THE GIANT GILA MONSTER

K-tel is a record label that made its name by selling cheap vinyl compilations of familiar hits. With titles like "Super Hits of the '70s", "Disco Inferno" and "Sweet Soul Sounds", they saturated the late night airwaves on local stations with corny ads that featured stiff actors portraying mellow couples in love or funky soul brothers who -- through the magic of a K-tel record -- made every party an orgy of pleasure. Now K-tel brings their spirit of quality for a bargain to DVD.

In 1959, radio actor Gordon McLendon got together with Western character actor Ken Curtis to produce a double feature of monster drive-in pictures. They both took roles in The Killer Shrews, but chose to stay behind the camera for the companion feature (though a few of the McLendon clan fill out the crowd scenes).

Well, when you title your movie The Giant Gila Monster, there's really no sense in beating around the bush, is there? The dour narrator barely draws a breath after describing "the enormity of the West... bleak and desolate" then some typical necking '50s teens get their car swatted off the road and are devoured by the title beastie.

The local hot roddin' teens at Spook's pop stand, including hero Chase Winstead (Don Sullivan) and his French exchange student girlfriend Lisa (Lisa Simone, part of the chorus in Missile to the Moon the same year), wonder at the pair's disappearance, as does Sheriff Jeff (former serial stuntman Fred Graham).

The budget barely provides production values beyond that of the typical educational short of the period, and some of the acting is at the same level, but the script is full of a lot of details that help bring the story to life. Writer Jay Simms may have been inspired by The Blob. Monster pictures rarely pay much attention to the victims, but here the characters take the time to speculate on what may have become of the missing kids.

Our teenage hero is fleshed out as well, a flawed but good hearted kid who supports his widowed mother and crippled sister by working in a garage -- and takes a correspondence course in engineering. Chase has enough problems that he doesn't himself take seriously his dreams of becoming a Christian rock star. Then one day he rescues a drunk driver who turns out to be local rock radio deejay "Steamroller" Smith (Ken Knox), and ends up getting discovered.

But meanwhile, more cars are found wrecked, and their drivers not found at all. Then a fuel truck, and even a passenger train are smashed by the big lizard. The Sheriff suspects the truth, but no one knows for sure until the monster crashes the big sock hop.

Director Ray Kellogg had a busy career both as an actor and special effects man in dozens of films and television shows before he decided to try his hand at directing this immortal double feature. Either feature would be enough to enshrine him in the Bad-but-Good Directors' Hall of Fame, but for the last of his four efforts he chose to direct the even more amazing The Green Berets.

Jack Marshall is credited with composing the haunting Gila Monster Theme. He went on to compose for The Munsters. Don Sullivan may not have set the world on fire as a rock star, but he has several more B-movie classics on his resume, including Monster of Piedras Blancas, The Rebel Set, and the stupefying Teenage Zombies. The not-so-special effects were accomplished with a real lizard, some twigs and pebbles, and a few models.

The print on display here has been run through projectors many times over the years, but is in serviceable shape. The digital transfer looks reasonably good, although the sound could use some cleaning up.

K-tel is enclosing all their DVD releases in generic looking packaging, and the discs lack any documentary extras directly associated with their features, but they still deliver value for the dollar. Each feature is accompanied by a number of shorts, much like an old time Saturday afternoon matinee. Giant Gila Monster comes with the Betty Boop cartoon Betty in Blunderland (1938), in which Betty dreams of going through the looking glass like Alice and having odd adventures. The cartoon has some scratches, but otherwise looks as good or better than those released in the laserdisc box sets from a few years ago, which were stupidly put through a digital "cleaning" process that erased parts of the artwork along with dust and scratches.

The disc also has chapters 7 and 8 of the Republic Pictures serial Zorro's Fighting Legion, in which the "Robin Hood of Old California" gangs up on his enemies with a masked secret society that is uncomfortably reminiscent of the early Ku Klux Klan. Zorro's foe here is Don del Oro, a supervillain in a robot-like golden suit of armor, kind of like Dr. Doom. The image is speckled and soft in places, and the sound is tinny, but otherwise looks great. The plot is a bit confusing without seeing the previous chapters, which I assume can be found on other K-tel DVDs (Killer Shrews has the next two chapters). Perhaps K-tel will release the entire serial as a separate title in the future.

Each feature can be accessed separately via the simple menu, or played through as one program. The menu also has a "Program Highlights" menu, which lets you read a few paragraphs about each film on the program.