Our month-long tribute to monsters continues as this week's film begins with Paul Frees waxing a nice planetarium speech about meteors. Most space rocks burn up upon entry into the atmosphere, he says, but some make it through and create some pretty big potholes on impact. Most are harmless, and a treasure for scientific study, but, as his speech turns ominous, some might prove deadly -- just as a huge flaming meteor (that looks suspiciously like the spaceship crash from It Came From Outer Space) augers itself into the earth. And as the smoke settles and the impact crater smolders, the credits roll.

The next day, we pan over the desert and see an oncoming car. (A quick glance at the credits confirms that we’re in Jack Arnold country.) Inside, Ben Gilbert (Phil Harvey), a geologist for the state of California, develops engine trouble when the radiator overheats. After he stops to refill it, we notice (along with him) that the large amount of black rocks littering the valley floor don't really look like they belong. Curious, he picks one of them up and moves on. (Your tax dollars at work people.) When he drives away, we zoom back to where he slopped some water onto the ground, and one of the oddball black rocks sitting in the middle of the puddle starts to boil and bubble. (That can’t be good.) Returning to his office in San Angelo, Gilbert’s joined by Cochran (Les Tremayne), the local newspaperman. Cochran grumps because the quiet little town has no need for him or his newspaper. Ben shows him the mysterious black rock, but Cochran doesn’t think it's earth-shattering news.

Later that night, in one of those disastrous chain of events (that always seems to trigger one of these nature gone wrong films), a beaker of water is accidentally spilled on the rock and it reacts violently. When Ben discovers this, he comes in for a closer look and then the music turns ominous and we fade to black. (Nice knowing you Ben.) The next day, Ben’s partner, Dave Miller (Grant Williams), returns to the office. Finding it a shamble and the black rocks scattered everywhere, Miller calls out and spots Gilbert in the hall -- but he doesn’t answer. When Miller approaches, he discovers that Gilbert is dead; turned to solid stone.

Meanwhile, out on the desert, Kathy Barret (Lola Albright) finishes her field trip by turning her rabid grade school class loose to look for souvenirs. ("Look! I found a gila monster. Oww!" Ritalin obviously hasn’t been invented yet.) Young Ginny Simpson (Linda Scheley) finds one of the black rocks for her souvenir, and asks Kathy if she and Dave are ever going to get married like the lizards they’re watching. (Yes, it’s as funny as it sounds.) The field trip also establishes that there is a salt mine and an irrigation dam close to San Angelo. (I wonder if that’s pertinent? Nah.) When Kathy drops Ginny off at her home, Ginny's mom won’t let her bring the dirty old rock inside unless she washes it first. (Uh-oh.) As Ginny turns on the spigot, her mom calls her in for dinner so she drops the rock into a washtub filled with water. And the same ominous music kicks up as the water starts to boil and bubble...

Later, Kathy joins Miller, Cochran and Sheriff Corey (William Flaherty) to hear the report on Gilbert’s autopsy. The local doctor is stumped and plans to send the body on to Los Angeles and have a specialist look at it. Cochran wants to know what he can print, but Corey wants him to sit on the story to prevent a panic. As they try to piece together what happened, Cochran was the last to see Gilbert and mentions the strange rock he found. Miller is puzzled because there was more than one rock in the demolished lab. When he describes the rock it frightens Kathy because it sounds like the same kind of rock Ginny found.

Corey, Miller and Kathy head out to the Simpson farm but find it demolished, covered with the same black rocks -- only a lot bigger. Something is moving among the wreckage. It’s Ginny; alive, but she’s in a state of shock, and her arm has turned to stone. They also find the petrified bodies of her parents. Rushing Ginny to Los Angeles for the best medical care, but they’re experts are just as stumped as the San Angelo doctor. They put Ginny in an iron lung to stabilize her while they run more tests. Miller runs his own tests on the rocks, but there nothing more than an ordinary amalgam of silicates. (It does have a negative cleavage though. I wonder what that means?) He turns to his old college professor, but Flanders (Trevor Bardette) agrees with his analysis; it appears to be an ordinary earth rock. But due to it’s mysterious duplicative properties, then maybe it’s not of the Earth. (Cue ominous music.)

While Kathy stays with Ginny, who only has eight estimated hours to live before she completely succumbs, Flanders and Dave high tail it back to San Angelo to look for some clues on how to fight it. Heading to the Simpson ranch first, Flanders notices that the soil is a different color around the black rocks. After an analysis, they conclude that all the silica has been removed from the sand. They assume that the rocks are, somehow, absorbing the silica and that’s what killed all the people. They claim that silicon is what gives our moving parts and skin their elasticity. And if all the silicon were removed, the body would turn rock solid. (Okay, having flunked anatomy, I’ll buy that.) When they pass this theory on to Ginny’s doctor, he gives her a silicon booster shot and waits to see if it has any effect.

Miller and Flanders eventually find the original meteor and take a sample of it back to the lab for analysis. Something had to trigger the reaction, since just handling it doesn’t cause the same effect, so they try heat and electricity, but nothing works. Outside, it starts to thunder, and soon, it’s raining cats and dogs. (Better catch up quick fellas, or you’re going to be up to your nether regions in black rocks PDQ.) The much needed eureka moment comes when Dave accidentally spills some coffee on a sample. And as they apply more water onto it, the rock grows, expanding upwards, into a mini-crystalline obelisk that soon collapses under its own weight and shatters. All the pieces of the puzzle quickly fall into place, but the happy moment is brief when they realize how hard it’s raining. If a small dose of water made the rock grow to over three feet high, what will all the rocks out in the desert do under this deluge?

They round up Corey and convince him of the exponentially growing danger, so he makes plans to evacuate the town. And they do receive some good news: Miller’s theory proved correct and Ginny is expected to make a full recovery. And with that, Miller decides to use a little reverse-engineering and thinks maybe something in Ginny’s booster shot might stop the monoliths. He gets the formula -- a little bit of this, and little bit of that, suspended in normal saline solution. (Salt water? Wait a second. Irrigation dam? Salt mine? Nah.)

Meanwhile, the rain has stopped but the monoliths continue their destructive advance down the valley, wiping out everything in their path. (The ground is saturated, and that’s enough to keep the ball rolling.) Knocking out both the phone lines and power lines, Corey turns to Cochran and his legion of newsies to spread the word of the evacuation. It may already be too late for some as several, desperate people rush into town, barely escaping the onslaught but are slowly succumbing to the loss of silicon. Kathy returns with several medics from LA to help out these victims. She finds Miller and Flanders trying every combination of chemicals off the list, but nothing works until Miller realizes they haven’t tried the saline solution yet. And when he dumps some sodium on the rock, it stops the reaction dead in its tracks.

Miller thinks they can stop the monoliths with a simple salt barrier, but Flanders points out that they don’t have enough time. They consult a map and Miller’s wheels keep on spinning until he comes up with a plan: Blow up the dam and flood the salt mine, creating a river of salt water between the rocks and the town. (It’s so crazy blah blah blah.) But they can’t blow up the dam without permission from the governor. While waiting for the word, the explosives are set, the town is evacuated, and the monoliths come crashing into view. And if they don’t stop them there, at the open end of the valley, then there are no more natural barriers and the monoliths will *gasp* take over the world. As the falling and regenerating spires advance ever closer, word comes that the governor is in route to personally assess the situation and take in the damage. But if they wait for him, it will be too late so Miller gives the order to blow the dam.

It goes off with a bang, and as the cascading water sweeps over the salt mine and torrents down the old riverbed between the monoliths and the town, Miller asks Flanders if there will be enough salt to do the job. He quickly calculates it out, crosses his fingers, and replies it'll be real close. (So we'll all cross our fingers.) And as the front spires tumble into the water, the rest follow suit and they all quickly fizzle out. *whew*

Cue ominous music and fade to...

Enter two men who would be credited with saving the company. One was Arthur Lupin and his Francis the Talking Mule pictures. (No, I’m not kidding.) The second was Jack Arnold, who, along with producer William Alland, was instrumental in generating Universal’s second wave of monster movies in the '50s. In the '30s it was the gothic horrors of The Wolfman, Frankenstein and Dracula. But the '50s was the atomic age, so most horrors were caused by science gone awry, alien invaders, or atomic mutations running amok. And The Monolith Monsters is a strange combination of all the above. A novel film filled with novel ideas it’s amazing how you can take the idea of falling rocks and make it interesting -- let alone menacing and entertaining. Again, The Monolith Monsters manages all of the above.

These monoliths are the fulcrum and their mystery is the lever that moves the plot along. Some of the best sci-fi movies, like THEM!, don't show their hands too early, and that it takes a while for the heroes to unravel this mystery is what really endears this movie to me. Some thought process went into the science behind it, and to me, of all the monster movies I've seen, this one seems the most plausible. It’s not based entirely in scientific fact but it doesn’t take a quantum leap in the suspension of disbelief to buy it. Usually, my suspension of disbelief is overtaxed and broken down by the end of these films. But not this time. Arnold had a hand in the story, here, but John Sherwood did the directing. Its plot is the same as any '50s sci-fi movie but there are some subtle differences. The hero doesn’t know everything and turns to someone with greater knowledge when he needs it. Williams does make a likeable hero, but Albright is remarkably absent as the heroine. The film manages a real sense of urgency because the normal route of calling in the army and bombing the hell out of the monoliths is out of the question. These things can't be reasoned with, and are truly unstoppable.

Jack Arnold eventually moved on to TV and directed episodes of Rawhide and Gilligan’s Island. And he stayed in the medium and eventually directed episodes of The Love Boat and The Fall Guy. I recall reading, somewhere, that John Carpenter had the option of remaking either The Thing or The Creature from the Black Lagoon. And I remember reading that if he had chose the latter, he wanted to get Arnold involved in the production somehow. Am I crazy? Am I the only one who remembers this?

Posted: 10/13/01. Copy and paste at your own legal risk.

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