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Lizards in Movies   The Treasure of the Sierra Madre  (1948)   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 movie classic, directed by John Houston, who won Best Director and Best Screenplay Oscars for it. Humphrey Bogart and Tim Holt play two broke Americans who convince an old prospetor to help them mine for gold in the Sierra Madre Mountains in Mexico. They find gold, but bandits, Federales, and their own greed ruin their success. Bogart hides his gold under a rock. Later, Holt sees a Gila Monster crawl the rock and walks over to it, not knowing it's also Bogart's hiding place. Bogart approaches, sees Holt looking at the rock and accuses him of trying to steal his gold. Holt tells him it was an accident and if Bogie doesn't believe it, he can reach under the rock himself and get the gold. Then he starts spouting nonsense about Gila Monsters - they never let go once they grab on to you and if you cut them in two the head will still hang on until sundown, by which time you'll be dead. Bogart starts to go get his treasure, but has second thoughts. The third miner, Huston, comes and turns the rock over with a branch exposing the lizard and the bags of gold. Holt shoots the lizard with his revolver. Because that's what real men do - kill anything they fear or don't understand.... A live Gila Monster is used in the scene. It started to crawl away when the rock was lifted, but then, in a minor goof, after the camera cuts away to show the gun, we see the lizard back under the rock as if it had never moved at all. It looks like they might have used two different Gila Monsters for the scene, since the first one we see going under the rock has a different pattern from the second one we see under the rock.