occasionally hisses and growls. As for how he got so big, it's not the typical explanation of it being due to radioactivity or a science experiment gone wrong; in fact, it's left kind of vague. Sheriff Jeff tells Chase that, according to a zoologist he's talked with, a change in the Gila monsters' diet can throw their pituitary off and cause them to either get too big or too small. He adds that the scientist also told him of the recently-discovered bones of some enormous animals whose abnormal growth was caused by some certain types of salt that they ingested from the river water. Besides being the definition of pseudoscience, exactly how or if this is what caused the Gila monster to become a giant is left unexplained. As creepy as that is in and of itself, it might've been better if there were no possible explanations at all. Or, if you're going to suggest one of those explanations, have the characters also wonder if this is the only giant Gila monster around. After all, if it happened to one, it could've happened to others.

Obviously, they had very little money to work with, which was why Ray Kellogg was hired for both this and The Killer Shrews, as the producers figured he could create acceptable special effects for the budget. And the technique used to create the Gila monster, putting a normal-sized animal on a miniature set (in this case, a beaded lizard rather than actual Gila monster), was akin to some effects work in the big budget production of Journey to the Center of the Earth that Kellogg worked on. It had also been done 

in other B-movies of the time, like Tarantula and the cheesy Earth vs. The Spider, and was pulled off fairly convincingly there. But most of the time, with one of the worst examples being The Beginning of the End, it tended to look really bad. Now, the effects in Gila Monster are done better than in that movie, mostly because they never try to put the real actors in the same frame as the monster (likely because they couldn't afford to), but the main problem is that he never looks as enormous as he's supposed to be. 

Most of the time when you see him, he's crawling through the forest and they use loud rustling sound effects when he moves to give off the feeling that he's a huge, lumbering creature, and when a twig or something is pushed over and hits the ground, they put in a loud crashing sound to make it come off like a tree, but it never works. There are only a handful of times when he's seen up against miniatures of vehicles and buildings (when he's hanging around the bridge cross the wash, when he causes the train wreck, attacks the barn, and when Chase's hot-rod 

crashes into him at the end), and even then, they're almost never photographed convincingly. Also, while it's nice that there aren't any really bad rear-screen or compositing shots with the actors, their absence further hampers the attempt to make the Gila monster look like a giant. Really, the only shots that give him any kind of effective scale are those of his foot heading towards the camera. And speaking of the actors, when the movie cuts back and forth from them to the monster, as it often does, the environment doesn't match where they are. In fact, you sometimes can't figure out where he is in relation to them, like when he's stalking Chase and Lisa while they're searching for Pat's car.

While we don't get our first good look at the Gila monster for a little while in, his presence is indicated right from the start, following the opening narration. We see Pat Wheeler and Liz Humphries parked near William's Wash, listening to music on the car radio, when they hear the monster hiss loudly behind them. As quickly as they look, he pushes and sends their car tumbling down into the ravine, and we then see a close-up of his foot as he comes down to devour them. Our first real look at him comes about eighteen 

minutes in, when he's hanging out around a bridge near William's Wash (or Wilson's Wash, as Sheriff Jeff calls that particular area). Nearby, a guy in a business suit and tie is hitchhiking, but hasn't managed to flag down a car. As he stands around in the dark, he goes to light a cigarette, when he hears the monster hissing nearby. Just as he puts the cigarette in his mouth, he sees the monster looking down at him from nearby (like I said, the shot of the monster doesn't match this setting at all). He falls back into the brush behind him when the monster 

lunges at him, and he's dragged away, leaving his briefcase on the side of the road. Later, while driving back from the car that had run into the ditch, Chase finds the briefcase. And when Sheriff Jeff arrives, he finds the hitchhiker's pack of cigarettes lying on the ground, as well as the one that the man never lit. Unbeknownst to either of them, the monster is watching them from nearby. When the sheriff drives off with the briefcase, Chase hears the monster hiss, but decides it's nothing and drives on. In the next scene, set a day or so later, the monster can be seen quickly crossing the road when Steamroller Smith comes blazing through, causing him to go off into the ditch.

Later, when Chase, Lisa, Gordy, and Jennie are searching for Pat's car, Chase decides to search a ravine in William's Wash. He and Lisa go down one end, while Gordy and Jennie start at the other and work their way towards them. The Gila monster watches Chase and Lisa as they make their way down into the ravine, then begins moving his way towards them, apparently flanking them (again, it's often hard to tell where he is in relation to them). Chase and Lisa come upon a spot where the monster had crawled 

through, with Chase remarking how some kind of animal apparently "dragged" something along. The monster continues stalking them, as they stop at a small stream where Chase takes a drink. In fact, he seems to be almost on top of them when Chase tries to ease Lisa's jitters by taking her into the shade and kissing her. Before the monster can attack, Chase and Lisa hear Gordy honking his horn and go back to meet up with him. When they do, he tells them that he and Jennie found Pat's car, although there's no sign of him or Liz. Chase brings the wrecker out from the 

garage and, as Lisa and Jennie watch from the edge of the ravine, he and Gordy hook the car up to the winch. Like before, the monster is watching them from nearby, and slowly makes his way towards them. Chase then has Lisa turn the truck on and instructs her on what to do, as she works to bring the truck up out of the ravine. Again, the monster slowly makes his way down into the wash and approaches them, though none of them see him. But then, they manage to pull the car out of the ravine and drive off with it back to the garage, as the monster just watches them go.

That night, Mr. Compton is coming back from a job, driving an oil truck. However, the sight of the Gila monster in the road causes him to lose control and the truck turns over, with the oil tank exploding. The monster then moves in to devour Compton. Later, when Chase gets a call from the sheriff about the wreck, he meets up with him and Old Man Harris at the garage. When the sheriff's car turns out to have a flat, the three of them speed off to the site of the wreck in Chase's hot-rod. Upon arriving, they find

that the wreck is still burning. Chase is able to get close enough to see that Compton isn't in the driver's seat, and the three of them search the surrounding area for him. Of course, they find no sign of him. This scene serves as something of a prelude to the monster's next, major attack. Harris is driving around drinking in his Model-A one night, when the train comes through. He stupidly floors it in order to beat the train to a crossing and he manages to do so, although the horrified conductor hides his eyes at the sight of this. Up ahead, the Gila monster is waiting

beneath the bridge. As the train gets closer, he breaks the middle of the bridge by pushing up on it from underneath with his back, then crawls up the hillside and looks at the train as it approaches. He then turns and crawls down towards the road, when Harris comes upon him. He stops, wiping his eyes to make sure he's not hallucinating, just as the train reaches the destroyed bridge and crashes into the wash. At this, Harris, hearing the passengers screaming, turns around and heads back down the road. Meanwhile, the monster crawls towards the destroyed train to gorge himself on the helpless passengers. Their screaming intensifies when he reaches the cars.

The climax begins when Sheriff Jeff, under Mr. Wheeler's insistence, heads to the barn to arrest Chase for taking the tires off the car they found in the ditch and putting them on his hot-rod. Just when they arrive at the barn, so does the Gila monster, wandering about the cars parked to its right. Not seeing him, Jeff and Wheeler head inside, while the monster moves to the side of the barn. Chase is in the middle of singing the "Mushroom Song" to the crowd, when there's a loud bang and everyone turns and screams as the

monster pushes his head through the barn's wall. Panicking, everyone runs outside, except for Old Man Harris, who runs upstairs and is never seen again. Outside, Jeff grabs a rifle from his car and fires multiple shots at the monster. Though it doesn't seem to really hurt him, it does encourage him to pull his head out of the barn's wall and move off into the woods. Jeff tells Chase that he's going to run to the train wreck and get some troopers for some more firepower. Meanwhile, Chase and Lisa jump into his 

hot-rod, as he tells her that he has an idea that might work. They drive off to the garage, while Jeff deputizes Wheeler and tells him to arrest any of the teens who try to leave the scene. However, when Wheeler tells them that, he gets a lot of pusback. Chase and Lisa arrive at the garage, and Chase tells Lisa to wait inside the office. He runs into the storage shed, getting the quarts of nitro glycerine that Compton bought back with him earlier. Much to his aggravation, Lisa insists on helping him, despite how dangerous the situation is. With no other recourse, he 

has her hold the nitro, telling her to keep them steady. Grabbing four canisters in all, Chase gets back into the car and takes off back down the road. They stop at a spot where the Gila monster plowed through a fence, and Chase is then horrified when he looks and sees that he next went right through the Blackwell home, where Missy was spending the night. He runs to the house and searches it, desperately yelling for Mrs. Blackwell and Missy, Finding no sign of either of them, he gets back in the car and tells Lisa to hold onto the nitro, as he's going to cut across the countryside.

As Sheriff Jeff, coming back from the train wreck, drives along the road with his siren blaring, the Gila monster runs across the countryside (as fast as a Gila monster can, anyway). Chase and Lisa speed to intercept him, with Lisa really having to keep the nitro steady. They come across Missy and Mrs. Blackwell, running for their lives (and shockingly, Mrs. Blackwell just runs off with another kid, likely her own, and leaves Missy when she falls in the dirt!). Pulling up alongside Missy, Chase tells Lisa to get out

and hold her down to the ground. When she does, he turns around and speeds off, heading straight for the Gila monster. The monster stands there and stares Chase down as he comes at him. Chase jumps out of the car and tumbles across the ground, while the car, and the nitro, head on towards the monster (the car literally looks like it's driving itself in some of these shots). It collides with him, causing a huge explosion that reduces him to a flaming corpse. Jeff shows up at the scene, with a pair of troopers in his car, while Chase sees to Lisa and Missy. He then explains to Jeff

what he hit the Gila monster with, which shocks both him and Wheeler, who arrives on the scene as well. Having now realized how hard the sheriff's job really is, Wheeler apologizes to him and offers to give Chase a job the next day, and the movie ends with Chase, Missy, Lisa, and Jeff looking at the monster's burning corpse.

While a number of people on the production side were carried over between The Killer Shrews and The Giant Gila Monster, the composer wasn't one of them. The music here was done by Jack Marshall, who later also scored My Dog, Buddy for the same production team, and went on to work in television, most notably doing the music for The Munsters. As I said earlier, his music helps give the movie the creep factor that it does have, especially the eerie main theme, which sounds like somebody whistling. If you heard that in the middle of the night, when you were alone in the woods, it would be unnerving. Heck, it's unnerving to listen while I'm in my house by myself, and it really works as something of a leitmotif for the Gila monster. It not only helps make him come off as a bit more unsettling than he really is, but it's most effective when it alludes to his presence in the moments where you don't see him. When you're hearing that music in the background during those scenes at night, when Chase and Jeff are talking about the strange things that have been happening, it makes you feel like the monster is nearby. Marshall also does some cool variations on the theme, coming up with some spooky theremin-like sounds for other moments, and a faster-paced but no less spooky one for the scene where they get Pat's car out of the ravine. Besides the scary stuff, Marshall also creates some warm, touching music for Missy, like when Chase tells Jeff about the down payment he made on her walking braces, as well as a soft, child-like piece for when she tries to walk over to him. And, hinting at what he would later come up with on TV, Marshall did the old-fashioned rock and roll music you often hear the teens listening to on the radio. While I don't mind that music, I think his blending it with the main theme during the climax comes across as really cheesy, especially in those moments where you see the Gila monster hauling ass across the countryside,

Now, let's talk about those infamous songs that Chase sings sporadically throughout the movie. I kind of like My Baby, She Rocks, which he sings while he's working in his shop, and it makes for an effectively funny scene, as he wakes up Steamroller Smith, who's trying to sleep off his hangover in the next room, with both his singing and hammering on a chunk of metal. I also don't mind I Ain't Made That Way, Chase's demo that Smith plays at the platter party, although I don't know how one of the teenagers mistook his 

voice, as good as it is, for Elvis. The one song that always makes me cringe, however, is the Mushroom Song, or Laugh, Children, Laugh, which he first sings to Missy after she tries to walk in her new leg braces for him. It's meant to make this moment between them all the more tender, but it does nothing but stop the film dead in its tracks, as he sings this corny tune about the Garden of Eden while strumming a little banjo. I don't mind it so much when he sings it again at the platter party, though that could be because it doesn't go on as long. (The Gila monster 

must mind it, however, because he picks that moment to bust through the barn's wall.) But I don't at all buy those rock and roll-loving teens getting into it as much as they do, even if he is their friend. All that said, though, I don't find this song to be anywhere near as annoying as what Kipp Hamilton sings in either version of The War of the Gargantuas. Ugh!

The Giant Gila Monster may never get to the point where it's considered to be a classic, and it probably shouldn't, but I do think it's a nice little gem of a movie. While there are certainly much better monster movies from this era, and movie monsters in general, for that matter, this one makes up for its lackluster monster and archaic effects scenes with likable characters, nice cinematography (at least, when you watch a really good print), a quaint, innocent feeling in its depiction of small-town life in the 50's, and a surprisingly eerie atmosphere at times, helped immensely by its music score. Ray Kellogg was no master filmmaker but he did some good work here, and if you can look past the not so great monster, as well as the songs that Don Sullivan sings and some of the actual score's cheesier moments, I think you'll be surprised at what a charming little film this is..