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Lizards in Movies   The Giant Gila Monster (1959)   Spoiler Alert ! Some of these pictures and descriptions may give away plot details that you might not want to know before watching the film.   This is a campy low-budget horror movie with hot-rodding teenagers and a giant lizard called a Gila Monster that terrorizes a Texas town. Godzilla was made a few years earlier and it seems to have popularized the trend of movies with giant monsters that destroy stuff. Like most monster movies of that era the sets are small models that make the lizard look gigantic as it walks around toy cars and trains. That's why we never see the giant gila monster in a scene with people, we mostly see it in close-ups. The movie also has some side plots about a disabled little girl, a friendly Sheriff, the start of a teenager's singing career, and some drama with parents and girlfriends. A narrator in the beginning tells us that there are vast unexplored desolate regions in the West - lonely impenetrable forest and dark shadows where the dreaded Gila Monster lives. Then we see two teenagers in a parked car looking their about to make out then they suddenly looking terrified, their busted car rolls down a hill, and we see a giant Gila Monster foot. When the car is finally found, there is no sign of the teens. We are left to believe that the lizard ate them along with all the other people whose deaths it was responsible for, but we never see any dead people or blood, even. A movie without blood or dead bodies is not much of a horror movie. We also hear that cattle have been going missing, so the lizard has been supplementing its diet of humans with some beef. The Sheriff tells Chase, the hot-rodding hero teenager (played by a 30-year-old actor), that he talked to a zoologist who told him that "...the gila monster size is controlled like everything else, by a sort of thyroid or pituitary gland. Sometimes a change in diet can throw the balance all outta whack. Either the cells break down too fast or build up too slow and this subset makes either runts or giants out of 'em." The explanation is silly, but at least they try to explain the phenomena and unlike most giant creatures of that era the cause for the gigantism is not due to nuclear radiation. A lot of the action is the same - someone driving a car or truck or hitchhiking sees the giant lizard and then runs off the road or crashes and dies and disappears without a trace. We also see the Gila Monster crawl under a railroad bridge and destroy it, causing a train wreck. At the end the lizard tries to break into a teenage dance party in a large barn. The monster crashes its head through the wall of the barn causing everyone to panic. Was it hungry for teenagers or did it just want to dance? We'll never know because - SPOILER ALERT - they blasted the lizard to bits with nitroglycerine. That shouldn't be a surprise - the monster always dies, unless they're planning on a sequel. Fortunately, this monster dies. The only good thing I can say about the movie is that they used a live lizard and not a fake one or a man in a rubber suit. But for some reason they didn't even use a live Gila Monster, they used a live Mexican Beaded Lizard, a lizard that is similar to a Gila Monster and related to it - they're both in the genus Heloderma - but it's not the same lizard. It's also apparent that they used more than one lizard in the movie when you compare the patterns on the lizards. And one more minor complaint - not that I expect a horror movie to be scientifically or geographically accurate - but the movie takes place in Texas, and neither Gila Monsters nor Mexican Beaded Lizards are found in that state. Maybe they should have consulted the Sheriff's zoologist. Along with the original black and white movie, you can watch a colorized version. It looks better for the most part since the picture is brighter but it makes the lizard look very unnatural with its bright pink coloring. Maybe that makes it a better movie monster. It's certainly better than the CGI monstrosity in the 2012 TV movie remake, Gila!