The Milpitas Monster

Pollution yields a winged gargantuan beast which proceeds to de-populate the community of Milpitas, California.

The general consensus on this flick is pretty reasonable...a grassroots love-letter to 50s era monster movies, funded with pocket change. Now...consider that production of this movie initialized as a high school project involving complete amateurs in every aspect of its penny-ante construction, and the results begin to look pretty darned good. Miniature sets are efficiently overseen, the monster is uniquely designed, and the various technical parts and parcels of filmmaking are roundly on the beam. It's high camp fun with a likable regional charm, and being observably rough around the edges only makes it that much more appealing.

There's a world of movies made by "professional" low-budget filmmakers that are far less enjoyable than this giddily ambitious curio. The median mainstream movie viewer will probably have a tough time with THE MILPITAS MONSTER, but it's pretty unlikely that they'd ever merge with it in the first place. For those among us with an interest in cinematic novelties with unusual production backstories, this should manage to entertain, and occasionally even impress, if accepted on its own realistic terms.

A+ for effort.

Made for $65,000, this one was the brainchild of a high school teacher who decided to make a monster movie in his small Californian town of Milpitas. And it seems like everyone in the town starred in this one! Is it any good? No! Its unsurprisingly strictly amateur hour all the way with ropey effects and a sound so muddy, you barely hear what anyone says but you never really feel like you're missing much. Its about a giant monster who feeds off the local rubbish dump. The inhabitants in the town take ages to spot it, which is somewhat hard to fathom seeing as it seems to be about ninety metres tall. It ultimately winds up with him grabbing a girl and climbing up the highest building in town. I wonder where they got that idea? Overall, this is likeable stuff, while simultaneously being utter, utter rubbish which is borderline unwatchable much of the time. It is nice to think that a small U. S. town got together and had a laugh back in 1976 and made a movie though. Bet they would never have believed that dumb-asses would still be watching it 45 years later.

The movie it's self is cheaply made and the editing is horrid. The whole mess sounds as if it was dubbed and badly i might add. From reading other review I believe that this movie was a local project and that would explain why it looks so bad. But that would also explain the heart that you can feel from the film. Even though it sucks and is muddled you can tell the project meant something to the people involved and that is why I will give the film a 6. I hate watching it but the effort is a all that matters. If Hollywood films would put forth half the love into their films we might not have crap like Miami Vice or Halloween H-2-O ruining the cineplex experience and driving the box office takes down. In Conjunction with this I will say that the drunk guy who runs around through the movie is hilarious and the only saving grace of the films story. he is worth two stars all by himself So keep on destructing Milpitas Monster.

This movie was made by a high school, and not a rich one at that. Ayer High School in Milpitas, CA made this movie. At that time, Milpitas was a small suburb of San Jose. The movie was actually a big deal for the town and many had a blast making it, being extras and then watching it in our little theater.

Sure, as a movie, it's nothing great. But it was made for practically nothing by high school kids equipment that was not very modern at the time.

Ecology as it was known was just becoming a big thing back then, and this movie is about a monster spawned from pollution.

My review was written in March 1985 after watching the movie on VCI video cassette.

Reviewed for the record, "The Milpitas Monster" is an amatuer horror film completed in 1976, theatrically unreleased and now available via home video (presented by "Le Bad Cinema"). Distrib VCI includes a disclaimer that pic "may insult your intelligence", but as usual, caveat emptor.

Premise is a huge monster (portrayed alternately by stop-motion animation and a guy in a felt suit) spawned by limitless garbage dumped in the little town of Milpitas, 40 miles from San Francisco. Between scenes of failed comedy relief concerning the town drunk George Keister, monster attacks a dance at the local high school and is finally fried when it climbs up the town's transformer tower in emulation of "King Kong".

Non-actors and incompetent film technique reduce this one to the unwatchable category. Sole point of interest is credit for (much-needed in view of the shoddy sound recording) sound effects by young wiz Ben Burtt, late an Oscar-winner for "Star Wars" and key contributor to many other recent fantasy films.