Just outside of a small town, deep within a ravine, a gila monster has grown to enormous size (and magically became a bearded lizard which is in turn presented on miniature sets to simulate it’s large scale) where it promptly eats two folks sucking face out on Lover’s Lane.
This causes the local teeny-bopper community to spring into action to assist the local sheriff (Fred Graham) in finding their chums, but even when their pal, ace mechanic/drag racer Chase Winstead (Don Sullivan, The Monster of Piedras Blancas) eventually locates the couple’s car and the mysterious damage it displays, no one expects a giant monster to be the cause… because they aren’t completely insane.
The monster biz escalates however from attacks on cars and trucks, to trains… which finally gets people to start digging on the possibility of a dinosaur-sized lizard hissing it’s ass off all over town…
Will Chase be able to save the town, and more importantly the sock hop, from reptilian doom?!!
Ray Kellogg’s The Giant Gila Monster hits a lot of the notes from the Greatest Hits of ’50s Era Teen Flicks (for example we have an impending dance, plenty of crooning… lots and lots of crooning, hep-cat lingo, a rebellious hero with a heart of gold (who likes belting out rockabilly jams to his physically disabled sis)… and just like those films, this film was hoping to discover the next Elvis in their midst, and while Don Sullivan wasn’t that, he sure as hell makes for a charming hero.
Charming is kinda the word of the day with this one, as everything from the cast (some of them seasoned acting vets, others not so much), to the not quite chart-topping ditties, to the copious miniature work all adds up to a production that just tries it’s damn hardest to entertain with whatever means the production had at it’s disposal, while offering a few tame, but oh-so-fun shocks and a whole lotta heart.
Additionally, the stark rural setting of the picture gives the entire affair an eerie sense of isolation as the small town relies on local ingenuity to solve their problems as they are literally in the middle of nowhere… and the method of dispatching the eponymous menace is probably the most perfectly 1950’s teen pic thing I have ever laid my putrid peepers upon!
Special mention must also be given to composer Jack Marshall’s suitably creepy, Theremin-infused soundtrack that does a lot of heavy lifting, especially during the creature sequences.
As for special features for The Giant Gila Monster, we get an audio commentary featuring Larry Strothe, James Gonis, Shawn Sheridan, and Matt Weinhold from The Monster Party Podcast who provide an upbeat discussion of the film’s production, peppered with plenty of anecdotes!
Moving on to the second film of this creature-feature double-feature from Film Masters, we get Ray Kellogg’s (yup, the K-man is back, and so is screenwriter Jay Simms) 1959 opus, The Killer Shrews!
Captain Thorne Sherman (James Best, Roscoe P. Coltrane from television’s The Dukes of Hazzard) and first mate Rook Griswold (Judge Henry Dupree) are all set to drop off supplies on a remote island where scientist Marlowe Craigis (Baruch Lumet) and his colleagues… as well as his daughter Ann (Ingrid Goude), have been working on a half-assed plan to shrink humans to end overpopulation (don’t even try and think it through).
Even though a hurricane is rapidly approaching the island, Craigis and his crew are absolutely balls deep into the notion of Sherman and Rook getting the hell out of there with Ann in tow, but Sherman puts the “Hell no” on that notion right quick as he doesn’t have a death wish.
Regardless, the choice was equally as shitty, as when night falls the group must barricade themselves within the compound because those aforementioned experiments have resulted in the animal test subjects, in this case shrews, mutating into wolf-sized, blood-crazed predators that stalk the night!
Soon, the shrews are at the door, and they want in real bad like, but Sherman and the gang manage to fend the beasts off until day… and while the storm may have broke, the terror is just beginning!
Kellogg brings us yet another highly entertaining (if scientifically unsound) late ’50s creature-feature, but while The Giant Gila Monster was filled with heart through and through, The Killer Shrews charm quotient lies mainly with Best (and to a lesser degree Dupree, but only because he has limited screen time).
Strolling through the film with a good-natured swagger and “Aww shucks” demeanor, Best’s Captain Sherman is a ton of fun to watch in this picture… and while the rest of the cast are rather dour types, there is still plenty to love about this flick!
For starters, the titular creatures are just the right mix of ridiculous and menacing, and the puppet head used for their close-ups sells their threat well with it’s jet-black eyes and gnashing, dagger-like teeth… and seeing dogs portray them in action shots is both inspired and entertaining (though perhaps not in the way that was intended).
Additionally the film builds a nice sense of ratcheting tension as our heroes are trapped like rats while the beasts chip away at their surrogate cage, and it seems like this sequence could have inspired some of George A. Romero’s 1968 zombie film masterpiece, Night of the Living Dead as the dramatic structure of the sequences of heroes trapped in a house while monsters attempt to break in are very similar.
As for special features for The Killer Shrews, we get an audio commentary with Professor and film scholar, Jason A. Ney who provides an absolutely info packed (yet very listenable) track that covers the film’s production in detail.
Also included are a retrospective of Kellogg’s career, and a collection of radio spots for both films.
It bears mentioning that both films are presented in crystal clarity with a rich chiaroscuro image that has been restored from the pictures original 35MM negatives… it’s shocking clarity compared to the regional TV broadcasts of these films I caught in my misspent youth.
Additionally, both movies are presented in 4×3, as well as theatrical 16×9, and the set contains a collector’s booklet with essays by journalist Don Stradley and Ney.
Containing two incredibly fun late 50’s creature-features, this set is an absolute must for drive-in cinema aficionados!
