402-The Giant Gila Monster

Film Year:  1959
Genre:  Science Fiction
Director:  Ray Kellogg
Starring:  Don Sullivan, Fred Graham, Lisa Simone, Shug Fisher, Bob Thompson
MST Season:  4

The Movie

Probably the “best” film of Ray Kellogg’s brief directorial career (which also includes double feature compadré Killer Shrews), this week’s film features titular Giant Gila Monster terrorizing a small desert town and eating teenagers who like to “sing whenever I sing whenever I sing whenever I sing…”

Slow as molasses, but features spirited monster mayhem, Giant Gila Monster can be both frustrating and fun at the same time.  One’s opinion of the film might very well be related to whether or not the movie’s shortcomings are annoying or not.  Let’s face facts, the film’s characters are as generic as they come, with the teenage dreamboat hero, who is humble AND CAN SING (Swoon!), local sheriff who strives to understand strange goings on, town drunks that nobody believes, and victim teenagers, in pre-Friday the 13th era innocence.  These characters do very little to stimulate the viewer and the thing that kills the film is that we spend far too much time with them without actually giving a crap about them.  It’s not that the movie doesn’t try, in fact in some cases it tries too hard (leg-braced sister anyone?), but there’s no actual substance to the clichés to latch on to.

But when the Gila monster is onscreen, the film flairs up some good old fashioned forced-perspective monster action.  Gila looks pretty damn good, being an actual Gila monster wandering around model sets.  Budget limitations are often obvious, because Gila has less screentime than Godzilla had in Gareth Edwards’ 2014 flick!  But when he finally does arrive, the movie goes from bore to a hoot.

The Episode

In lesser hands Giant Gila Monster might have wound up a boring episode, though Joel and the bots are certainly not lesser comedians.  A monster movie that feels as dry as the desert it’s set in can be a daunting task to make exciting, but they take the film’s lesser moments and make them worthy of a viewer’s attention.  The drab and uninteresting characters are given some much needed personalities by our riffing crew making our time with them far more enjoyable.  When the Gila monster shows up, the icing is on the cake, because our boys do love to dub our monsters inner thoughts in at their leisure, to pleasing results.

Host segments are mostly small chuckles at best, with the drunk retrospective being the most creative (though I laughed hard at the “Leg Up” montage also).  There’s not one but TWO sketches this week that start strong and dwindle into “the other guys are ruining it for me!” gags, which isn’t even my favorite type of sketch to begin with.  On the other hand, we have Servo and Crow sharing a body and a mildly amusing Invention Exchange, with a cute Sitcom Radio and enjoyable Renaissance Festival Punching Bags.  The climactic letter read brings us the infamous letter that referred to Crow as “Art,” mistakenly referred to as such thanks to a segment in Jungle Goddess.

Giant Gila Monster isn’t a riot, but it mostly rides a steady high and keeps one’s attention.  I forget that I enjoy the episode in the moment quite often, so it does take me by surprise when I do watch it.

And the lord said “Laugh, MSTies laugh.”

Good

The DVD

This episode was released as a replacement for Godzilla vs. Megalon in Rhino’s reissued Volume 10.2 set (for a brief amount of time, it was available individually through Rhino for those who already purchased Volume 10).  Picture and audio is sharp (with a slight digital hiccup in an early host segment), but the star of the show is the first bonus feature, which reunites Joel, Trace, and Frank as their popular MST characters as an apology video.  The shots are filmed against blank screens with backgrounds added in, but it’s a good love letter for the fans.  The one downside is that neither Josh nor Kevin voice Servo, so for Servo’s brief lines in the skit Frank performs him.  Unfortunately, it’s off-putting.  But the skit is funny, and the idea of the “upgrade” by throwing away a perfectly good disc you paid good money for is amusing.  Plus Frank’s line “Toho said ‘noho’ and I thought they meant ‘yes.’” is an instant classic.

There’s also an interview with Don Sullivan, star of the movie.  He talks about his brief career in Hollywood, as well as the much ridiculed songs in the movie (though never mentions “I Sing Whenever I Sing Whenever I Sing”).  He shares some positive feelings about the show, which is always good to hear (in fact he claims Gila Monster is his favorite of his films because it was on the show!).  There are two bonus songs included by him as well.

The final feature is a photo gallery which has been imported from the Godzilla vs. Megalon disc.  Exact same photos, nothing new here.

Shout Factory rereleased the 10.2 box set and these bonus features were retained.