The Monolith Monsters starts as a meteorite crash lands near the desert town of San Angelo & shatters sending shards of black rock everywhere, the next morning & geologist Ben Gilbert (Phil Harvey) pick a piece of it up & takes it back to his laboratory to examine it. Later that night the wind knocks over a beaker of water which lands on the fragment of rock which then starts to grow. Ben's partner Dave Miller (Grant Williams) finds the laboratory wrecked with pieces of the rock everywhere & Ben dead, stiff as a board. Trying to work out what killed Ben leads Dave to discover that the rock is activated by water & grows to enormous heights until it cannot support itself & falls over & shatters in a thousand pieces each of which then also grow in a never ending cycle, then suddenly Dave realises that it's raining outside & all the other pieces of the meteorite start to grow & advance towards the town crushing everything in their way...
Directed by John Sherwood this was yet another Universal monster film from the 50's that they churned out, to be fair to Universal they usually produced decent films & The Monolith Monsters is no exception thanks to a unique alien threat even if the basic story doesn't deviate too much from the stand small town comes under attack from some sort of alien or monster scenario. I must admit that I love the concept of the alien rock that simply grows like a skyscraper until it topples over & shatters in hundreds of shards each of which then goes through the same process as the alien rock just multiplies & engulfs anything that gets in it's way. It's a great idea, sure there's still some subplot about how it causes people to turn to stone by sucking the silicone out of them but otherwise The Monolith Monsters avoids the usual men in rubber monster suits & dopey science although some of the dialogue between Miller & the Professor is a bit dry & doesn't entirely convince. Once again The Monolith Monsters is a real product of it's time, it's amazing how polite & helpful everyone is here with a real post war community spirit where all the young kids in town decide to help out by delivering warning posters, the army, politicians, Doctor's & scientists all work together seamlessly without any arguments & even the local reporter decides not to cash-in on the story & keep it under wraps to avoid a panic. It feels a little naive when seen today but it's not a huge problem. At a brisk 77 minutes the plot takes no longer than it needs to & it moves along at a decent pace, the climax is a little rushed & everything works a little too well but the ending still works.
With no aliens or monsters the special effects people had to somehow create huge rock formations that grow, fall over & shatter & start all over again & they do a fine job with some good model work & effects. The iconic scene of the huge monolith crashing to the ground & destroying the farm is still quite an impressive special effect. Less effective is the dam being blown up & the subsequent stock footage of gushing water. Apparently originally released by Universal as a double feature with Love Slaves of the Amazons (1957), the footage of the meteorite crashing during the opening sequence was taken from It Came from Outer Space (1953) which Universal made four years earlier.
Probably shot on a low budget the makers did the best they could with decent production values & surprisingly good model effects work. Mainly shot on the back-lot at Universal studios like most of these sorts of films were. The acting is alright, it always seems a little wooden to me in these quick & cheap 50's sci-fi films but no-one really embarrasses themselves.
The Monolith Monsters is an enjoyable slice of 50's sci-fi horror with a great central concept & some impressive effects work, for the time anyway. You could do a lot worse than spend an hour & a quarter watching this.
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