Our Monster Month Marathon kicks off at the local lighthouse somewhere along the foggy coasts of the Pacific, and the ominous soundtrack tells us we’re in trouble already. We pan over the rocks and catch a quick glimpse of an inhuman hand reaching over a boulder. It retreats when Sturges (John Harmon), the lighthouse keeper (and a cranky old salt), comes out. He yells at some smoochers to get off'n his property, and then jumps on his bike and heads into town. On the way, he comes across a crowd gathered around a small boat that’s run aground. Sturges doesn’t stop and keeps on riding, but we stay with the group and Constable Matson (Forrest Lewis) takes in the grim scene. The boat belonged to the Finaldi brothers. And I say belonged because, even though both brothers are still inside the boat, the two have been savagely decapitated -- and both heads are missing!

The town doctor (Les Tremayne) examines the bodies and is amazed at the lack of blood inside the boat. You’d think with that kind of severe trauma it would leave an ample amount, but it’s bone dry. The gathered locals think Matson should interrogate Sturges because the lonely lighthouse keeper has to know something. (Not only is he a crank, but he’s the town creep as well.) Doc tells Matson to move the bodies into the freezer at Kochek’s store until the State Police arrive. As Sturges goes into the very same store for his weekly surprise, Kochek (Frank Arvidson) asks if he saw the boat. Thinking evil is afoot, the grocer thinks the old legends of the monster of the Piedras Blancas are true (hence the title.) Sturges says that it was probably just a freak boating accident. (This was no boating accident!) Kochek replies then what happened to that other couple that disappeared? Sturges ignores the question (and Mr. Sturges, I believe you are going to ignore this problem until it swims up and bites you on the ass,) and asks for his usual supply of meat scraps. (But we’ve got to close the beaches.) When Kochek says he gave them away already, Sturges gets very angry with this and promises that "You’ll be sorry" and leaves. (What the heck does he need meat scraps for? No wonder he’s the town weirdo.)

The old crank then moves on to the local café where he finds his daughter, Lucy (Jeanne Carmen), working behind the counter. He cryptically warns her to be home before it gets dark just as Matson arrives. He asks Sturges if he knows anything about the Finaldi’s accident. The old man says he warned them to stay away from the dangerous surf where they were found, and that’s all he knows. After they both leave, Lucy turns her attentions back to Fred (Don Sullivan). He asks if she wants to come with him to the ocean so he can collect some samples. (Some samples of what is never made clear. I think Fred is some kind of marine biologist for the local university, but this is never made clear either.) She thinks that’s a great idea and packs a picnic lunch.

Meanwhile, Doc and Matson brainstorm on what happened to the Finaldis. Doc thinks it was either a freak accident -- or there’s a lunatic running loose. And he's leaning more toward the later because it appears that someone (or something!) ripped the heads off and then sucked all the blood out of the bodies (using the arteries as some kind of silly-slurpy straw!) He also warns Matson to tell Kochek to keep a lid on all his monster stories or he’s going to start a panic. Back at the lighthouse, Sturges puts out some fish scraps, around the rocks where we saw the monstrous hand. And we slowly realize they aren’t for his dog as he looks woefully toward the sea.

At the beach, for some unknown reason, Fred is stripping for the picnic dinner with Lucy. He then heads into the surf for his mysterious samples. (Oh, that’s why he was stripping. I was starting to get worried.) When he returns, they clumsily recreate the scene from From Here to Eternity. (It isn’t quite as romantic because Fred dang near drowns the poor girl.) Thoroughly pruned, Fred drops Lucy off at the lighthouse. She doesn’t invite him in because of her flaky dad, but promises to work on telling him about them. Fred takes his mysterious specimens and drives off, and Lucy detours down to the beach and goes skinny-dipping. After she runs into the water, some sinister, inhuman hands start sifting through her clothes.

Getting worried, Sturges heads out to look for her. He calls her name and Lucy comes back for her clothes, and while dressing, she hears some funny breathing among the rocks. Spooked, she hi-tails it back to the lighthouse. Once inside, she tells her father what happened, and how she felt like something was watching her. This really spooks Sturges who warns that if she does something so foolish again she’ll go right back to the boarding school, and then sends her straight to bed. (This is pretty funny because I gauge Lucy’s age to be 30 at the least.) In town, the monster’s shadow moves along the main street. Making its way into Kochek’s store, the owner is pouring over his record books. He looks up, too late, and can’t even muster a scream.

The next day, as the Finaldi’s funeral procession moves past Kochek’s store, little Timmy sneaks away and spots some discarded change. Picking it up, he heads to the store for some candy. He finds it empty and calls for Kochek until he spots the dismembered body and flees. Catching up to his mother at the cemetery, breathless, he says Mr. Kochek is dead and doesn't have a head. Matson and the Doc head to the store. Again, there is no blood. With a crowd gathering outside, Matson posts Eddie, his deputy (Peter Dunn), outside to keep everyone out -- except for Fred, and they ask him to come inside because the only real trace evidence they found was a chunk of something that resembles a fish’s scale. Leaving Eddie to move the body into the freezer, the trio take off to Doc's house to analyze their find. After a slow and tedious (and pretty damned ridiculous) examination, Fred says the scales match some fossilized remains of the diplavertabran (or something) found in the caves along the coast. Matson is confused and is about to ask some questions (that I want to ask, too,) when Lucy bursts in saying her father has had an accident.

They find him at the bottom of a cliff, pick him up (and jar his spine around a little more, please,), and carry him back to the lighthouse. He’s injured his arm and leg but nothing is broken. Matson tells him about Kochek’s murder and want to know what Sturges was doing at the estimated time of death. But Sturges won’t cooperate and kicks them out. Doc and Matson head back to town but Fred stays behind to help out. And Sturges finally breaks his silence, a little, with Fred. After he sent Lucy to bed the night before, he wanted to see if there was somebody down in the rocks and must have slipped off the cliff and fell. (And I point out, if he fell off the cliff where they found him, he most certainly would be dead.) When Fred asks if he believes in the monster legend, Sturges clams up again. Getting nowhere, Fred says he might check out the caves along the cove for himself, but Sturges forbids him to go, insisting nothing is there. 

Leaving the old man to rest, Fred asks Lucy why was she sent to boarding school the first time around. She talks about how she used to wander the beaches, all the time, until one day her father forbid her to do it anymore. But one day, she snuck off to the beach and got lost in the caves. After her father found her, the very next day, she was shipped off. Then ten years later she came back. (So she was twenty when she went the first time?) Fred thinks her father is hiding something, which doesn’t make Lucy very happy, and plans on checking the caves out anyway. Still upset with him, Lucy replies that if he does, to not even bother coming back.

In town, the monster has struck again; this time killing a little girl. Matson asks her father where she was headed. Between sobs, he says to Kochek’s store. Doc feels there must be some connection to the store, and when they head over there, find Eddie has disappeared, too. As they search around, several more people come into the store behind them. Matson enters the darkened freezer and is greeted with a monstrous roar, startling everyone else gathered there. (And I’ll admit, it startled me too.) He stumbles back out, grabbing at his chest, as a result of the creature's blow. Then the monster clomps out -- with the Eddie’s head clutched in its hand! One of the townsfolk grabs a meat cleaver and takes a whack at it, but is knocked away and the monster chases the others outside. Rushing to Matson side, he tells Doc to check on the others first. The man with the meat-cleaver is dead, but they find more scales on the blade, and if wasn't obvious enough, they've definitely found their killer. 

Rounding up Fred and few more men for a posse, they go after the monster and track it to the beach, and then split-up to cover more ground. Matson and Fred search along the beach where they find a cave and hear something inside. But when they go in, only find Eddie’s head with a giant crab crawling on it. Disgusted, Fred shoots it. (Take that -- you evil crab you.) With the crab menace out of the way, they hear more gunshots up on the bluff and, too late, find the monster has taken out two more men. With the body count rising, Matson decides to call off the search until morning so they can get more reinforcements.

Back in the lighthouse, Sturges finally confesses to Lucy. Shortly after his wife died, he did find something in one of the caves and started to feed it the fish he caught. Rationalizing that if he fed the monster, it would leave them alone. On the days he didn’t catch any fish, he started feeding it meat scraps. Eventually, the thing wouldn’t eat the fish any more, only the meat. Feeling somewhat responsible for introducing meat into the monster’s diet, and in a sense, causing the rampage, Lucy assures him that’s nonsense. (I don’t know, makes sense to me.) Her father then rambles on that he kept feeding the monster because he was just lonely. (Okay, this is getting weird.) Realizing night has fallen, Sturges freaks out because the fog-light hasn’t been turned on. Lucy helps him out of bed and they start doing the pre-maintenance prep before turning the big light on...

...Which leads us to the "Where the monster came from scene." In town, Fred has some theories -- that don’t make any sense. As the trio postulate on whether it’s a rational animal or not -- because rational animals are more dangerous (Uh-huh, okay Einstein.) -- they decide that capturing the creature will be easier than killing it. (They aren’t really sure if they can kill it.) All they'll need is a large net and some bait. Back at the lighthouse, when Lucy puts out some scraps for the family dog (whoops), a familiar shadow lurks along the lighthouse wall. We then get a big cheesecake shot as Lucy changes into her nightgown before the monster breaks into her room. The monster is polite enough to knock (?) on Lucy’s door, and when she opens it, we, along with her, finally get a look at the monster’s head -- and she faints. 

Yep, we’ve see his hands, his torso, and his pigeon toed feet, and finally his head -- complete with his severe drooling problem. Do we faint? Nope. Just a little deja-vu as there's something about the creature's make-up that strikes us as awfully familiar...

In town, noticing the lighthouse hasn’t lit up yet, Fred calls but no one answers. Worried, they head on over to make sure everyone’s okay. But everyone is not okay. The monster has Lucy cradled his in his claws and is carrying her toward the sea. Sturges spots them from the top of the lighthouse, and even though it is an incredible distance, he throws a lantern at them which gongs the monster right square on the head. (Give that man a cupie doll!) Angered, the thing drops Lucy and stomps back to take out the old man. They meet half-way on the stairway and Sturges empties his rifle into the monster with no effect. He retreats back up the stairs, and the monster follows him up to the top. The others reach the lighthouse and find Lucy just as Sturges makes it outside, on to the balcony, and locks the steel door behind him. He yells at the others, below, to seal the house up and then they’ll have the monster trapped. (But how they gonna get him down?)

Waitaminute?!? Doesn’t that thing live in the water? Then wouldn't it -- ah, forget it.

Although it is nowhere near as known as The Creature From the Black Lagoon, and has been accused of being just a bloody rip-off of said film, The Monster of Piedras Blancas -- despite its inherent flaws -- is a very entertaining film. My Spanish is worse than my German but I believe Piedras Blancas means white cliffs. And the Monster of the White Cliffs just doesn't have the same punch does it?

As stated, the film does have some glaring flaws but the flaws make it more fun. The actors don't embarrass themselves; Lewis is a veteran of countless westerns, and Tremayne has got this down to a science. Carmen is a little old to be playing her part but is sufficiently bubbly as the heroine. And I've always felt that Sullivan was likeable dope because he always plays the same likeable dope. (I think that's a compliment.) He basically plays the same dope in The Giant Gila Monster and Teenage Zombies. And, well, at least he doesn't try to sing in this one.

The script, for the most part, keeps things moving nicely. Some scenes between the actors seem genuine and work well (there is good chemistry here among the leads) while others are stilted and forced -- especially when the sci-fi gobbledy-gook is the brunt of the dialogue. It also grinds down in plot exposition (also known as padding) like the long, gripping scene of explanation as to why the cliffs are white. (For the record: It's because the seagulls keep pooping on them, turning the rocks white, and that’s why the boats can’t see them and wreck.) I also got a kick out of how they kept stacking bodies in the grocery store's freezer. Man, by the end, it had to be getting pretty crowded in there.

Beyond that, there are no real surprises and it's a pretty straight forward 1950s monster movie -- except for one notable exception, and it's the cornerstone of the films notorious reputation and claim to fame. For it's time, The Monster of Piedras Blancas is pretty bloody, gory and gruesome. Yes, the creature carries around a bloodied, dismembered head, and it implies a lot more. A little girl is also killed in the same fashion, beheaded, with all the juices sucked out the arteries. And to it's credit, the film doesn't overplay this hand leaving more to the imagination. If they had pushed it any further, I fear, it would have become laughable instead of gross.

I've got a soft spot for this genre (monster movies), so I am a little biased, but it is unfortunate that this film hasn't had a wider audience because it is pretty good. Honest. Not as good as its bigger and better known brother, mind you, but good enough for this critic anyway.

Posted: 10/05/01. Copy and paste at your own legal risk.

Questions? Comments? Shoot me an e-mail. My dubbing policy.

How our Rating System works. Our Philosophy.