Monolith Monsters
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VHS Movie Reviews of Monolith Monsters
Movie Review: classic b movie from universals classic sci fi series
Summary: 5 Stars
this is one of the best of the universal classic's of the fifties..giant rocks growing and falling with terror and local townspeople running for their life. good acting and well paced it will be around for a long time...but where is the dvd...please all fans contact universal and please demand that these classics be put to dvd.Movie Review: One of the Best B-Films
Summary: 4 Stars
This was the second monster movie I ever saw (right after Them!). Not I have it in my collection and it is better than I remembered.A small mining town is in danger when a mysterious meteorite falls in the nearby mountains. Black rocks, unexplained deaths and destruction soon follow. Soon the truth is learned as it is discovered that the meteorite is a deadly menace. When the stone comes in contact with water is absorbs the silicates in the area and grows into a Column. Once tall enough, the column topples and shatters creating new pieces to grow and shatter.
Just as the menace is discovered the region experiences a torrential downpour. Gigantic columns of rock begin to tumble down a mountain pass towards the town. An evacuation is put into effect while a method of stopping the crushing rocks is searched for. People who come in contact with the rocks are paralyzed as their silicates are removed. A cure used on a small girl with a paralyzed arm leads to the breakthrough in stopping the monoliths. The only way to stop them before they destroy the town is to blow up the local dam so that it washes salt from the salt mine into the path of the approaching towers.
Although the idea of falling rocks used as monsters seems a bit lame, the movie works (if you ignore the science and biology). Better acting than is found in most monster movies contributes to the films success along with excellent special effects and genuine suspense. The Monolith Monsters should be added to the collection of any monster movie fan.
Movie Review: The best killer rock from outer space movie of all time
Summary: 4 Stars
In science fiction films the threat of meteors serves as a plot premise in one of two ways. First, there are the meteors (or asteroids or comets or rouge planets) big enough that when they collide with the earth it is going to literally be the end of the world. Contemporary audiences will be thinking "Deep Impact" and "Armageddon," while those who are older or have a sense of cinematic history will be thinking of "Meteor" and other films all the way back to "When Worlds Collide" (which always makes me think of George Pal and his bride). Second, there are the meteors that crash and bring with them a strange visitor from another planet, which can be anything from a dangerous microscopic organism as we found in "The Andromeda Strain" or a growing monstrous glob that threatens to devour everyone at the local movie palace as in "The Blob." But in the 1957 film "The Monolith Monsters" the writers (Jack Arnold and Robert M. Fresco with the story, Fresco and Norman Jolley with the script) come up with something a little bit different. This time the meteor essentially IS the monster.The opening for "The Monolith Monsters" is fairly traditional for a Fifties sci fi flick. Paul Frees does an initial voice over and then the meteorite crashes near a small California town. Ben Gilbert (Phil Harvey) just happens to have his car overheat near the impact point and since he happens to be a geologist for the Department of the Interior he checks out the meteorite. What he finds are these pieces of rock that look sort of glassy, like obsidian (they do look good), but he does not notice that a piece of rock that had water spilled on it is smoking. This cannot be good and we would know this even if the music did not provide an ominous clue. That night the wind knocks over a convenient beaker of water that falls on Ben's samples and the rock begins to grow into (you guessed it) a monster monolith.
When fellow geologist Dave Miller (Grant Williams, a.k.a. "The Incredible Shrinking Man") shows up the next day to the office he finds that Ben (cue the music) has been turned to stone. Plus there are all these broken pieces of black rock all over the place. Later that day Dave's girl friend, Cathy Barrett (Lola Albright) takes her class of school children on a field trip to the desert, where young Ginny Simpson (Linda Scheley) finds one of those cool looking pieces of black rock. She takes it home with her but her mother, who has not been watching the movie, insists Ginny wash off that dirty rock before she brings it into the house. By the time Dave starts to piece things together and shows up at the Simpson house, Ginny's parents are turned to stone and so is her arm. What can this all possibly mean?
This is the point in "The Monolith Monsters" where Dave turns to his mentor, Professor Arthur Flanders (Trevor Bardette), who shows up and starts connecting the dots by providing a lot of necessary exposition. The interesting idea here is that these rocks leach all of the silicone out of anything that touch, whether it is the dessert sand or Ginny's arm (I did not know that silicon was a big part of our arms, but then I never did take biology so what do I know? However, that iron lung doing what it does makes no sense at all). But the monster in this film is rather unique and for once there is not a lot of time wasted getting everybody to do the right thing; the closest thing to a villain in the film is veteran character actor William Schallert who plays a weatherman whose true level of expertise is about what you would expect from a 1950s weatherman.
Dave is a rather classic science fiction B-movie hero and there is something to be said for the film's simple solution to the menace of the monoliths (it is a simple household item found on most dinning room tables). For that matter the monoliths, which grow into this giant obelisks that then splinter and topple forward (decent special effects for the time), ready to repeat the process during the next thunderstorm, are pretty interesting just because they are so decidedly different; in other words, they are truly alien. You also have to like the brisk pace of this story, which director John Sherwood ("The Creature Walks Among Us") brings in at 77 minutes. Not a great film this remains a solid B-movie from the period that offers more than its share of originality with the ideas if not the execution.
Movie Review: perfect
Summary: 5 Stars
This is the quintessential 50's sci-fi horror film. I grew up with these things, and this is a good one!Movie Review: Towers of Stone.
Summary: 4 Stars
Meteor fragments from deep space grow gigantic and mobile after contact with plain water. What is worse, they absorb the silica out of human flesh and turn people into stone. (Silicon Valley nothwithstanding, I had to look up "silica," too). This nifty-'50s sci-fi flick is unique because the "monster" is a bunch of rocks. Not giant bugs or radioactive dinosaurs, mind you, but rocks with an attitude of deadly intention. Giant rocks that crush buildings and steadily move down the canyon toward the helpless desert town. The authorities run around with more than the usual B movie incredulity because they can't fathom what space-age menace is on the loose now. Our favorite scene is after Grant Williams figures out that water gives the rocks mysterious power, it starts raining heavily in an arid area that probably hadn't seen more than a passing shower for months. The script includes the obligatory mysterious deaths and enough suspense to keep classic sci-fi/horror fans amused. Sighful-eyeful, Lola Albright lends her considerable talents to the story. Sadly, her role as a "Miss Landers"-type schoolteacher means she dresses modestly, and there is no cleavage or cheesecake. Filmed in glorious B&W, this Universal entry is an entertaining second string effort. Fine for collectors and die-hard fans of '50s sci-fi. ;-)