The Monster of Piedras Blancas

Don Sullivan should be the star. He is the young handsome monster fighter. Others were better known at that time, perhaps. This is a good, but not great sci-fi B movie. It is entertaining and an obvious low budget quickie that might make back the investor's gamble. The monster is not totally ridiculous and the story is OK. The acting is better than most low budget films. Any of the main cast members, including the child actors could handle a Hollywood production. Camera work is better than adequate. This is not boring but sometimes it slips into comedy that is unintended.

Very entertaining movie,gives you a real feel for the time it was made.Was one of Don Sullivan's best and makes you wonder, if Steve McQueen could advance from " Blob " what ever happened to Don Sullivan? My friends and I first saw this movie late on night while camping out in the backyard with an extension cord stretched to an old b/w and the scene where the monster comes out with the head scared us to death!

This is one of those films that used to be shown on Creature Features on Saturday mornings. Its a rather dull film about a Black Lagoon-type creature who goes around killing people. Despite its dullness, it has a couple of the scariest scenes of any film made during this era. The first, when the monster comes bursting out of a door is a moment of shock and horror equal to the similar scene in "The Thing". And the second, at the lighthouse at the end of the film, is extremely terrifying and gave me recurrent nightmares as a child. Both scenes are still frightening to me as an adult. One also has to appreciate the amount of thought that went into the plot. The origins of the monster and the reasons he starts to kill are convoluted but, if you follow along carefully, everything is explained in a logical manner and there are no inconsistencies in the plot. In "Keep Watching the Skies", Bill Warren criticized the film as lacking a logical plot and explanation for the monster, but he is wrong! However dull, a lot of thought went into the plotting of this film and, had the script been better, this could have been a scare classic.

John Harmon plays a crusty lighthouse keeper who lives with his daughter and secretly feeds a monster of a prehistoric fish-man heritage scraps and fish. One day he misses feeding the creature scraps and all hell breaks loose. The creature walks about unseen and walking in and out of stores neatly severing the heads off folks. This is vintage 50's bad sci-fi. It has all the cliches you would expect, yet it is a whole lot of fun. Obviously made on a shoestring budget, Monster of Piedras Blancas has a charm to it. The story is pretty straightforward with everything from one-dimensional characters to the obligatory romance between the lighthouse keeper's daughter and a serendipitous biochemist versed in prehistoric fish species(played by Do Sullivan who you may...or more likely may not...remember as Chase in The Giant Gila Monster...no singing in this one fortunately!). The monster looks decent. Sure, you know its a rubber suit, but at least its not crying out that it is. This film makes great Saturday or Sunday afternoon fare!

A generally underrated monster flick from 1959, The Monster of Piedras Blancas is often compared to the undeniably similar Creature From the Black Lagoon, with this film invariably coming out second best. Certainly, Creature From the Black Lagoon is a true classic and The Monster of Piedras Blancas rarely equals its more famous cousin, but nonetheless this is a very good little film with a lot going for it on its own terms. The Monster, of course, is the star of the show, and the suit designed for him is impressive and scary, and must have seemed even more so in the 50s. As is typical of this sort of film, screen shots of the Monster are limited up until the climax, when he runs wild in all his visceral glory. The Monster's killings are quite brutal and rather bloody for the conservative 50s, and there are several decapitations in his wake. The coastal setting, where folk tales of the alleged Monster are whispered in the shadows, is evocative and the director uses the location to maximum effect. Acting is for the most part competent if unexceptional, highlighted by the dazzling Jeanne Carmen as the lovely Lucy, upon whom the Monster inevitably turns a ravenous gaze. Ms. Carmen is a luscious damsel in distress, and it's a shame she didn't do more sci-fi. Don Sullivan plays Lucy's boyfriend, Fred, and veteran b-movie actor Les Tremayne is a local doctor. John Harmon turns in a surprisingly effective performance as Lucy's father Sturges, the local lighthouse keeper, a man with many secrets and who knows more about the Monster than anyone suspects. The townsfolk of Piedras Blancas are developed with some attention to detail, and it means something when one of them dies. The only real weaknesses of the film are its obvious low budget and a somewhat lagging pace that does make the movie feel a bit longer than its short run time of 71 minutes. But overall, this is a pretty good monster movie that meets most of the genre requirements. Unfortunately, this is a difficult movie to find, but if you can track it down, the Monster From Piedras Blancas is a surprisingly effective chiller.