Last month when I was up to my neck in monster movie reviews, I kept meaning to work in a review of The Monster of Piedras Blancas, but alas I never got around to it. I will now. This movie is one I've only seen recently. I caught a few minutes of it on a late-night show some years ago, but never the complete gig. And I did very much want to. It was like so many classic monster flicks, one I'd seen a few stills from and even read a bit about in the pages of monster mags from years gone by. It looked intriguing enough, but I was sufficiently savvy about these low-budget affairs to modify my expectations. I needn't have worried -- this one is full of the freaky fun that low-budget movies can often excel at.
It's a monster movie that keeps it simple. We have a beautiful buxom babe and a malignant monster and that's enough for most red-blooded monster fans. This always offers up other details which keep the viewer engaged. The story takes place on the west coast in Piedras Blancas (a real place with a real lighthouse, but not where they shot the movie) which translates to "White Stones". That's a clever bit of business as the title has always been a winner, compelling and mysterious. We meet a lighthouse keeper who is also the father of our buxom babe and he just so happens to keep a pet monster hidden away amid the rocky cliffs of the dangerous coastline he guards.
But it gets away and starts killing town folk, usually by decapitation. There's also some nonsense about drinking blood, but that all falls into the woodwork as the hapless sheriff and the local doctor try to make sense of the growing bedlam. They assisted by the buxom babe's boyfriend who appears to have some marine biology chops and together they tool around town in the only motorized vehicle ever seen in the movie, an old-fashioned jeep. The action slips from the lighthouse to the town and back again as the monster inexplicably moves about without being seen by anyone who doesn't meet a grisly death.
Eventually the boyfriend, the doctor and the sheriff figure out how toe do in the creature and save the buxom babe, but then any self-respecting monster movie fan already knew that. What makes this one hum is the whip-saw action as the cast jump in and out of the jeep and jet around the rugged coast in search of danger and sometimes finding it. The best action is always off screen with the hint that we will actually see something, which we pretty much don't. The finale is pretty grand and worth the wait.
This is not a great movie by any stretch, but it's a remarkably by-the-book low-budget monster movie and for a fan like me, that's a sure-fire way to get my attention. I enjoyed this one down to my socks and am very pleased I got around finally to seeing it.
Highly recommended for the hard-core monster fan. Others will be disappointed I suspect.
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When I was 5 a copy of a book entitled Monsters, Maidens and Mayhem by Brad Steiger (copyright 1965) found its way into my young hands. I still have it today. It was mostly composed of monster movies stills. Over the course of my life, I think I’ve now seen most of the monster movies in that book. But one that has so far still escaped me is: The Monster of Piedras Blancas. The book had one of the photos you show here - that of the Monster standing there with the bloody, disembodied head in his hands against the ocean back drop…So yep, thinking this will be my post-Christmas gift to myself. I see the folks on Amazon give it 4.6 stars.
ReplyDeleteI put it on my Christmas list last year and my family didn't opt for it. I forgot it in all the tumult last year and only remembered earlier this year when October rolled around with its emphasis on monsters. It's a fun movie, goofy and cheap, but fun. Some of the actors are rock-solid pros, some not so much, and that mix is always a riot.
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