HOT CARS, HOT CHICKS, ONE BIG MONSTER

Last week was one heck of a week and not in a good way.  It wasn’t one of those weeks where the bear got me, but it certainly let me know I had been in a fight.  By mid-week, I was in serious need of some stress relief...and that relief came in the form of a pair of low-budget monster movies.

The movies were The Giant Gila Monster (1959) and Gila (2012). The former is the original, the latter is the remake. I watched Gila on Wednesday night and The Giant Gila Monster on Thursday afternoon.  I loved them both.

Directed by Jim Wynorski, Gila is set in the same late 1950s era as the original. It’s a little choppy in places, but that might be due to the film having four writers: William Dever, Steve Mitchell, Jim Nielsen and Paul Sinor. Here’s how the Internet Movie Database has summarized the movie:

A giant lizard terrorizes a rural mid west community with a group of heroic young people led by Chase Winstead attempting to destroy the creature.

We get to see the CGI monster in the opening scene when it attacks two young lovers. The young man meets his demise quickly, but the fate of the young woman, who we later learn is the daughter of the arrogant and heavy handed mayor, isn’t revealed until later in the movie. The monster looks pretty good and I think its occasionally jerky movements are meant at a homage to the original movie, which used a live lizard and miniature sets.

We quickly meet the cast members. Chase [Brian Gross] might be into drag-racing, but he’s a good guy who works as a mechanic to provide for his mother and his polio-crippled kid sister. His girlfriend Lisa [Madeline Voges] is feisty and gorgeous. The other kids in the group are standard background characters, though the movie gets some funny moments from a Swedish exchange student and the fellow courting her.

Bad boy Waco [Jesse Janzen] has a chip on his shoulder for the town he feels has never given him a break and for Chase in particular. Waco’s girlfriend [Christina DeRosa] is beginning to question her choice of man and sets her sights on Chase. Other key players are the sheriff [Terence Knox], his flirtatious, wise-cracking deputy [Kelli Maroney], the grizzled and well-armed veteran Chase for whom Chase works [Rich Komenich] and Chaee’s sister Missy [Jenna Ruiz]. Outside of Knox, I wasn’t familiar with this cast, but they all played their roles with an earnestness that suited the film well.

Once you accept the giant monster dining on citizens in the rural setting of the movie - and that’s a given with giant monster movie fans like me - Gila plays out in an exciting, suspenseful manner. The threat always seems real, especially when the beast is closing in on Chase’s mother and sister. Neither character changes of heart or the climatic battle between Chase and the Gila monster come out of nowhere. It’s a solid little movie.

My complaints about the movie are that it goes on a little too long after the climatic battle and it failed to include/improve on the scene in the original movie where the monster crashes its way into a teen dance. That moment in the original scene was limited by the movie’s use of a real lizard being prodded/poked from off-camera. In the remake, the scene could’ve been very effective and  perhaps even memorable.

My only other complaint is a gory scene earlier in the movie when two men are splashed with toxic waste. It’s nothing we haven’t seen in other movies and this movie doesn’t dwell on it.  But it still struck me at odds with the rest of the film.

Those are minor complaints. Gila is a blast and the perfect way to spend an hour-and-a-half on a lazy afternoon or in the spring chill of an evening. I recommended it to my giant monster-loving friends and readers. You can get it from Amazon where it’s currently priced at $14,.95.

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The Giant Gila Monster [1959] appears to be in the public domain. It’s available on YouTube and showed up in the fifty-movie Horror Classics pack I bought almost a decade ago and have barely watched since.  It’s also available from several different manufacturer of DVDs. You won’t have a hard time finding it.

I hadn’t watched this movie since I saw it on Cleveland television as a kid and, on viewing it again, was amazed at how closely Gila followed it. Hard-working hot-rodder Chase Winstead [Don Sullivan] is still supporting his wife and sister, though he’s not adverse to breaking the law ever so slightly, like when he “borrows” the tires off a vehicle damaged when the monster ate its driver.  But he is still the alpha male of the town’s teens and someone the sheriff relies on for help. His climatic battle with the giant monster is pretty much the same as in the remake, though the remake was able to do it better.

There are some other differences between the two. There’s no Waco. The town is too small for the sheriff to have a deputy. There’s a star disc-jockey who appears in the original, but not in the newer version. Do they even have star disc-jockeys anymore in these days of iTunes and such?

The main difference is in the monster. Mock CGI all you like, but it’s far superior to using actual lizards and clumsily irritating them into “acting” in the movie. And, as mentioned above, there’s no monster party-crashing in the remake.

Here’s some Giant Gila Monster trivia “borrowed” from the Internet Movie Database...

The Gila Monster in the movie is actually a Mexican Beaded Lizard.

Ken Knox, who plays disc jockey Horatio Alger "Steamroller" Smith, was a real disc jockey working at radio stations in Texas owned by Gordon McLendon, the uncredited executive producer of this film.

This was one of two features produced by an independent company in Texas and meant for release as a double feature. The other feature was The Killer Shrews (1959). Unlike many such features produced in the South, these films received national distribution.

Gordon McLendon, who owned a number of radio stations and theaters in Texas, was the uncredited executive producer and financier of this film. Some members of the McLendon family were given roles in this film.

Not mentioned was that Don Sullivan, who was Chase Winstead in the original, has a small part in the remake.

The Giant Gila Monster turns out to be the little movie that could. It has been referenced in dozens of movies, shown by Elvira, mocked by the oafish Mystery Science Theater 3000 - I'm not a fan of the show  - continues to be enjoyed by B-movie devotees and has been remade in much the same family-friendly manner of the original. That might not get it into a movie hall of fame, but it’s an ensuring success nonetheless.

The Giant Gila Monster was a delightful follow-up to my viewing of Gila. I recommend a double-feature of the two movies with popcorn, soft drinks and a box of delicious nostalgia.
 
I’ll be back tomorrow with "The Night of the Betrayers" as we celebrate another "Rawhide Kid Wednesday."

© 2014 Tony Isabella