The Monolith Monsters
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| The Monolith Monsters | |
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 Film poster |
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| Directed by | John Sherwood |
| Produced by | Howard Christie |
| Written by | Story: Jack Arnold Robert M. Fresco Screenplay: Norman Jolley Robert M. Fresco |
| Starring | Grant Williams Lola Albright Les Tremayne Linda Scheley Trevor Bardett Phil Harvey William Flaherty Uncredited: Troy Donahue Paul Peterson |
| Music by | Uncredited: Henry Mancini Irving Getz Herman Stein |
| Cinematography | Ellis W. Carter |
| Editing by | Patrick McCormack |
| Distributed by | Universal Pictures |
| Release date(s) |  January 28, 1958 |
| Running time | 77 min. |
| All Movie Guide profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
The Monolith Monsters (1957) is a science fiction film starring Grant Williams and Lola Albright. It is based on a story by Jack Arnold.
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[edit] Synopsis
A meteor crashes near a small town in the American desert southwest. One of a pair of geologists finds a piece of it in a roadway and, not recognizing the mineral, takes it back to their laboratory to study. In the morning his partner finds the lab wrecked and the man himself petrified. It is eventually determined that the substance composing the meteor uses water as a catalyst. If wet it grows into black, crystal-like shafts which absorbs all available silica nearby, including from any animals or humans who come in contact with it. Once all silica is absorbed and grown to its fullest possible height, the shaft becomes dormant, but may easily totter and collapse, shattering into a legion of fragments, waiting to grow entire new shafts at the next contact with water. The original meteor has also shattered all about the area where it crashed. A local schoolgirl on a field trip takes a piece home and puts it in water ... her farmhouse is later found demolished, and the girl near death. She's rushed to the city and kept barely alive in an iron lung. The big problem for the town is a rain storm is on the way.... Our hero races time to find a treatment for the little girl and protect the town from the onslaught of the towering, destructive Monolith Monsters.
[edit] Production Notes
- Exteriors for The Monolith Monsters were filmed in The Alabama Hills in Lone Pine, California. The rugged landscape has been used in many films including Gunga Din, High Sierra, Maverick, How the West Was Won, The Charge of the Light Brigade and Gladiator.
- There is no such town as San Angelo, California. Shots of the town were accomplished by a combination of mat paintings and a street set on Universal's back lot.
- Alternate takes from It Came from Outer Space were used for the meteor crash in the film's opening.
- The effects were created by Clifford Stine whose career went as far back as 1933 and King Kong.
[edit] Popular culture
This film inspired the fictional element Tiberium in the popular Command & Conquer computer game series .
