It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

In this obvious "Creature from the Black Lagoon" cash-in, the title beast terrorizes a small seaside community. The local lighthouse keeper, Mr. Sturges (John Harmon, "Malibu High"), makes a habit of leaving morsels of meat for It to eat, but soon it's clear that these morsels just aren't enough. So citizens are then found both decapitated and drained of blood. It's up to locals such as doctor / scientist / minister Sam Jorgenson (Les Tremayne, "The War of the Worlds"), his young associate Fred (Don Sullivan, "The Giant Gila Monster"), and grumpy town constable George Matson (Forrest Lewis, "The Todd Killings") to devise a means of neutralizing their nemesis.This marked the directing debut for Irvin Berwick, a former employee of Universal-International who'd just started a production company with his partner, producer Jack Kevan. While it may do the trick for people who just can't get enough of 1950s creature features, it's mostly on the dull side. The screenplay by H. Haile Chace is overly talky, and doesn't have enough good Monster action. (The action is largely confined to the final dozen minutes.) The cast, also showcasing a young beauty named Jeanne Carmen ("Untamed Youth") as Sturges' daughter / Freds' girlfriend, is on the amateurish side. One notable exception is reliable Tremayne, a busy genre actor during this time. The movie does get some points for being willing to kill children and animals, and there's one great, show stopping moment when the Monster swaggers out of an ice room holding the severed head of one of its victims. The Monster is played by Pete Dunn ('Cimarron City'), who has a second role as townsman Eddie. It's a rather low rent creature suit (designed by Kevan), but it serves its purpose.Although it makes good use of locations, and is gorgeously shot by future Oscar nominee Philip H. Lathrop, it just doesn't have a lot of atmosphere. A climactic confrontation is interestingly shot from overhead, but the ending is too abrupt and falls short of real satisfaction.Six out of 10.

1959's "Monster of Piedras Blancas" remains one of my favorite horror/sci-fi films from my childhood. I remember watching this film for the first time after school on N.Y's channel 9 during the early 1970's. It had such an impact on me. Loved the creature costume. (very convincing till this day!) I was quite surprised by the level of gore for a film of that period. The setting of a sleepy California coastal town and the impressive score, added to the films appeal. Some of the acting was fairly decent and the plot simple and straight forward. I understand the film is unavailable on DVD at the moment, but hope to find it soon. It is a must for mine as well as anyone else's collection.

The Monster Of Piedras Blancas is a low-budget monster movie from the golden heyday of low-budget monster movies, the 1950s. By this time, the British had begun introducing an element of gore into their horror movies with the likes of The Curse Of Frankenstein and Horrors Of The Black Museum… and here some of that gore makes it into an old-school American creature feature. While the film isn't especially good in the normal sense of the word, it does rise to a number of scenes that must have been very powerful to the unsuspecting audiences of the day, most notably the scene where the monster suddenly emerges from a freezer at the back of a store with a severed head in its hand.In a quiet Californian coastal town, a couple of fishermen turn up dead in a boat, their corpses decapitated with almost surgical precision and barely a drop of blood left in their bodies. Local store-keeper Kochek (Frank Arvidson) warns that the dead are not victims of a tragic accident, hinting that they have been killed by a living creature, perhaps even the Monster of Piedras Blancas which is a well-known but much-ridiculed local legend. Lighthouse keeper Sturgess (John Harmon) seems particularly upset by the killings and makes a point of telling his daughter Lucy (Jeanne Carmen), waitress in a local bar, to make sure she is vigilant on the way home. Meanwhile, the town constable Matson (Forrest Lewis) works tirelessly with the local doctor, Sam Jorgenson (Les Tremayne), to figure out a rational explanation for the recent deaths. Lucy ignores her father's advice and goes for a moonlight swim with her boyfriend Fred (Don Sullivan), but she can't shake the feeling that someone or something is watching them. Later, more decapitated corpses turn up – one of them a child – and people start placing more credence in the idea that a monster is at large. Finally, the monster shows itself and the townsfolk find themselves up against a seemingly indestructible mutant fish-man with a taste for red meat! For me, the thing that makes The Monster Of Piedras Blancas more bearable than many films of this type is that it tries to pay attention to logic. Admittedly, much of the logic in the film is flawed. For example, the "indestructible" monster falls from a lighthouse into the sea and everyone celebrates its destruction - erm, hold on folks, the monster's almost impossible to kill and it's back in its natural habitat… something tells me this thing ain't dead! However, in others aspects the film does try quite hard to provide feasible explanations for the origins of the monster and the actions of the characters. The monster itself is the best thing about the film – a nod towards The Creature From The Black Lagoon, with a more gruesome face and bucketloads of drool. Alas, there's not much else in the film worth mentioning. It's an extremely slow-moving flick for much of the time, and the years have diminished whatever shock value the occasional gore scenes might once have possessed. There's probably some nostalgic charm in revisiting a movie like this – indeed, a whole generation have The Monster of Piedras Blancas to thank for the first time they saw a severed head in a film – but overall it's not a film that has much else to offer for modern audiences.

Monster of Piedras Blancas, The (1959) * 1/2 (out of 4) Silly Mexican rip of The Creature from the Black Lagoon has a small fishing village being terrorized by a sea creature who likes to cut off heads. There isn't an ounce of charm in this low budget film, which makes it deadly boring and silly. The creature looks pretty good but he isn't on screen until the very end, which makes no sense since the rest of the movie is just boring.As of now this title isn't available officially so you'll have to find it from a trader.