Dorky Teens and Beaded Lizards: Remembering ‘The Giant Gila Monster’
Christopher Stewardson
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By 1959, the American market for giant monster movies was saturated. Superb films like The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953), Them! (1954), and Tarantula (1955) had led the charge in the first half of the decade. The subgenre then peaked in 1957, with everything from giant invertebrates (The Black Scorpion, Attack of the Crab Monsters, The Deadly Mantis, The Monster that Challenged the World) and robots (Kronos) to oversized people (The Amazing Colossal Man). 1958 gave a few more titles via Earth vs. The Spider, War of the Colossal Beast, and Attack of the 50-Foot Woman. But by and large, things were winding down. The last year of the 1950s gave fewer still, with highs of Caltiki, the Immortal Monster, and lows of Attack of the Giant Leeches. Two of the least celebrated from 1959 are The Giant Gila Monster and The Killer Shrews.
The Giant Gila Monster has been a staple of bargain-bin sci-fi DVD sets for years, with poor picture transfers not helping its reputation. It’s good to hear, then, that the new boutique label Film Masters has given the film its first proper Blu-ray release. And with that in mind, it’s high time we gave the film its dues.
The Giant Gila Monster is set in rural Texas, opening with ominous narration warning that “no man” can say how large the dreaded lizard grows. The local Sheriff (Fred Graham) is stumped as people all over town begin to disappear, victims of the marauding reptile.
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Our main character is Chase (Don Sullivan), a teenage mechanic with a hot rod. But he’s far from the delinquent one may expect. On the contrary, he’s a goody-goody who’s all too happy to help the Sheriff. In fact, none of the film’s teen heroes are anything like the decidedly rebellious figures in contemporary titles such as Rebel Without a Cause (1955), Roger Corman’s Teenage Doll (1957), or the excellent I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1957). No, the teens of The Giant Gila Monster are fervently dorky and law-abiding, right down to an excruciating Christian lullaby that Chase sings at a local dance. Its chorus goes, “And the Lord said laugh, children laughed, the Lord said laugh, children laughed, the Lord said laugh, children laughed, the Lord said laugh” …and so forth. It’s truly a blessing when the enormous lizard breaks through the wall mid-song.
But how did the film come about? Firstly, it’s helpful to reflect on modes of cinema exhibition at the time, specifically the drive-in theatre, which had emerged in the 1930s and was enjoying its heyday in the 1950s. As Don Sullivan himself explained in a 2008 interview for Scary Monsters Magazine,
“Gordon McLendon of Dallas, Texas owned a chain of drive-in [theatres]. 500 to 600 across the country. When he would take a major film like From Here to Eternity [1953] he had to have a second film with it at the drive-in, so he was paying the money for the second film whereas the first film was a draw for the people coming in. Then he came up with the idea of making a couple [of] movies and we can use those as the bottom half of a double bill and save ourselves a lot of money. So that’s how it came about.”
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In his lifetime, Gordon McLendon was a wealthy businessman who made a name for himself in radio, running the 458-station Liberty Sports Network from 1948 until 1952, with most of its stations based in Texas. McLendon eventually owned the radio station of disc jockey Ken Knox, who appears in The Giant Gila Monster as Horatio “Steamroller” Smith, adding to the film’s regional appeal. Whether McLendon really owned “500-600” drive-ins is debatable, as Cinema Treasures lists only 73 cinemas as having been owned by McLendon Theatres, most of them dotted throughout Texas and the South. In any case, while it may be tempting to look at these films as just business ventures, they’re also fascinating artifacts of theatrical exhibition demands and practices in the 1950s.
Such trends followed a landmark 1948 Supreme Court ruling (the Paramount case), which divested the major Hollywood studios of their own theatre chains. In response, the majors decreased the number of B-films they produced and invested in new technologies (like 3D) to stay competitive with television. With rental costs rising and the days of “block-booking” long gone (when independent “second-run” cinemas would buy an entire season’s worth of titles from a studio, ensuring they’d have films to play), the shortage of films hit independent theatre owners hard. While McLendon owned a chain of theatres, the product shortage and high rental costs of the era are reflected in his making The Giant Gila Monster and its co-feature release partner, The Killer Shrews. McLendon essentially circumvented the problem facing exhibitors by supplying his own film product for his drive-in theatres.
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It’s also worth mentioning how the drive-in experience extended far beyond the films on the screen. Many drive-in owners had playgrounds and laundromats constructed on-site, often making attendance much more of an event. Coupled with the novelty of car ownership in the 1950s, films like The Giant Gila Monster, openly made with such exhibition in mind, are pieces of Americana.
So, with its inception bound in local exhibition demands, and featuring a bizarrely dull set of teenage heroes, what makes The Giant Gila Monster worth seeing? One of its major merits is its setting. The film seemingly takes place in the middle of nowhere, as though Chase or the Sheriff may at any moment pull up to the home of Eustice and Muriel from Courage, the Cowardly Dog. The horizon is dotted with either dead brush or nothing at all. Coupled with the hypnotic theremin soundtrack, the film’s events truly feel miles away from anywhere else.
In turn, this helps the Gila monster ooze some menace, portrayed by a real animal clambering about miniature sets. As is now commonly known, a Mexican beaded lizard was employed to portray the beast—a close relative of the Gila monster but, alas, not a Gila monster. Nevertheless, the handsome reptile performs beautifully, scurrying or creeping over lonely stretches of road. Several characters have brief encounters with the monster while driving, catching a glimpse as it crosses before them. This gives the creature a cryptid-like presence, recalling countless stories of roadside meetings with everything from Bigfoot to Mothman. Indeed, the opening narration, in its assertion that nobody knows how large the Gila monster grows, lends a mythic flavor to the beast.
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Speaking of Gila monster encounters, I must mention the film’s standout scene where the creature creeps under a railway bridge, triggering a collapse. When a train arrives, it’s naturally derailed, and the massive lizard sets about the wreckage looking for food. It’s far from the heights of the train crash sequence in The Black Scorpion, but it’s still entertaining in its own way.
These sporadic special effects scenes were handled by Ray Kellogg, who also directed both The Giant Gila Monster and The Killer Shrews. Audiences may recognize Kellogg’s name from more acclaimed 20th Century Fox titles. He’s credited for special effects on Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) and The Seven Year Itch (1955) with Marilyn Monroe, as well as The Girl Can’t Help It (1956) with Jayne Mansfield.
On June 25, 1959, The Giant Gila Monster and The Killer Shrews premiered together at the Majestic Theater in Dallas, and at the Palace in Fort Worth, simultaneously. Writing in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram on June 26, one critic called The Killer Shrews “deplorable artistically” but another review in the Abilene Reporter-News on June 28 called the films “compact, entertaining little sci-fi products.”
Also on June 28, Marie Stevenson, writing in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, noted that both films were “entertaining great hordes of the younger generation daily.” And so, for all we could criticize in The Giant Gila Monster, it seemed to serve its purpose. All these years later, the film is finally receiving what looks to be a brilliant new home video release. Perhaps it’s time we give this beaded lizard…err, Gila monster…a break.
Categorized:Editorials
