The Monolith Monsters

I wasn’t expecting, when I sat down in front of the TV, on Friday night a week and a half ago, to watch a black and white movie with such a title, that I was going to like it this much. But I did!

For a 1957 science-fiction B-movie, The Monolith Monsters, directed by John Sherwood and starring Grant Williams, Lola Albright, Les Tremayne and Trevor Bardette, is (almost) surprisingly good.

After an ominous voiceover introduction on rocks hurling at our planet from the cold, unknown reaches of space, a meteorite is shown crashing in the desert, outside of a small California town. With the impact, it explodes into hundreds of black fragments. The next day, a federal geologist driving through the desert stops his car right where many of the smaller fragments are scattered on the road. (Don’t stop! Don’t stop! Don’t pick it up!) But despite my mental pleadings, he picks up one of these rocks and takes it to his office.

You know what will happen, right? He keeps touching it, cutting it, studying it… but nothing good can come out of this, right?

Right. The next day, his colleague, Dave (Grant Williams), who had been absent from the office, returns to find him dead, in a strangely petrified state, while the lab is filled with an overgrown black rock. He might’ve dropped some water on the original piece, but Dave doesn’t know that.

The same day, Cathy the schoolteacher (Lola Albright), who is also Dave’s girlfriend, takes the children on a field trip… guess where? To the desert… There, a smart, inquisitive young girl (Linda Scheley) notices a black rock. (Don’t pick it up! Don’t pick it up! Go away!) She doesn’t listen to me, of course, and takes it home. Her mother would not allow her to bring a dirty rock inside the house, so she leaves it outside in a basin filled with water to get it clean. Oh, no! Oh, no!

Well, I’ll let you watch the movie to find out the rest…

The characters are interesting and varied; besides the ones already mentioned, we have the journalist (Les Tremayne), Dave’s old college professor (Trevor Bardette), the local physician (Richard H. Cutting), the chief of Police (William Flaherty), the doctor in Los Angeles (Harry Jackson). They all add depth to the story, making it even more likeable, and raising the quality of the movie above its B status.

The plot is not perfect and I admit having some (big...gish) question marks at the end, but this didn’t make it at all less enjoyable. The special effects are great. They were created by Clifford Stine whose career has started with King Kong in 1933, and that means something.

All in all, this movie is a little gem. I watched it with my young daughters and they were glued to the screen and even a bit nervous at times, but still glued to the screen.

The trailer might give away a bit too much of the story, but the movie is still very enjoyable to watch.