I’ve seen sci-fi horror movies where the threat is animal, and at least one where the threat is vegetable, but 1957’s The Monolith Monsters is the first one I can recall seeing where the threat is mineral.
This sci-fi/horror film opens on a shot of the Earth (well, a fairly crude model of the globe) getting hit by what are supposed to be fiery objects, courtesy of some quaint effects works. In narration, we are told about how the planet is under constant bombardment by extraterrestrial objects, but how most of these burn up in the atmosphere. As the narrator rather poetically puts it, these are “the shooting stars upon which so many wishes have been made.”
Then we transition to the desert, where Department of the Interior agent Phil Harvey stops his government vehicle to put some water in the overheated radiator. He uses a black rock to chock the tires, not knowing this is a fragment of the alien material which will soon pose a major threat. Additional shots show many of these rocks scattered around the area, and these glassy objects look great as they shine in the daylight. It’s almost like something from a Hipgnosis album sleeve, such as that for Elegy by The Nice.
Harvey takes the rock back to the department’s outpost in some podunk town, where he leaves it on a counter overnight. Unfortunately, he also leaves the windows open. It’s like God has a penchant for jokes with convoluted set-ups, like some sort of Rube Goldberg set-up with a cruel punchline. You see, the wind knocks over a clipboard on a high shelf, which topples a container of water, which soaks the rock on the counter below. Even in a desert town, I doubt water is so scarce one would keep some in a lab container like that, let alone keep it on a higher-level surface than a counter.
Still, something has to kick the plot in motion, and Harvey comes downstairs to find the soaked rock growing. Transition to the next day, when fellow Interior agent Grant Williams has returned to the office, startled to find it locked. Once inside, we see his reaction to the carnage before we see the devastation. That’s the key difference between comedy and horror—in the latter, you see the reaction shot before you know what the person is reacting to.
There’s more of the black rocks all around the lab. A weirdly unnerving element of this scene is Harvey, uncommunicative and standing stock-still with his back to Williams. The effect is slightly spoiled by this obviously being a still image. It turns that not only is Harvey dead, but an autopsy reveals he has been welded into a solid mass. This isn’t explained further, but I wondered if his body was solid rock throughout and, if so, how they even did that autopsy.
Who knew rock collecting could be such a dangerous hobby? Unfortunately, there wasn’t time to warn Lola Albright, as a schoolteacher who has just taken a group of students on a field trip into the desert. I’m guessing there aren’t many places in the area one could take the kids on a school outing. I like the moment where, after giving the kids some instructions, she says, “OK, explode”, whereupon they all tear off in different directions.
A little girl (Linda Scheley) in the group takes home one of the rocks. After washing it off, she leaves it in the washtub. That night, the police find that house destroyed, the parents literally petrified and Scheley in shock. Unfortunately, what initially appears to be nothing more than shock is something more sinister, as her body is gradually calcifying.
Analysis of the rock reveals it grows when in contact with water, which we already surmised. As it grows, however, it drains organic materials of their silicates, making them less flexible. I almost used the phrase “less supple” instead, but that read as a bit gross, though I’m not sure why.
The rocks soon pose a far greater threat when some of them end up in water-saturated ground, causing them to grow into ebony pillars several stories high, which then fall over, shatter, and each of those fragments grow into a stories-high crystal, and so on. It’s a neat idea and well-executed through miniatures.
It is discovered salt puts a stop to the growth process. There is conveniently a salt reclamation facility downstream from where the water would come through should the area dam happen to break. And the path that water, now salt water, would take just happens to be in the path the alien rocks happen to be taking. Hmmm…
The acting here is pretty, um, solid all around, though little of the dialog or performances is remarkable. The one standout is Les Tremayne, as the publisher and seemingly sole reporter for the town’s sad little newspaper. He apparently hangs around the Interior office a lot in desperate hopes that, if anything newsworthy ever happens, it will likely originate from there. One moment I really like is when characters are speculating about the distance between the dam and the town, and Tremayne effortlessly rattles off it is two and seven-tenths miles. “If it’s dull or statistical, I’ve written about it.”
I really liked The Monolith Monsters, and have seen it twice so far. It is a unique approach to the sci-fi monster trope. I suspect it is also making a comment on invasive species. Events proceed in a rational manner, with rational people using science to investigate. I’m sure that science is dodgy, but at least it gives us logic we can follow and I appreciate how these characters arrive at their solutions. For a movie with an unthinking threat, I like to believe a fair amount of thought went into it.
Dir: John Sherwood
Starring Grant Williams, Lola Albright, Les Tremayne
Watched on Shout Factory blu-ray