- Directed by John Sherwood
- Written by Norman, Jolley, Robert M. Fresco, Jack Arnold
- Stars Grant Williams, Lola Albright, Les Tremayne
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 17 Minutes
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxohSwDFjxg
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
This one is heavily science fiction with horror elements. There are no actual monsters. Just rocks from space. But it is very well made and manages to be entertaining. And a time capsule of technology and small-town life from the late 1950s.
Synopsis
We get some narration about how meteors strike the Earth every day. Once in a while, some of them strike the Earth and make craters. We watch one impact in a fiery explosion. Credits roll.
Ben’s car overheats in the desert, so he gets out to fix it. He finds some strange rocks on the ground and takes one with him but drives on. We see that when water from his radiator spilled on the rocks under his vehicle, they released smoke. Ben goes to his office in town and takes the sample in. He works for the Department of the Interior. Martin the newspaperman comes over and whines about how boring this town is. That night, the rock gets wet, and this time, Ben sees what happens. The rock grows!
Dave comes to work in the morning, and he’s surprised to find the front door of the office is locked. When he goes inside, he’s even more surprised to find rocks like the one Ben found all over the room, and Ben is quite dead.
Meanwhile, Dave’s girlfriend Cathy takes her grade school class on a field trip into the desert. We see the strange black rocks all over the area here too. Little Ginny takes one of the rocks home, but her mother won’t let her bring it into the house. When her mother calls it a filthy rock, Ginny washes it and then leaves it in a tub full of water.
The doctor does an autopsy on Ben, and he’s been fused into a solid mass. They talk about the strange rock, and Cathy mentions how many of them there were in the desert. Dave thinks the rocks may have something to do with Ben’s death. They drive out to Ginny’s house and find the place has been destroyed. There are, however, hundreds of shiny rocks scattered about. Ginny is alive and in shock, but both her parents are turned to stone, just like Ben had been. Dave and Cathy drive Ginny to Doctor Reynolds, while the police chief remains behind at Ginny’s house.
Dave analyzes the rocks and thinks they’re entirely ordinary silicate, but in a strange composition he’s never seen before. Martin doesn’t even understand why that’s important. Dr. Reynolds calls Dave and says that Ginny’s hand has turned to stone; he’s sending her to Dr. Hendricks, a specialist in Los Angeles. Dave takes a sample of the rock to his old geology professor, Flanders. The professor thinks the rock is a meteorite. Dave says no, there are hundreds of them.
They soon figure out that the rocks suck the silicate out of people and soil in order to multiply. There’s some nonsense about silicon making human skin flexible, which is why the people seem to have turned to stone. The doctor decides to inject Ginny with a mixture of silicates.
Dave and the Professor go out to the desert to find the original meteor, and it doesn’t take them long. That night, they get a thunderstorm in the desert, and… it rains. They soon find rocks that are hundreds of feet tall. They decide to evacuate the town; it’s almost like an invasion!
Back at the hospital, Ginny wakes up; the cure works! When Cathy tries to call Dave with the news, she can’t get through on the phone; all the power in town is off now. But they figure out a way to relay communication through police car radio. Joe Higgins rushes into town, saying the rocks are headed this way fast.
More people die, and the governor issues a state of warning. They use Ginny’s cure to find a way to at least stop the impending stampede of stones. Turns out, all they need is salt to stop the progress of the stones. They decide to blow up the dam, which will make the salt flats into salt water, which should kill the monoliths. Or rather stop the chemical reaction that’s causing them to expand out of control – they are just rocks not living creatures.
The governor is late, so Dave orders that the dam be blown up right now, and they do it, flooding the valley just outside of town. The Monolith Monsters are destroyed.
Commentary
It’s an entertaining mystery with some sci-fi elements. It’s not really an alien invasion, and calling them “Monolith Monsters” isn’t fair either. They’re simply rocks. Rocks that have a strange natural property, sure, but they’re just rocks. They aren’t evil or even intelligent. They’re literally rocks.
The acting is fine; they all take things very seriously and work together to save their town and the world. Still… they’re just rocks.