The Big Picture

The Giant Gila Monster failed to generate scares because it didn’t incorporate a relevant theme that would have given the story more dramatic heft. The film’s lack of convincing special effects and dissonance between the actors and the fake-looking lizard made it a laughable and forgettable monster film. The film’s legacy is that it became a target for ridicule on Mystery Science Theater 3000 and its 2012 remake, Gila!, only highlighted the charm of the original’s 35mm film and real lizard effects.

Horror movies always reflect the era in which they were made. Torture horror of the 2000s featured the U.S.’s practices of torturing foreign citizens while 1980s American horror often reinforced very traditional social norms as a part of the Reagan era’s love for yesteryear. Then there were 1950s horror films, which largely focused on nuclear anxiety. The Cold War was in the air during this decade and the prospect of the world coming to a halt because of nuclear annihilation wasn’t a far-out possibility anymore. Inevitably, horror features were going to capture this anxiety with titles like The Giant Gila Monster.

A less well-regarded cousin to the likes of Godzilla or Them!, The Giant Gila Monster was unleashed on the world in 1959. The feature concerns a series of murders in a tiny Texas town that ends up being the work of a massive hungry lizard. The head of a biker gang, Chase Winter (Don Sullivan), turns out to be the world’s only hope for stopping this creature from destroying everything. On paper, it sounds like The Giant Gila Monster could’ve been yet another 1950s monster film that tapped into the zeitgeist and petrified moviegoers. Instead, all it did was become an instant punchline, including how it seemingly forgot to make its titular beast originate from the horrifying phenomenon that was dominating headlines in the 1950s.

Why Did ‘The Giant Gila Monster’ Fail to Generate Scares?
Image via McLendon-Radio Pictures Distributing Company

In an era where so many genre B-movies were exploiting concerns about rampant covert communism and nuclear anxiety, The Giant Gila Monster stands out as an amusing relic of this decade as a movie that should be about nuclear-based concerns…yet somehow isn’t. Nearly every other movie of this decade that was about ordinary animals transforming into massive beasts that crush towns made sure to have varying levels of recognition of how the very existence of these critters was due to nuclear energy. Even modern-day monster movies like Pacific Rim throw in lines of dialogue explaining the presence of monsters as a result of modern hot-button issues (like climate change). The Giant Gila Monster was such a haphazardly thrown-together affair, though, that it seemingly forgot to incorporate a relevant theme that would’ve potentially given the story more dramatic heft.

Then again, nothing could’ve saved such a hysterical stab at monster cinema. Focusing on a Mexican beaded lizard wandering around miniature sets and adorably ramming into buildings, The Giant Gila Monster is never convincing even by the standards of 1950s drive-in scary films. On the other hand, there is an amusing dissonance between the human performances trying too hard to act like there’s something urgent happening on-screen while a critter straight out of a PetSmart is wandering around on a separate set. There’s just no way anybody involved could’ve thought this would work, which would explain the overall lethargic nature of The Giant Gila Monster. It’s a bit too slow and generic (it’s such an obvious pastiche of Godzilla) to become a truly unforgettable piece of shlock cinema like Laserblast or Plan 9 From Outer Space.

One might be shocked to even imagine an era in which The Giant Gila Monster was conceived as a potential moneymaker and worthy of release, but people are always looking to make a quick buck off of hastily assembled genre cinema. This isn’t a phenomenon limited to just the 1950s, it’s one that permeates every era of American moviemaking. After all, just look at all the significantly costlier dreck Netflix releases on a weekly basis with CG backgrounds even less convincing than that Mexican beard lizard knocking over Hot Wheels cars. The enticing prospect of a quick dollar will make producers and financiers stand behind a lot of bad ideas.

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What Was the Legacy of ‘The Giant Gila Monster’?
Image via Shout! Factory

The Giant Gila Monster may not have worked as intended in the 1950s, but it did provide amusing fodder for an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 decades later. What failed on any level in 1959 became a hysterical target for barbs from the crew aboard the Satellite of Love. There was also somehow a 2012 remake of the movie entitled Gila! that decided to bring super fake-looking CGI to a new incarnation of the story of a scaly beast terrorizing a rural town. This modern project somehow makes one appreciate the charms of The Giant Gila Monster that one might’ve never been conscious of otherwise. Namely, the original was shot on 35mm film, which gives it a way more pleasing look than the digital camerawork of Gila!

Meanwhile, any of the cornball charms of seeing a real lizard knocking over objects on miniature sets is now replaced by a sterile CGI villain. You really don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone and that includes the miscalculated ways cheapie 1950s horror movies tried to communicate that a big lizard was laying waste to a Texas town. Plus, Gila! Being a straight-up remake of The Giant Gila Monster makes it somehow even more of a cynical cash-grab than the original film. Sure, The Giant Gila Monster was obviously just trying to ride the wave of Them! from five years earlier, but at least it made up its own new characters! Boy, when you’ve got one yearning for the “good ol’ days” of The Giant Gila Monster, you know something’s gone haywire.

The modern world always seeps into horror cinema. After all, what’s scarier than the reality we all have to confront every day of our lives? The Giant Gila Monster didn’t confront the specter of nuclear anxiety like so many of its horror contemporaries did. However, it being such a pastiche of movies heavily revolving around the theme of nuclear Armageddon makes it so incredibly evocative of the 1950s and all the horror cinema that could’ve only thrived in that era. The Giant Gila Monster works as a time capsule and a source for unintentional laughs…it just doesn’t work at all as a horror film.