THE GIANT GILA MONSTER {1959}

 "I DEMAND A SOBERTY TEST!" 

Yeah, so do I for rewatching this one.  The occasion was the recent super-duper remastered blu ray released of THE GIANT GILA MONSTER double-featured with THE KILLER SHREWS by the awesome new company Film Masters.  Now, I'm just a tiny lil potato in this pumpkin patch of horror and receive no freebies from anybody but Film Masters is a great boutique label you just have to check out.  On a mission to release sparkling new transfers of old favourites they have restored to 4K scans (on blu ray) and their first release is absolutely stunning!  Who knew what the world needed was a restoration of a Ray Kellogg double feature?!?!?!?  Kellogg directed both GILA and SHREWS and no one and their mother would've ever expected to see these films look and sound as good as they do here!  I don't know if it's the beautiful new version or not but this viewing bumped up my rating of THE GIANT GILA MONSTER up a half-a-point! So enough of the unsolicited (but sincere) commercial for Film Masters and on to the movie.

An obvious old horror chestnut I've seen several times before, THE GIANT GILA MONSTER concerns the budding singing career of young Chase Winstead who is a grease monkey by day and a rock & rollin' singer/songwriter by night.  OK, the film is REALLY ostensibly about a giant gila monster attacked some people but really it's about forging a singing career for Don Sullivan aka Chase Winstead who seems to be being groomed here in a similar manner to Arch Hall Jr. in WILD GUITAR et. al.  To be fair (to be faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiiirrrrr), Sullivan is a likeable singer who very well could've had a successful late-50's/early 60s teen idol career and I'm all for him . . . . until he sings that 'Laugh, Children, Laugh' song which is so NOT rock & roll and cringingly we hear TWICE during the movie!!!!  Thankfully, Sullivan's second rendition is interrupted by the giant gila monster crashing through the wall of a barn.  Oh yeah, that gila monster.  Let's get back to him and/or her. 

AWWWWWWWWWWWWWW Cute!

A necking couple in a hot rod start the movie off by getting offed by said giant gila monster.  Roll credits.  When the young couple are reported missing, the assumption is that they ran off to get married.  They did not.  They be in the belly of the gila!  Various other people during the movie end up becoming gila monster tapas too.  A drunken disc jockey named Steamroller Smith (Ken Knox) is run off the road by a big black and pink thing and Chase tows the drunk DJ's car into the garage where Steamroller sleeps it off.  Chase has a French girlfriend named Lisa for no other reason then they cast French actress Lisa Simone in the part.  Chase's boss brings a crate of nitro glycerin into the garage for some reason I can't really recall.  Chase has a paraplegic little sister named Missy (Janice Stone) because . . . well, I assume it's to give him an excuse to sing 'Laugh, Children, Laugh' to her as she tries to walk with the new leg braces Lisa bought her and also to appear in even MORE mortal danger when she goes over a neighbour's house to spend the night and the giant gila monster attacks it.  The movie is full of weird, unnecessary details like this.  I mean, there's no reason why she had to go to somebody else's house to be endangered by the monster; she could've just as easily stayed at home and the gila monster could've attacked THAT, right?  But who cares.  As I said, this viewing made me increase my rating to 3 stars outta 5 because it's just so dopey and likeable.  Don Sullivan is a pleasant leading man whose singing (besides the "Laugh, Children, Laugh" song) is enjoyable enough.  And while the film doesn't feature much in the way of horror action or monster attacks, I'm STILL not really mad at it.  A dumb little 74 minutes that goes by pretty painlessly.