"The Giant Gila Monster" is one of those films where you take a real animal and having it crawl through miniature sets. The tagline for this film was: "Only Hell could breed such an enormous beast. Only God could destroy it!" But this 1959 film from director Ray Kellogg ("The Killer Shrews," "The Green Berets"--how is that for a credit combo?), filmed in north Texas for $138,000, is a lot more low-keyed than those lines would suggest. In fact, what is interesting given when this film is made is the key relationship between Sheriff Jeff (Fred Graham) and young Chase Winstead (Don Sullivan). The kid is working on his hot rod and instead of busting his chops the sheriff really functions as a mentor: he says he is concerned about the kids in town, and you actually believe it. The idea of having a movie in which a teenage hot rodder, who also sings like Pat Boone who is not a juvenile delinquent, or at least treated like one by the cops, is rather refreshing, although admittedly the character is a bit heavy on the saccharine. But Sullivan has a natural charm and the guy wrote his own songs, so give him some credit.

But since we are talking letting a Gila monster wander through miniatures in a film with teenage hot rodders, of course this movie received "MST3K" treatment (Season 4, when Joel turned Crow and Servo into "The Thing With Two Heads" as inspired by the movie of the same name"). My major complaint about this film is that the day for night shooting is so dark I have a hard time figuring out what is happening. Obviously the special effects budget is such that most of the "horror" is suggested by quick cuts rather than actually showing everything. Still, I like the way that everybody is pretty level headed in this film and deal with the giant Gila monster in a relatively intelligent manner without wasting a lot of time and effort. Yes, finding the monster, which is the size of several houses, should not take so long, but then the movie would be shorter and it is only 74 minutes anyway.

Be aware that you have several options for checking out this drive-in classic on DVD. Specifically you can have it as part of a double-feature with Kellogg's first directorial effort, "The Killer Shrews," or with one of Roger Corman's best quick & dirty films "A Bucket of Blood," or with the infamous "The Wasp Woman," or with "Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter." Gee, I hardly know which one to recommend. Or you can go for a triple feature of "The Killer Shrews" "The Giant Gila Monster," and "Human Gorilla." Hard to go wrong with choices like these.

Monster movies of the 50's either take place in a crowded metropolitan city or in a tiny town in the desert. In the former, the monster of the hour can run amuck squashing any number of cars, wrecking buildings, and standing up very well to a barrage of weapons aimed at it.

In the latter, the "destruction" is usually minimal. Instead, we have innocent teenagers or senior citizens being picked off one by one until others in the area realize that "something is wrong."

It is this remoteness factor, I believe, that makes for a better movie. I think most people can relate to how they would feel if they were on their own fighting an unknown creature--as compared to being part of a company of soldiers shooting machine guns at it.

"Giant Gila Monster" is most definitly "B" movie material. The acting and writing are so-so. And that giant paw coming down on the hapless victims was rather silly. To complete the negative aaspects of this movie, the music was horrible. Whenever rock & roll music was being pretended to be played, what we heard was some generic jitterbug music. Perhaps the producers could not afford to pay the royalties to play Buddy Holly, Elvis, or the Everly Brothers. Whatever the reason, the record-playing music was good only compared to the "live" songs sung by the star of this movie.

The positive aspect about this movie is that in a strange way it was realistic. One might argue that nothing staring a "giant gila monster" could be "realistic." But consider that the monster did not go on a rampage of mindless and malicious destruction that is so often seen in other movies of its like. Instead, it caused death only because it was hungry--and nobody had instructed it not to eat people. And it caused destruction only because it was so large (too big to crawl under a train bridge, for example).

There are also some cool cars. I'm not much into pre-WWII cars and it was hard to believe that every teen in this movie seemed to own one. And the guy you "love to hate" drove a 1959 Caddy. Perfect automobile casting!

This is a picture of life before CGI. The contrived dialog is part of the mystique. You get to see hotrods and large lizards (every thing is bigger in Texas.) The blob it is not; but it is a necessary addition to any 50' collection.

A teenage boy and a teenage girl disappear together and the law is getting suspicious.

I want to ask the monster if teenagers taste like chicken?

Very good 50's horror flick. What is good about this movie is that some other movies like this either show the monster too much or too little. But in this movie, the monster has the right amount of screen time. There is one very good scene in which the monster causes a train to crash. Overall, this is a great movie and I recommend it.

A giant gila monster is the least of your worries when you have to deal with an annoying, drunk radio DJ. And that's just what the main character does...although radio DJ's haven't been known to break through barn dances and cause havoc.

This gila monster, still undiscovered, just wanders out of the wilderness, starts pushing cars, and eats teens that are into heavy petting....There's also this amusing drunk character, who whimsically drives drunk away from an officer. Ah, the fifties...when the penalty driving drunk was a stiff lecture and a pat on the shoulder.
The monster, of course, gets what's comin to it and is destroyed by things-that-don't-like-to-explode's worst enemy: nitroglycerine. The boy also sacrifices his cool, old hot rod in this explosion. But, everyone's safe and there's no sequel...

...or is there?..

Oh, and buy this, too. It's a great creature flick.