The Monster of Piedras Blancas

In the 1950s and 60s, there were a bazillion cheap and shlocky monster films. They featured silly monsters in silly costumes and were mildly entertaining...but rather stupid. I thought "The Monster of Piedras Blancas" was one of these films but it turned out to be a touch better. Now I am not saying it's brilliant...but the story isn't bad and the monster costume isn't particularly dopey.

The film is set on the California coast. Someone or something is beheading folks and eventually people realize they have a monster on their hands...and it's up to them to defeat it. Oddly, after the killing spree began, no one ever thought to contact the state police or other authorities about the problem...even when a group of folks saw it was a monster!

So, the plot isn't perfect...but it is enjoyable and the monster costume is reasonably scary looking. A good film for afficianados of the genre.

I insisted on seeing this movie when it came out in the 1950's, I was 7 years old. I got to the theatre late and the movie had already started. As I opened the doors to enter the screening room a strange feeling came over me, could it have been that the room was pitch black and 500 people were screaming at the top of their lungs? Somehow I found my way to a seat trying not to look at the screen. In a few minutes the monster comes waltzing out of some industrial size refridgerator carrying some guys head in his hand.....that was all it took....as the blood rushed to my head I did the 50 yard dash to the doors in world record time and never looked back. Decades later (1990's) I had the chance to watch the movie again on cable. This time my girlfriend was with me so I was able to get through it........

This is one of those films that used to be shown on Creature Features on Saturday mornings. Its a rather dull film about a Black Lagoon-type creature who goes around killing people. Despite its dullness, it has a couple of the scariest scenes of any film made during this era. The first, when the monster comes bursting out of a door is a moment of shock and horror equal to the similar scene in "The Thing". And the second, at the lighthouse at the end of the film, is extremely terrifying and gave me recurrent nightmares as a child. Both scenes are still frightening to me as an adult. One also has to appreciate the amount of thought that went into the plot. The origins of the monster and the reasons he starts to kill are convoluted but, if you follow along carefully, everything is explained in a logical manner and there are no inconsistencies in the plot. In "Keep Watching the Skies", Bill Warren criticized the film as lacking a logical plot and explanation for the monster, but he is wrong! However dull, a lot of thought went into the plotting of this film and, had the script been better, this could have been a scare classic.

Don Sullivan should be the star. He is the young handsome monster fighter. Others were better known at that time, perhaps. This is a good, but not great sci-fi B movie. It is entertaining and an obvious low budget quickie that might make back the investor's gamble. The monster is not totally ridiculous and the story is OK. The acting is better than most low budget films. Any of the main cast members, including the child actors could handle a Hollywood production. Camera work is better than adequate. This is not boring but sometimes it slips into comedy that is unintended.

In THE MONSTER OF PIEDRAS BLANCAS, a series of grisly decapitation deaths occur in a small seaside town. Suspiciously, the local lighthouse keeper has been feeding meat scraps to a certain big-clawed creature. Keeping his secret becomes increasingly difficult as the body count rises.

Upon watching this movie again, it's interesting to notice the subtle influences it has had on other films, such as JAWS and THE FOG. It's also pretty grim and graphic for a monster movie from the late 1950's. Overall, the movie is very effective. The finale at the lighthouse is certainly memorable.

Co-stars Don Sullivan (THE GIANT GILA MONSTER, TEENAGE ZOMBIES) as Fred and Les Tremayne (WAR OF THE WORLDS, THE SLIME PEOPLE) as Dr. Jorgenson.