The Giant Gila Monster

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source: The Giant Gila Monster

Chase Winstead is a good ol' American small town boy. He's into hot rods and rock n' roll, he has a steady job at a garage, he's in good with the local sheriff. His bombshell-of-a-girlfriend was nice enough to buy his polio-stricken sister leg braces. Why, he's even got a record deal for having such a beautiful Elvis-like voice. What could possibly go wrong? How about (of all things on Earth) A GIANT GILA MONSTER ATTACK! This campy classic is the cousin to another cult cinema gem, The Killer Shrews. It is not to be missed by fans of Roger Corman, Ed Wood and the like. It's got fast cars, rock music, cheesy effects, but, quite a good script and above par acting. Great to watch by itself or, as it was once featured, on Mystery Science Theatre 3000. It's not too long, not too short, and there's never a dull moment.

I've seen The Giant Gila monster a couple of times and quite liked it. This is one of several monster movies made at this time that mixes teenagers/hot rods and rock and roll. Others include Earth vs. the Spider. A small town in Texas is invaded by a giant lizard, eating people. The first few victims are from car wrecks and a tanker crash, the lizard forcing the vehicles off the road. When the lizard destroys a railway bridge, a train crashes as it crosses and he makes a meal of a lot of the passengers. The lizard then interrupts a party and dance being held in a barn, featuring most of the town's teenagers. One of them, a mechanic gets some nitroglycerin and runs his hot rod into the lizard and blows it up. Life can now get back to normal. The lizard in The Giant Gila Monster is rear projected and looks sleepy throughout, moving only slowly. The cast is made up of unknowns, lead by Don Sullivan and Fred Graham as the Sheriff. This movie is a must for monster movie fans like myself. Great fun. Rating: 3 stars out of 5.

This movie has it all--bad plot ,bad script,bad acting,bad special effects ,bad lighting...and on and on.What a total waste of film this thing was. A small town in maybe Texas is terrorized by a giant Gila monster for some reason.The local sheriff,who mostly talks on the phone a lot,and a kind hearted young dragster,Chase,set out to rid the town of this threat.Chase races around town in his souped up car and beats the sheriff to all the wrecks and bad stuff that the monster does.Save this tidbit for later---Chase,for some ungodly unexplained reason, also has access to nitroglycerin that apparently comes in what looked to be coffee cans with "XXX" stenciled on them. This movie was clearly trying to capitalize off all the teen trends of the late 50's---kids and their hot rod cars and their music,Elvis was mentioned, and all that.Chase is a good wholesome teen who is helping his single mom raise his crippled little sister.This cool cat is also trying to get a singing career off the ground.Anyway there is some singing and some DJ comes to town for a dance party and all the while this giant Gila monster is walking around. Now the giant lizard is never really explained...the sheriff and Chase have some lame talk about gullies and washes and 'salts' that could have caused this lizard to grow to be a monster.But we never really learn how the lizard got so big and why it seemed to be the only lizard who was so affected by the 'salts'. None of these people could act whatsoever....well one little guy could ..Shug Wilson ,I think was his name and he ended up on a few episodes of the Beverly Hillbillies and some other stuff like that.Everything else was terrible in this movie.....a shot of the monster crashing through the side of the building at the dance party was clearly just a lizard with it's head through a piece of cardboard. A train wreck caused by the monster was simply a model train rolling off the end of the track down into some dirt.No grinding of metal or massive dust clouds thrown up or anything,just a little train flopped down in the dirt with some dubbed in screams from the 'passengers'.Anyway after the sheriff sits in his office a whole bunch Chase goes out and ends the movie in a really implausible silly finale. I don't want to give too much away but there wasn't really a giant Gila Monster in this movie,it was just a regular sized Gila monster shot really close up amid some really crappy looking little models of stuff. This is just a bad mess by people who had no clue about any facet of movie making.It isn't so bad it's fun either.It's just plodding and boring and a waste of time-not entertaining in the least.

Yeah, yeah, I know... it's supposed to be stupid. Trouble is, THE GIANT GILA MONSTER doesn't supply the unintentional laughs that should accompany such an outlandishly titled, zero budget effort. Don Sullivan, who would later land the coveted role of Steve in the 1962 blockbuster PARADISE ALLEY (no, not the one with Stallone), stars as young Chase Winstead. Winstead is so pure-hearted he makes you wanna throw up. He sings little songs about God and spends what little money he has on his sister's leg braces (she's starting to walk again!). Trouble is the last thing Mr. Sunshine wants, but it finds him in the form of a giant lizard terrorizing his community. (Okay, okay... it's really just someone's pet lizard crawling around on miniature sets, but bear with us). Luckily, Chase just happens to have four cannisters of nitroglycerin, which he's pretty sure would destroy the monster. You'll actually find yourself rooting for the slimy creature to devour all the humans whole. The film's summary will have bad-movie lovers rejoicing, but it's really not as fun as it sounds. What makes for a "good bad movie" is intent to create something legitimate that ends up ludicrous (see THE BEAST OF YUCCA FLATS or, of course, PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE sometime). THE GIANT GILA MONSTER just tries a bit too hard to be campy. You'll be disappointed.

Terribly made, pointless, ultra-cheap '50s monster movie that tries to cash in on the hot rod/monster/rock n' roll genre and fails miserably. The gila "monster" is a normal-sized animal plopped down on miniature sets (that, like everything else in this picture, are tenth-rate) which slithers around trying to figure out where it is (and what the hell it's doing in this awful movie). The acting is sub-grammar-school level; veteran stuntman Fred Graham as the sheriff is one of only two professional actors in the cast and he can't do much with the stilted, senseless dialog he's forced to recite. "Star" Don Sullivan has absolutely no screen presence whatsoever; he's apparently going for the Robert Mitchum "sleepy eyed" look, but manages to seem more like he just woke up. Even more irritating, he warbles (badly) two of the most insipid, brainless "rock" songs ever written. One is called "And the Lord Said Laugh, Children, Laugh", which consists mostly of that particular phrase repeated for three solid minutes, and the other one has lines like "my baby rocks me when she rocks and rolls me when she rolls", whatever the hell that means. In any case, the movie is an exercise in boredom. It fails as a teenage rock movie (the music's awful), it fails as a teenage monster movie (there's no "monster", just an over-sized lizard on an undersized set), it fails as a teenage J.D. movie (all the teenagers are sickeningly clean-cut, freshly scrubbed and law-abiding), it fails at everything it tries to be. Good for an unintentional laugh or two, but that's about it.

Featuring some of the lousiest, z-grade effects ever, along with some of the most inept acting on Earth, The Giant Gila Monster is Sci-Fi/Horror that truly scrapes the absolute bottom of the barrel when it comes to cheap, worthless and incompetent film-making. I would like to say that this dreadful clunker was actually so bad that it was good. But if I said that I would (truthfully) be lying. The Giant Gila Monster is a typically predictable mix of 1950s, hot-rod teen-mentality and the bizarre appearance (for no explicable reason, whatsoever) of a mutated monster. This time it being a 70 foot gila monster. Set in rural Texas - Minor, 50s pop sensation, Don Sullivan plays the sickeningly sweet bad-boy and car fanatic, Chase Winstead. Chase and the bungling town lawman, Sheriff Jeff, unite as a team and join forces to try to find a way to combat and destroy this ferocious beast who, besides already gobbling up several town-folks, has had the sheer audacity to actually bulldoze its unwelcome way into the teens' barn-style sock hop. In between all of the mayhem and carnage, our darling, little Chase manages to take some time off from all the heroics in order to sing some truly god-awful songs, like - Laugh, Children Laugh and My Baby, She Rocks. Yep. This film is pure rubbish.

There are two types of bad horror films--those that are so dull and atrocious that no one likes them (except masochists or mental patients) and those that are so inept and silly that they are great for a laugh (such as PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE). I would put this one in the second category, though it is a bit duller than some of the cheesy old horror films from the 1950s. I would say that it's more fun than watching ROBOT MONSTER but not quite as much as TEENAGERS FROM OUTER SPACE. The film is about, you guessed it, a giant gila monster that terrorizes a small town. One by one, it causes auto and train wrecks and then feasts on the inhabitants! While this all sounds very ridiculous and funny, the film actually plays most of the plot very straight. However, inexplicably, it also chooses to insert a lot of 50s rock and roll into the film--even at moments where it makes absolutely no sense at all. For example, near the end of the movie the sheriff finally realizes that the accidents were being caused by the giant lizard but doesn't warn anyone. So, naturally, the teenagers stage a big dance right where the gila monster resides. But to make things worse, even though many people have just died, the lead actor begins to sing (a la Arch Hall, Jr. in EEGAH!)! Huh?! About the only decent thing about the plot was the role of the sheriff. Aside from the big brain lapse mentioned above, he seemed like a nice guy and actually liked the teens and listened to them--not like MOST sheriffs in these sort of movies (like the cops in THE BLOB and INVASION OF THE SAUCER MEN and countless other films who ignore the warnings). Considering how slowly the gila monster moves in the film, it's a great metaphor for the rest of the movie. Not exactly action-packed but still silly enough to provide a few chuckles to bad movie aficionados--but probably of no interest to others. By the way, in one scene late in the movie, the sheriff and another local jump into the leading man's jalopy. As they pull out, the shadow of the boom microphone is very clearly seen in the foreground. Considering the low budget and lower expectations for this film, it's not too surprising that they didn't edit this out or re-shoot the scene!

The Giant Gila Monster is another creature feature from Ray Kellogg (The Killer Shrews) that usually gets passed over with bad reviews. The story is about a giant, people-eating gila monster, which usually lurks in the thick brush near an isolated community. The main character, Chase Winston, (Don Sullivan) is a teen leader, car mechanic, and rockabilly/folk singer who sort of reminds me of singer Jimmie Rodgers. The acting is fine to passable for this type of low-budget movie, and the film is well shot. The Giant Gila Monster may be too slow for younger audiences used to today's action-packed fare, but for older audiences it might be a fun reminder of the era in which it was made. The music is creepy and nicely captures the mood of the isolated areas. The special effects (like the gila monster attacking a wrecked train) may bring on some good laughs. Throw in some rock & roll, teen lingo, a French exchange student (Lisa Simone, who was also in Missile To The Moon), a big city disc jockey, and some hot rods, and you've got a late 50's, drive-in flick which can be easily enjoyed for the type of movie it is.