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

When I was a young kid, I bought a VHS called Fantastic Dinosaurs of the Movies, a compilation of trailers for movies featuring both dinosaurs and all sorts of giant monsters. That tape is how I first became aware of a number of the classic monster flicks of the 1950's and 60's, from bonafide classics like The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms and Them! to B-movie favorites like The Giant Behemoth and The Giant Claw, among many, many others. As you can guess, the trailer for this film was one of the many that were a part of that compilation but, as with most of those movies, while I knew about it from a very early age, I wouldn't see the actual film until many years later when I bought it along with a bunch of other movies in the spring of 2001 when I was thirteen years old. Initially, I was a bit put off by the cheapness of the movie, especially in regards to the effects, and how it mainly focuses on the residents of the town. Also, it's not until the third act that they realize that a monster is living in the woods outside their town, something that never fails to annoy me in these types of films. But, as I've watched the film more and more, I've grown to really like it and, of the two low budget movies produced back-to-back by an independent Texas film company that same year, the other being The Killer Shrews, this is definitely the superior film in my eyes. (Like that movie, this one is public domain, so some of the images here may not be in the best quality; also had trouble getting the best images for certain sections, so bare with me.)

In a small town in the American south, a teenage couple is reported missing the day after they failed to meet up with their friends to go to the local drive-in. After hearing about it, the local sheriff talks with Chase Winstead, a young mechanic who was very close to the missing boy, Pat Wheeler, and while he tells him that he isn't sure what could have happened to him, Chase is sure that they didn't elope like he and some of the other adults feel they may have. That night, Chase listens in on a call to the sheriff about a car that's been found in a ditch and, knowing that it means a tow-job for them, heads out to the scene, where he and the sheriff notice that the car's skid marks on the road go at a direct right angle to the direction it was traveling. More strange events occur, including Chase finding an abandoned suitcase sitting on the side of the road on his way home from the accident and some time later, meets a drunken man from the city, who's later revealed to be a popular disc-jockey, who says he ran off the road because of a "big pink and black thing" that drove out in front of him. Chase and his friends decide to help the sheriff in combing the area for Pat and Liz and they eventually discover Pat's car at the bottom of William's Wash, battered up but with no sign of the two teenagers. That night, another accident occurs, this time involving an oil truck owned by Chase's employer, Mr. Compton, and like at the other accidents, he's nowhere to be found. Saturday night arrives and with it comes not only the report of a disastrous train wreck but also of a giant lizard, not only by the drunken Old Man Harris who was at the scene but also from some survivors of the crash. After talking with a zoologist about possible gigantism in animals and hearing the DJ's report of what forced him off the road the other day from Chase, the sheriff begins to believe that there is indeed an enormous lizard prowling around William's Wash; specifically, a venomous Gila monster. Not only is he right but, now that it's found a reliable food source, the monster has decided to come out of the woods and head straight for town.

Like The Killer Shrews, The Giant Gila Monster was directed by Ray Kellogg, a veteran special effects man who made his directorial debut with both of these flicks (he also wrote the original story for this film). However, his directing career didn't pan out, as he only directed two more films, My Dog, Buddy and, most notably, The Green Berets (which he co-directed with an uncredited Mervyn LeRoy and John Wayne himself), as well as an episode of the TV show, The Monroes (whose producer he worked under as an assistant), afterward. Following The Green Berets, he worked as a second unit director on several more films into the 1970's, including Tora! Tora! Tora! and The Revengers with William Holden and Ernest Borgnine, and he also directed second unit on the 1966 Batman movie with Adam West, before he died of cancer in 1976 at the age of 70.

For me, what elevates this movie above The Killer Shrews, and most cheap monster movies of the time, is that a good majority of the characters are reasonably developed and quite likable. Like The Blob, this has to be one of the first horror/sci-fi flicks that not only focused on teenagers but also had one as the main character and hero. Now, in the end, this movie is nowhere near the level of The Blob but it does have some of the same qualities, particularly in the main character of Chase Winstead, played by Don Sullivan. Chase is your typical 50's teenager, a lover of hot-rods and rock and roll, and works as a mechanic. Sullivan may not have the charisma of Steve McQueen but, nonetheless, he's a likable character and is helpful to the local sheriff, aiding him in finding out what's going on when things start getting weird. He also clearly cares about his friends and family, seeming more than a little concerned when his friend Pat Wheeler, who clearly had a troubled home life that Chase helped him get through, disappears without a trace. Moreover, Chase works hard in his job to support his mother and disabled little sister because his father died in a drilling accident. He especially cares very much about his little sister, working hard to get walking braces for her. He's just a very dependable and likable young man all-around.

Equally likable is Sheriff Jeff, played by Fred Graham (I honestly don't remember them saying that his name was Jeff in the film but the credits list on IMDB says so, so I'll go along with it). As the only bit of law enforcement in a rather quiet little community, he probably doesn't have much to do most of the time but, when mysterious accidents start happening and people begin disappearing, he's determined to find out what's going on. He's very friendly towards the teenagers, making him akin to the character of Lieutenant Dave in The Blob, and when the mother of a missing girl apologizes for putting him through so much trouble, he says that it's never a problem looking out for kids. He especially sticks up for Chase when Pat Wheeler's bullying father accuses him of being the reason why Pat's missing, letting him know that Chase is a great guy and helps Pat a lot more than he ever does before saying that he'll do everything he can to find Pat. From that, you get a very strong impression of his character: he's a warm man who'll always do what's right but, at the same time, he doesn't stand for any bullshit. 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, and he also does everything he can to make sure that Old Man Harris stays sober (although he tends to fail in that regard).

Lisa, Chase's French girlfriend, played by Lisa Simone (who was in the Miss Universe contest of 1957), doesn't have much of a role but she does come across as a caring person, paying for a set of leg braces for Chase's little sister Missy with her own money and refusing to let Chase pay her back. There's also a sad part about her because you get the impression that Mr. Wheeler, who happens to be her sponsor, verbally abuses her, especially since she's Chase's girlfriend. 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. Although, that said, Lisa does one thing at the end of the film that I do find kind of annoying: Chase tells her to wait in the garage when he plans to carry out a plan to kill the Gila monster but she insists on helping him, saying that she doesn't care that he's going to be driving with a bunch nitro-glycerin. Right then, she seems like a person who means well but kind of gets in the way when she's trying to help. But it doesn't last long enough for it to be of any consequence anyway.

As you can probably guess, Pat's father, Mr. Wheeler, played by Bob Thompson, is the most unlikable character in the film. You can guess from the way everybody talks about him and from the way that he himself talks about his son, that he's a domineering, bullying father. Chase even says at one point that he gives Pat a good allowance, "when he's not mad at him," suggesting that he's always on Pat's back about something. I've already said how mean he is to Lisa and how he clearly despises Chase, the latter of which makes him even loathsome when you find out that Chase's father died on one of his oil rigs. He thinks Chase is a bad influence on all the teenagers, hating on him when he tried to help by accusing him of disrupting a crime scene when he moved Pat's empty car, and he also talks down to the sheriff by holding his wealthy status over his head and accusing him of not doing his job well. He's just a nasty piece of work, but he is redeemed when the sheriff deputizes him for a brief period and he learns how hard the job really is and, after the Gila monster has been killed, he offers to give Chase a job since it killed his boss. That's fine with me because I always like it when nasty characters eventually become decent.

The funniest character in the film is Old Man Harris, played by Shug Fisher, the town drunk. He's definitely a friendly guy but he's not the most responsible person as he often causes headaches for the sheriff with his drunk driving. Even more annoying for the sheriff is how, when he needs important information from Harris, he tends to go off topic, often talking about his 1930's Model-A, prompting him to say at one point, "I ask you what time it is and you tell me how to build a clock." And, like the town of Mayberry on The Andy Griffith Show, this seems to be the type of town where the criminals are civil enough to lock themselves up in the jail, which Harris does, although he apparently broke out in order to go to the platter party. Harris' funniest moment is when he's driving and drunkenly sings about divorcing an overbearing wife, which may be a reflection of his own life seeing as how later on, he's not too keen on his letting his wife know he's in jail for drunk driving.

None of the other characters have much to them. Missy, Chase's little sister, played by little Janice Stone, is cute, never comes across as annoying, and obviously looks up to Chase, seemingly both as a brother and a father figure, but ultimately doesn't do much. "Steamroller" Smith, a popular disc jockey, played by real-life disc jockey Ken Knox, has one funny scene where he's drunk and the Gila monster causes him to run off into the ditch, as well as when Chase later wakes him up with his hammering and singing, but not much else. And Chase's mom (Gay McLendon), Compton (Cecil Hunt), the man who employs Chase, and Chase's other friends aren't in the film long enough to be memorable, although if you listen closely during the scene where Chase listens on a report that the sheriff gets about a car that's run into a ditch, you may recognize the voice of Ken Curtis, Festus from Gunsmoke, who was also a producer on this.

The giant Gila monster himself, unfortunately, is where the film's biggest failing lies. The way they conceive him is the old technique of putting a normal sized animal on a miniature set (and in this case, they couldn't even get the right type of lizard, as what they use is a beaded lizard rather than an actual Gila monster!) and in some movies, like Tarantula or even the cheesy Earth vs. The Spider, this is pulled off fairly convincingly, but most of the time, with the worst example being The Beginning of the End, it looks really bad, as is the case here. The Gila monster just never looks as enormous as it's supposed to be. Most of the time, it's in the forest and they use loud, rustling sound effects whenever it movies to make it feel bigger and whenever a twig is pushed over and hits the ground, they put in a loud crash to make you think the twig was really a tree, but it never works. Only twice is the monster ever seen against miniature models of vehicles and buildings and even then, they're never photographed convincingly. There aren't any shots of the actors in the same frame as the monster like you normally get in this flicks, no doubt due to the very low budget, and it further hampers the attempts to make it look like a giant. Really, the only shots that give it any kind of effective scale are a couple that show its foot heading towards the camera, and I'm unsure if those are of a model or just a close-up of the real lizard's foot. The Gila monster never "acts" dangerous or aggressive either, as it just slowly crawls around, so slowly that it's hard to believe that anybody would fall prey to it, and mainly just watches the characters. What's more, there's not even a solid answer for how the Gila monster got so big. The sheriff talks with a scientist off-camera and he says that a change in the Gila monsters' diet can throw the pituitary gland off and cause them to either get too big or too small. Fair enough, but then sheriff adds that the scientist also claims to have found the bones of enormous animals whose growth was caused by a type of salt that they ingested from the river water (watch out the next time you put salt on your food, because it may turn you into a giant!) Well, which is it? If you're going to the trouble of giving an explanation for the monster, at least give one solid one, not two vague ones. Actually, I think they could have added to the creep factor if the reason behind the monster's size was left unexplained.

You may be wondering from that last sentence, "Does this movie have any creep factor?" Believe it or not, yes, it does, although it's not due to the Gila monster itself. Rather, it's simply a result of the mystery of what's going on. As I said, until near the end of the film, the characters don't know what's going on; all they do know is that strange vehicle accidents are happening and people are disappearing without a trace. If you put yourself in their shoes, it would be quite unnerving to be experiencing this. Since you know from the movie's very title what's behind it all, that aspect isn't as effective as it could be and that's a shame because, if it had been kept a secret, the eerie moments would have worked even better than they already do. For instance, the scenes where the sheriff and Chase investigate the wrecks take place at night, on lonely roads in the middle of the woods, and are actually quite creepy. During one of these scenes, the sheriff mentions to Chase that there have been a lot of reports of missing livestock lately, adding to the atmosphere, but just imagine how creepy it would have been if you didn't know about the monster. It also helps that the area of Ciello where the movie's outdoor scenes were filmed is photographed to come across as a strange, creepy place. At one point, Lisa says that William's Wash, the area that happens to be the monster's home, has always frightened her for some reason, a statement that struck home to me because, if you live in a very rural area like I do, you know that there are some places that, day or night, just give you the creeps and you can't put your finger on why. For me, it all comes down to the idea of something lurking in the woods, and the biggest addition to this atmosphere is Jack Marshall's eerie main theme, which sounds like somebody whistling. If you heard that music in the middle of the night in the woods, it would be unnerving, to say the least, and it really works here (not so much when it's blended in with some typical 50's beats during the climax when the Gila monster is hightailing it across the countryside but that's another matter).

As you can tell, the location is the main part of the film that I really like. We never actually see the entire town, which makes me feel that it's actually not so much a town as it is just a rural area in the backwoods with a few houses here and there, which is fine with me since it reminds me of where I live. The actual state is never made clear, either (although it's clearly in either Texas or New Mexico), which is also okay by me because it makes it feel like it could anywhere in the American south and, as a result, easier to imagine myself there. The townspeople are a little more hit and miss for me, though. While I feel that most of the main characters and the adult townspeople are believable, I don't think that the other teenagers are. Maybe I'm off-base here but, with the constant 1950's slang the teenagers tend to over-use in conversations, it feels more like how an adult filmmaker at the time would have imagined young people talked and acted. But as I've said, I could be wrong.

The songs in this movie that Don Sullivan tends to sing are somewhat notorious among viewers for being pretty dated and bad. Personally, I don't mind the song he sings during one scene when he's working in his shop (it's actually funny because he wakes up Steamroller Smith, who's trying to sleep off a hangover in the next room) and I don't mind his song that plays at the platter party, although I don't know how one of the teenagers mistook his voice, as good as it is, for that of Elvis,. The one song that always makes me cringe, however, is the one he sings to Missy after she tries to walk in her new leg braces for him. I'm guessing it's meant to be a tender moment but it does nothing but stop the film dead in its tracks while he sings this corny-sounding song about the Garden of Eden with a banjo. It just feels out of place, although I don't mind it so much when he sings it again at the platter party because it doesn't go on as long. (The Gila monster must mind, though, because he picks that moment to bust through the barn's wall.) All that said, though, I don't find this song to be anywhere near as annoying as what Kipp Hamilton sings in both versions of The War of the Gargantuas. Ugh! (I can't wait till we get to that film some day so I can rip on that song hardcore.)

At the end of the day, The Giant Gila Monster may not be a classic but I do think of it as a nice little gem of a movie. While there are certainly much better monster movies, this one makes up for its lackluster monster and effects scenes by having likable characters for the most part, an ability to create an eerie atmosphere at times, especially with its music score, and, like The Blob, a quaint, innocent feeling in its depiction of small-town life in the 50's that I find to be irresistible. Ray Kellogg was no master filmmaker but he did reasonably good work here and I do recommend seeing it at least once if you're at all a fan of these types of movies.