The Milpitas Monster

B-movies, either you love them or you hate them. Right? I'm not so sure. I believe there are exceptions. I just cannot except how anyone in their right mind, could hate this movie. And by the way, this hilariously inept pile of garbage ain't no B-movie. I'm talking about genuine Z-grade. I'm talking about some of the worst acting you'll ever see, even if you happen to like this type of thing. I'm talking about an incoherent, pointless movie which drags the term "Z-grade" to new lows. This is The Milpitas Monster. This avenger was toxic before toxic was cool. Actually, this guy isn't much of an avenger, he sorta wants to kill everybody. Years and years of garbage build-up, and an accident, involving the town drunk has somehow created a giant, pollution monster, who, like I said, wants to kill everybody, or at least walk around and scare the hell out of everyone, and destroy stuff, and leave giant footprints everywhere. That's basically it. No character development, or anything like that. I don't think that anyone even says anything remotely clever. Not the brightest bunch, I guess. The phrase "so bad, it's good" never made so much sense. An enthusiastically produced, feel-good, schlock-fest, from a better time. I would say how they don't make them like this anymore, but the truth is, they didn't then either. The giant monster thing was done a million times over in the 50's and the early 60's. Just one more thing to add to the clueless oddity that is The Milpitas Monster. I suppose this movie could have used a little gore, like other stuff from this era, but it ain't about shock in Milpitas, California, it's all about the schlock... or at least that's how things ended up. For all I know, these people could have been going for a masterpiece, although, I sincerely doubt it. Just try to remember, The Milpitas Monster meant well. 8/10

This is a feature movie but not of Hollywood quality. Here are some trivia about the movie:

The Milpitas Monster took three years to produce. The kids grew during all that time.

The director, Bob Burrill, was an art and photography teacher at Samuel Ayer high, he went on to write a book about the history of Milpitas and illustrated another history of the nearby town of Alviso. He was a student of famous photographer Ruth Bernhard and filmed a documentary of her shown on PBS. Some of his shorter projects can be viewed on YouTube on the moooose69 channel.

The persons in the film were often recruited from those families who contributed money, materials, and volunteer hours into making it.

The heroine, daughter of the Ayer High principal, and the young hero did marry in real life and raised a family.

A claw from the monster's hand was on display at the Great Mall, a shopping mall in Milpitas, until the President of the local historical society had it removed because she did not consider it to be part of the city's history.

The only professional, paid actor in the film was the drunk.

The film was shot in 16mm.

The attorney hired to copyright the film failed to do so, but the trusting producers never checked up on him. It took over 25 years for the error to be discovered.

The film has been pirated around the world with new covers.

The film is still shown in the South San Francisco Bay area as a fund-raiser for various charities, including an annual showing on Halloween to benefit the Niles Railroad Museum in Fremont, CA.

Pollution yields a winged gargantuan beast which proceeds to de-populate the community of Milpitas, California.

The general consensus on this flick is pretty reasonable...a grassroots love-letter to 50s era monster movies, funded with pocket change. Now...consider that production of this movie initialized as a high school project involving complete amateurs in every aspect of its penny-ante construction, and the results begin to look pretty darned good. Miniature sets are efficiently overseen, the monster is uniquely designed, and the various technical parts and parcels of filmmaking are roundly on the beam. It's high camp fun with a likable regional charm, and being observably rough around the edges only makes it that much more appealing.

There's a world of movies made by "professional" low-budget filmmakers that are far less enjoyable than this giddily ambitious curio. The median mainstream movie viewer will probably have a tough time with THE MILPITAS MONSTER, but it's pretty unlikely that they'd ever merge with it in the first place. For those among us with an interest in cinematic novelties with unusual production backstories, this should manage to entertain, and occasionally even impress, if accepted on its own realistic terms.

A+ for effort.

And that's not necessarily a good or bad thing.

Let's face it: The Milpitas Monster is a cheapie...in fact it's the kind of movie that Frank Zappa immortalized in the song "Cheepnis", only a couple of decades removed. This movie rode the tips of the coat tails of the brief monster movie revival of the seventies (Octaman, The Crater Lake Monster, APE) that occurred right before the advent of Star Wars and the plunge of science fiction into the mainstream.

But it has its points. I actually like some of the stop-motion animation in this one, primitive though it may be. There are a lot of interesting camera angles that one wouldn't normally see on such a film, and the lighting is for the most part adequate (the movie, especially during most of the special effects sequences, is kept rather dark).

I even enjoyed the story up until the introduction of the stupid "odorolla" tracking device, and the particularly stupid way that was used to lure the monster to its death. I don't mind a "bad" script, but I hate a stupid one.

The Milpitas Monster is worth a look if you are a fan of the giant monster genre, or if you just like cheap movies in general. A film that has Paul Frees do the narration can't be all bad.

This movie was made by a high school, and not a rich one at that. Ayer High School in Milpitas, CA made this movie. At that time, Milpitas was a small suburb of San Jose. The movie was actually a big deal for the town and many had a blast making it, being extras and then watching it in our little theater.

Sure, as a movie, it's nothing great. But it was made for practically nothing by high school kids equipment that was not very modern at the time.

Ecology as it was known was just becoming a big thing back then, and this movie is about a monster spawned from pollution.