I think everyone has at least one comfort film, the movie they watch when they’re stressed, or down, or just having a bad day. The one that makes you feel warm and cozy. For some people that’s The Wizard of Oz. For others it might be The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I don’t judge. I have many of those kinds of films; hell I have entire genres that I consider a comfort. I realized this week that I’ve basically been watching comfort genre films for all these double features. 80s Horror, giallos, J-Horror. (I may have mentioned some of these, briefly, in a review of One Missed Call, of all things.)
All of that informs my choices for this week’s double feature, because 50s Monster Movies is ALSO a type of comfort film for me. If it’s got giant insects, mutated humans or alien creatures in glorious black and white with a three-to-five note monster music theme? I’m in. I’ll settle in on the couch with a bowl of snacks and while the afternoon away, safe in the hands of scientists or the military or plucky teen outcasts. I’m sure it’s a throwback, as so many classic horror movies are for me, to being a kid and watching these films at my grandmother’s house. I loved those rainy afternoons and still remember every film with a fondness all out of proportion to their quality.
I also noted that the films I’ve chosen for these double bills have tended to be lesser known examples of their subgenre. Part of that’s down to having reviewed a lot of the higher profile releases, but I think at least part of it is a desire to plumb the depths a bit. See what else is out there, good or bad. That ALSO informs my choices this week, as (despite one of the films having a Criterion release) I don’t think either of these films jumps to mind when talking about 50s monster movies.
This is the last of the double features for a while, so enjoy!
The Medium(s)
I have the Criterion DVD of Fiend Without a Face. Yes, there is a Criterion release of Fiend Without a Face. I’ve got the Robocop DVD from them as well. It was a crazy time. ANYWAY. It looks about as good as a DVD can, and I should really get around to listening to the commentary one of these days.
I watched The Monolith Monsters on Tubi. I actually have the film on DVD as well – part of The Classic Sci-Fi Ultimate Collection – but it’s since been released on Blu-ray (by Shout Factory), and the version on Tubi is of higher quality.
For streaming, Fiend Without a Face is available for subs on AMC+, YouTubeTV, The Criterion Channel and Philo. The Monolith Monsters can be streamed for free (with ads) on Fawesome and Tubi. Both movies can be rented or purchased at the usual online vendors.
Fiend Without a Face
“We’re all human here – we’re not monsters from outer space!”
It’s been a while since I last watched Fiend Without a Face. Mostly I remember the monsters, the glistening, disembodied brains with spinal columns for tails and nerves/blood vessels for limbs. They make an impression!
The setup involves an American/Canadian joint military base in Manitoba. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen any other film set in Manitoba. The base is engaged in a secret operation to boost radar with broadcast nuclear power. If this gobbledygook of science bothers you, the plan to shut down the plant by blowing up the control room (after the control rods are destroyed!) will really upset you. The local townsfolk are already on edge, unhappy with the loud jets and the nuclear power plant, blaming it for problems with their livestock. When locals start showing up dead, expressions of absolute horror on their faces, the fingers quickly start pointing at the base.
Of course this is the 1950s, and the military is not only blameless, but the only hope the town has against an insidious, invisible creature of pure thought. The result of the experiments by a local scientist, the monsters are literally sucking people’s brains out. For much of the film the monster is only shown via effect and sound – there’s a sort of creepy, crackling noise as it moves and knocks things down or tracks through liquid. When they finally do appear visually – due to an increase in the output of the nuclear plant – they’re well worth the wait.
The monsters are stop-motion, which was something of a rarity in the 1950s. They’re suitabley gross and horrifying, flying through the air and wrapping their spinal cord tails around people’s necks. There’s some gore as well, which I remember being a surprise the first time I watched the film. During a tense standoff in an isolated farmhouse several of them are shot, spurting blood and other substances, and one is even dispatched with an axe. The censors were flabbergasted, and there was even a discussion in British Parliament as to why the film was allowed to be released! (The film was an independent British production.)
The film’s plot is a bit unorthodox for a 1950s monster movie in that nuclear power itself isn’t the issue, it’s how it’s used that causes the problems. And even then, only as a side-effect of a completely different “science-gone-amuck” experiment. The characters are pretty cookie-cutter, but the effects are above average and there are some nicely tense sequences as invisible monsters stalk various victims.
Marshall Thompson, who plays the main character, Jeff Cummings, was in another independent sci-fi classic the same year, It, the Terror From Beyond Space. (One of the inspirations for Dan O’Bannon’s script for Alien.)
The Bottom Line
Fiend Without a Face is an enjoyable 1950s sci-fi/horror flick that fits comfortably alongside more classic efforts like THEM! and The Thing From Another World. It’s not the same level of quality, but it has some unique elements – particularly the monster special effects – that make it stand out.
The Monolith Monsters
“The most common material you can find, and yet everywhere this stuff goes, somebody dies.”
The original story for The Monolith Monsters is by Jack Arnold and Robert M. Fresco. Arnold, of course, is the director of some of my favorite 50s monster movies – including Creature From the Black Lagoon, Tarantula and The Incredible Shrinking Man. While The Monolith Monsters doesn’t rise to anywhere near the same quality as those films (perhaps in part because Arnold wasn’t at the helm), it’s still a fun and unique take on the classic 50s monster movie formula.
A meteor crashes into the desert landscape, leaving shards of black, glass-like material all over the place. A local geologist, Ben (Phil Harvey) finds some of the fragments on the way to work, and tries to figure out what it is. That night a windstorm causes a bottle of water to tip over and drip onto the material. The next day his coworker Dave (Grant Miller) finds a ton of the rock fragments in a partly destroyed room at the office as well as Ben, who is almost completely turned to stone.
While Dave and local authorities try to figure out what happened to Ben, a little girl picks up a fragment of the meteorite on a field trip and casually drops it into a tub of water before she heads into her house for dinner. We’ve got a fairly good idea what’s going to happen at this point, but the reveal of a house crushed by a massive amount of the glistening, black stone is still a great visual. The little girl’s parents are dead, in much the same manner as Ben, and the little girl is starting to slowly turn to stone as well.
(To be clear, the scientific gobbledygook explaining why the people are turning stiff doesn’t exactly SOUND like they mean they turn to stone, but that’s absolutely what the movie wants us to think.)
The meteorite material looks very much like obsidian, and is juuuuust strange enough, visually, to make you think it could be from space (instead of just another rock picked up from the side of the road). The special effects related to the initial growth experiments are minor, but well done, with the rocks appearing to react with bubbling mist and “grow” from almost nothing into bigger chunks. Eventually the scientists figure out that it’s water that causes the stone to react and grow – just in time for a rare rainstorm to hit the desert.
At this point the movie transitions from a monster movie into more of a disaster film, because the huge chunks of meteorite – particularly in the crater – erupt into enormous, skyscraper-sized tower for heavy, black stone. And then they collapse under their own weight, spreading more of the material that then also begins to expand… The massive stone towers are quickly multiplying down the slope of a canyon, heading right towards the small town of San Angelo.
The miniature effects are excellent, with the stone monoliths looking appropriately dangerous – crystalline and heavy. One scene of a cluster of the towers growing near a farm lets us know just how bad things are going to get if they reach the town, crushing and destroying everything they land on. The scientists are only too happy to announce the monoliths will quickly threaten all life on earth if they ever expand out into an area with a major water source.
Eventually a weakness is discovered, and the fact the town economy is based on digging salt out of a local salt flat (and is downstream from a major dam) becomes an important plot point.
The Bottom Line
The Monolith Monsters features a unique menace in the 50s monster movie pantheon – rocks! Despite the weirdness of the premise, it’s actually an enjoyable disaster/monster movie with some great special effects that keep you interested, even when the scientific nonsense gets too thick. Great sound effects and slow motion enhance the sense of the monoliths as something massive and dangerous. It’s a nice diversion from giant insects.
The Bottom Bottom Line
Two minor, but enjoyable, entries in the 50s monster movie list! I think I would have been more than happy to watch Fiend Without a Face and The Monolith Monsters on the couch at my gram’s house as a kid, and they more than satisfy the “comfort film” requirement, at least for me. While they have some of the same drawbacks as other monster movies of the time – nonsense science, cookie-cutter characters, some pacing problems between “monster” attacks – they make up for it with some unique monsters and above average special effects.
