THE GIANT GILA MONSTER (1959)

One night in a desolate area just outside a small Texas town, Pat and Liz are necking in a car when, yes, a giant Gila monster attacks, wrecking the car and, one assumes, eating the couple. Meanwhile, the most wholesome gang of teenagers in Texas (played mostly by actors who are closer to 30 than 20) are meeting at the malt shop, and when Pat and Liz don’t show up, they inform the sheriff. We meet Chase, the good-natured leader of the group who writes songs and is devoted to his little Polio-stricken sister. We meet Lisa, a French exchange student, who is dating Chase much to the anger of her adult sponsor. We meet Pat's dad who is a rich old bastard who can't stop complaining that the sheriff isn't doing enough to find his son. The Gila monster keeps attacking hitchhikers and truck drivers, but is never seen by anyone except the town drunk who, of course, no one believes. Meanwhile, Chase finds an out-of-town drunk with his disabled car by the side of the road and helps him out; the next morning, we find out he’s a big-city DJ who offers Chase career help. The various storylines, such as they are, converge at the big sock hop that the big-city DJ helps host, when the Gila monster crashes the party.

This Texas-made monster movie has a certain cheap charm, though it is rarely ever scary. That's partly because the monster is just a regular-sized Gila monster wandering around some miniature sets. The first shot or two are fairly effective, but repetition weakens the illusion. Aside from the monster angle, the movie almost feels like a Disney story with its goody-goody teens, a cutesy old drunk, a friendly sheriff, the little girl in leg braces who never stops trying to walk unassisted, and some pop tunes, including the truly awful "Laugh, Children, Laugh" which is performed about 40 times (or seems like it). There's also Chekhov's nitroglycerine stash, introduced out of the blue early on to be forgotten until the climax. I wanted to like Don Sullivan, who plays Chase, but he is so clearly 30 years old that he's not effective at all as a teenager. The drunk is played by Shug Fisher, who actually was an old-time country singer. The DJ is Ken Knox who actually was a Dallas DJ, and he's not bad. It's weird that the two alcoholic characters almost steal show from the Gila monster and the personable, moderately attractive lead kids. If the monster effects had been a little better, this might have been more fun to sit through, but it's a prime example of Chiller Theater fodder of the 60s. [Amazon Prime]