THE GIANT GILA MONSTER (REVIEW)

Dir. Ray Kellogg

Reviewer. Dan Cook

One of the more underwhelming creature features from the 1950’s, THE GIANT GILA MONSTER is a standard and pretty tedious sci-fi B movie that sees an oversized reptile causing havoc in a small American town. When I say oversized, I of course mean an obviously normal sized lizard (in this case a Mexican beaded lizard) traipsing through unconvincing miniature sets of deserts and dusty highways while the human characters do their best to decipher the mystery surrounding a series of unexplained car crashes and missing persons.

While the reptile itself it is, as expected, a fairly unthreatening presence, some of the performances are pretty good - particularly that of leading man and genre veteran Don Sullivan who is actually quite likeable and charismatic as mechanic-turned-unlikely hero Chase whose bravery and ingenuity prove to be the behemoths’ downfall. But despite this one positive, even the most undiscerning of B movie lovers will find very little to enjoy here and would do better turning their attention to the better movies of the sub-genre such as TARANTULA, THEM! and THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS.