- Original theatrical poster - image courtesy of HappyOtter
Fairly unique amongst its kind, The Monolith Monsters is notable (and notably audacious) for having an antagonist that lacks in both malice and sentience, despite the typically conjured images of monsters evoked by the title. While I’m sure there are plenty of unimaginative or cynical viewers who have and would scoff at the film’s premise, the core concept plus the rudimentary science injected throughout the script to back up the premise make for one of the more genuinely frightening entries in the Universal horror lexicon. It’s a stark reminder of man’s utter helplessness at the indifference of Mother Nature.
For a change, mankind’s negligence of his Garden of Eden isn’t to blame for this film’s destructive presence, which comes from somewhere afar in the universe in the form of a meteorite, crashing in the desert region of San Angelo, California. Scattered about the crater are bizarre, shiny black pieces of the once heavenly body, which quickly draw the attention of a local geologist as well as a young girl on a school field trip. Unlike anything on earth, an analysis of the rock’s contents defies all scientific logic and knowledge. And that’s before they find out what happens when they get wet.
You see, these mysterious rocks are prone to endless duplication when subjected to water, growing taller, like a crystal on steroids, before falling over on account of their own weight, breaking into dozens of pieces capable of continuing the process. The first cases of this process prove both accidental and lethal, and it isn’t until a happy accident that the film’s scientists realize what it is that induces the frightening change in mass. It’s just too bad that their discovery coincides with an epic downpour, the rest of the meteorite now sprouting a city of stone that threatens to avalanche the nearby town within hours.
It doesn’t take much logical follow-through to recognize the potentially earth-shattering implications of this scenario, and it’s one that the film taps into through a handful of sequences in which the monoliths are seen rising, steadily and almost ceaselessly (after the rain subsides, they continue to draw water from the ground), laying waste to all in their path. Furthermore, the properties of the stones are also capable of drawing out valuable agents from biological entities, petrifying several entirely while leaving others with an affected limb that spreads throughout the body. On that note, the film gets points for a child-in-peril thread that proves both tasteful and disturbing.
Those familiar with the template of so many 1950s monster movies will recognize many of the same motions repeated here, albeit with a calculated proficiency and above average intelligence that make this something of a zenith of the era’s sci-fi offerings. Perhaps most satisfying about the film is how ultimately open-ended it is, concluding with what can only be the first of many struggles. (For starters: How to safeguard the countless tons of stone before precipitation resumes? And you never know how far one of those shards might travel with an unwary tourist before the process begins anew.)
Those who refuse to bury their head in the sand about the fragility of our existence in the world will groove on this film’s unforgiving look an amoral universe in which mankind is a fleck amongst infinitely greater forces, making The Monolith Monsters something of a retroactive B-side to 2001: A Space Odyssey’s (no monolithic relation) depiction of mankind’s dawning ability to affect his surroundings. The film is a potent reminder of our smallness, but despite all that, it’s an optimistic one, in which the best of our kind emerges at the time it is most needed. For genre buffs, climate change advocates and science junkies, The Monolith Monsters is a pitifully overlooked classic.
The Monolith Monsters. Dir. John Sherwood. Perf. Grant Williams, Lola Albright, Les Tremayne, Linda Scheley, Trevor Bardette, Phil Harvey, William Flaherty. Universal International, 1957. Running Time: 77 min.
