The Giant Gila Monster was created as part of a double B-movie bill in 1959. As I stated in my lambasting of its counterpart, The Killer Shrews, some B-productions are enjoyable because of how poorly executed they are in most every conceivable aspect. Such movies, despite their poor execution, remain watchable for one of two reasons: Either they are inadvertently funny or they are an exercise in the cataloguing of cinematic no-nos. For Kellogg’s production, The Giant Gila Monster is both.
Barebones, the film involves, get this, a giant Gila monster which attacks a small town. The catch? A teenage mechanic named Chase Winstead (Don Sullivan) who, each and every time he enters his garage coats himself up to the shoulders in grease, has penned a ditty, which he sings (twice) on the ukulele, titled “Laugh, Children, Laugh” (the first stanza opening rather disturbingly with disclosure of a mushroom) before saving the town. And yes, the song’s bad enough to make any Bible-beating Christian join American Atheists and take Madalyn Murray O’Hair and H. L. Mencken as surrogate parents.
What about the monster you ask? Well, after taking his paw and making Jaws, Godzilla, and King Kong mere afterthoughts, he appears in all this glory. Actually, he’s the normal, run-of-the-mill kind you’d meet on the street everyday, it’s just that Kellogg and Co. put him on a miniature set. Is it obvious you ask, considering what Kellogg did with the f/x on such great films as The Day the Earth Stood Still and The King and I? Yes, to the extent that when he derails a train, we are given a replica with a single plume of smoke emanating from the carnage as a litany of screams are heard while no one is seen in the rubble. I know, I know, it must have been a mistake given the director, thus I won’t mention that when Sheriff Jeff (Fred Graham) and the father of the first casualty in the film, Mr. Wheeler (Bob Thompson), arrive at a sock hop in order to apprehend the menace they both appear a head taller than the late teens surrounding them before the camera cuts and a) the teens simultaneously hit their growth spurt or b) the two characters instantaneously shrink in proportion to the crowd.
Alright, I’ll consent, the film does have a few redeeming points. Foremost of which is its role as a caustic tale concerning drunk driving. Old Man Harris (Shug Fisher) is seen throughout the movie smashed out of his gourd. The Sheriff pulls him in and, after Harris requests a “so-bra-tee” test, he–in the tried and true vain of Andy Griffith–goes and locks himself in a cell in order to sober up. Yet, as soon as he gets out, he races a speeding train down a country road, crossing the tracks just in the nick of time as he tips another bottle. Now, don’t get me wrong, this isn’t to imply that if you are a lush that the local Sheriff won’t take you seriously or that a speeding train will no longer serve as a just competitor. What this does to say is, along with the renowned alcoholic disc jockey, Horatio Alger “Steamroller” Smith (Ken Knox), that all drunkards are financially set, the former owning a vehicle that the local teens envy and the latter dropping forty bucks on a grease monkey without battling an eye.
The way not to go is also illustrated in the film. After finding a car apparently left on the roadside, the Sheriff, noticing that Chase hasn’t replaced the burned out headlight in his customized hot rod after letting him off with a warning, tells the boy to take one from the deserted vehicle because no one would be the wiser. Chase, being the sharp young man he is because he’s taking a correspondence course in engineering, takes the cue and lifts a new set of wheels off another vehicle in police custody. Now, as the tagline states “Only Hell could breed such an enormous beast. Only God could destroy it!” God, acting through Chase, not only destroys the beast but also condemns Chase, correcting the error of his ways by channeling through Mr. Wheeler, who jumps down the Sheriff’s throat after noticing that the wheels on one of the vehicles in the case, “evidence” in Wheeler’s words, have been traded out.
Now, now, don’t be hasty in your accusations. Chase isn’t the devil incarnate. He didn’t replace the headlight the first go-around because he had to buy leg braces for his kid sister (Janice Stone) when she could have really used a weed wacker because she can barely see through the Amazonian uberbrow that has taken root on her forehead. Imagine Martin Scorsese and Frida Kahlo’s lovechild and you’ll be close.
Enough about the Chase’s ethics. Let’s move on to his acting. When the scene doesn’t take place at night–meaning you’d be just as well off if you turned off the television because, if there was a someone in charge of lighting, the person asked not to be listed in the credits–Chase can be seen to pause, contemplate the line he nearly forgot as he utters “Um,” before stammering his dialogue while diligently reminding himself not to look at the camera. And don’t fret if you miss the first couple of “Ums” because Earl Snyder, the individual in responsible for sound, made sure that the scenes which take place in small rooms carried an echo. Yet, Sullivan’s acting is second only to his onscreen love interest, Lisa (Lisa Simone), who–if she hadn’t mentioned her brother taking her to the movies back in France, we’d have never figured out where she was from.
But let me make note that the actors where given a heavy load with the dialogue. It must have been torture to turn a 1950’s analogy concerning podiatry, which had never before existed, into convincing Jive Cat lingo that just swings. For instance, if your tires are bald, you now have “bare feet” and if you have a flat, you are the proud owner of a “sore foot.”
The Giant Gila Monster is a classic B-movie atrocity. It has the charm of a Roger Corman flick while posing most of the sins as an Ed Wood film. When people talk of B-movies, this is what they mean and rightfully so.
-Egregious Gurnow
- Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
