Customer Reviews

Monolith Monsters [VHS]

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Enough with the "science" of the Monolith Monsters!! Who cares if it's goofy science, bad geology or whatever (like "The Day After Tomorrow" or "Deep Impact" is any more realistic)! This is a great movie, with decent special effects and a truly fun story. This movie is a great way to spend a rainy Saturday afternoon. Like the best of the 50's sci-fi, you have a really original story where rocks are threatening to destory the surface of the Earth, you have a great musical score that really drives the action, top notch acting also raises "Monolith Monsters" above the usual B-Movie schlock. I loved when the VHS tape came out and featured the original theatrical trailer at the beginning. It seems Universal gave quite a few of their 50's sci-fi/horror films a decent treatment in the mid 90's with these releases. Films like "Monolith Monsters", "The Night Walker", "Tarantula", "The Deadly Mantis", etc. never looked better than with these restored versions, and the movie trailers were a great addition. So Universal....where are the DVD versions? It's obvious some care and attention were given to these films with their last VHS release, so why not just pump them out on DVD? As a fan of the genre I would be willing to plunk down the money to get the latest and greatest versions of these films. Or better yet give us box set similar to what was done with the "Frankenstein" & "Wolfman" movies.

...for what that's worth. Like the last reviewer, I saw it at a very early age. Thirty years later (channel flipping at 1 am), I recognized it instantly--from nothing more than the opening scene of a car moving down a desert highway. It must be a very special movie that something like that should happen--twice, judging from saxsdad's review. And forget the allegory-for-the-communist-threat hypothesis: that's a (thankfully discredited) analysis of 50's sci-fi that began in the paraniod imaginings of professors paid on the side by the column inch. Nevertheless, Monolith Monsters abounds in rich Freudian imagery (this last to film students hard-up for a paper topic). And it has all the elements of classic Hollywood 50's sci-fi: it takes place in the DESERT, there are Scientifical Experiments and Explanations, it has Alien Monsters, and High-Technology (albeit an iron lung)--all except radiation (being the California desert, not NM). The B/W photography rounds out Monolith Monster's bona fides. Get it while you still can. Whenever you have an apartment that needs cleaning, dishes that need washing, or a paper due in the morning, you'll never tire of watching this instead.

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.

I won't reiterate the plot; most of the other reviews provide a nice summary. I saw the movie as part of a Saturday matinee double feature when I was about nine, and was expecting a standard stunt-man-in-a-bad-rubber-suit jump-out-and-say-boo "horror" flick, like its companion on the double bill that day (which was "Night of the Blood Beast," forsooth -- featuring a stunt man in a bad rubber suit).

Instead, I was enthralled by a thoughtful, suspenseful, problem-solving tale of research, hypothesis, and creative solutions to the problem of a mindless, purposeless natural force -- it was great, and made the "sci fi" horror films of the day seem juvenile and trite, even to a nine year old. I loved it, and began reading good science fiction (like Heinlein, Clarke, and Asimov) as a result.

Though not up to the production standards of "Forbidden Planet" it holds its own. The science is fairly silly (as if recent movies like "The Core" have even a faint resemblence to plausibility), but it is far above the standard 1950s "let's see if we can make the audience jump" genre. It's actually a thoughtful film, and hugely enjoyable to this day.

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.

I remember this movie as a kid in the early 60's when it first turned up on television and never forgot it. Not your average giant insect, giant reptile kind of escapism. It stands as an original for it's time and like most all of those nuclear terror scifi films, it does have a message of sorts, but mostly it is just plain unique fun...after all, how often are rocks the culprit of our anialation--current meteor flicks excepted.

-"Its been gathering the secrets of time and space for billions of years.And how long do we have to unlock its most important secrets?Three hours or three minutes?"-

The strength of this movie lies in the fact that its such an original story.Despite the title,there are no "monsters" in this movie.The threat comes in the form of a meteor that crashes to earth and when exposed to water grows to gigantic proportions only to come crashing back down to the earth where it breaks into pieces and the process is repeated over and over again...

To tell you more would ruin the film for you because a major portion of the movie is dedicated to discovering the secrets of the meteor and finding a way to stop its slow advance towards the town of San Angelo.

One problem I had with the film was that no one was ever in any immediate danger from the falling rocks.A scene with one of the main characters speeding down the highway while the monoliths are crashing down around him would have done a lot to boost the excitement level.

All told,this is a decent little flick.The spfx are good if not great and the cast is pretty solid.I thought it had a bit more potential than what made it to the screen but I definetly enjoyed it more the second time I watched it.

If you like 50's sci-fi but your looking for something a little different I dont think you'll regret making this purchase.

Another of universal's films that have stood the test of time...desert..wind blowing...great monsters..original..great sound effects. this movie is just pure entertainment...if you are a fan of the 50's scfi... grab your kids and watch with them..i guarantee they will enjoy....

Although this movie was made in 1957, in my opinion it has the most well thought out plot from a scientific viewpoint of any movie that has been produced before or since! The actor that played the geologist was excellent - he played the role with great intensity at all the appropriate points in the film. I felt that the special effects were just excellent(even by todays standards). Even after all these years, I still get goosebumps when I watch this movie. The concept of these crystals growing to colossal heights & propagating across the country with the simple addition of water (which allowed them to draw silica from the earth) was mind boggling. This movie has never been given the credit it so richly deserves. It certainly would be wonderful if audiences could again be treated to a science fiction movie such as this with such well thought out concepts.
This movie would be a prime choice for a remake if it remained true to the original story line & just updated the technology, special effects & sound(which would be truly awesome with THX).

First of all I could have sworn I saw a DVD of this film. But in andy case...

Like all of the '50's Sci-Fi movies one must put away their modern-day objections and open their minds to some silliness. If one can't do that, all of these movies will be nothing more than kids stuff. "Monolith Monsters" must be viewed with the same open-mindedness. It's a good story that allows the mystery to build before we get to the payoff: So-so special effects of "living" rocks that grow into "monoliths" of towering, tumbling rocks that threaten a desert community. One can't help to ask: "How long have the meteor fragments been in the desert and is this the first time it ever rained to initiate this terror?" Don't be a cynical adult when watching this film and you'll enjoy it. It makes for a good weekend watch with your kids or by yourself and is much better than many other '50's Sci-Fi movies. On a quality scale, I put it slightly below "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" or "Them" but equal to "Trantula." For those (like me) who can't help themselves when it comes to '50's Sci-Fi, this is a film worth having.