The Monolith Monsters

Yves Bouwen3.0

A meteor crashes in the desert and shatters to hundreds of shiny black fragments. The crystal fragments grow, petrifying humans in the process. Some of them grow to the size of the Empire State Building, break up, crash down. Quite the disaster. Can geologist Dave and his girlfriend, teacher Cathy save a little girl from a life with an iron lung and certain death, a desert town from being crushed and the world from total destruction? Yes. Yes, they can. The Monolith Monsters is based on a story by Jack Arnold. First I was thinking, this crap violates Lavoisier’s law of the conservation of mass. When they started selling exposition - Man! Do they have a lot of exposition to sell! - I was actually buying it. I think this is a very plausible scenario for world destruction.

Lou (doesn't rhyme with booh! 👻)3.5

Who would have thought that the same rules apply to space rocks and gremlins? Don't get them wet! 😱Such an excellent 1950s B-movie.

Jesse3.0

I’ve really loved diving into these 1950s Universal sci-fi films because they all have such unique premises and efficient runtimes. The Monolith Monsters is no exception. When a large meteorite crashes in the California desert, the broken fragments starts to turn people into a petrified state and when exposed to water, it starts to multiply, slowly taking over the landscape and the nearby town. Visually it’s impressive with some rather decent sound design of these giant monoliths growing. But the palpable fear of trying to find answers to medical anomalies is what drives the film. The type of fear that was just rampant in films of this era. You may find more entertainment in a film like The Blob but there is a subtle nuance here that is worth looking into. And you know Joe Dante, Steven Spielberg, and Chris Columbus watched this at least once.