The Monster of Piedras Blancas (1959)

We kick off near a lighthouse somewhere along the foggy and craggy coast of the Pacific southwest. And as the ominous soundtrack swells, saying we’re in trouble already, we pan over some rocks and catch a quick glimpse of an inhuman hand reaching over an outcropping!

But whatever this clawed hand was attached to quickly retreats when the lighthouse keeper comes outside, a crabby old salt by the name of Sturges, who then yells at some teenage tresspassers, telling them to get the hell off'n his property. And once he's cleared them off, Sturges (Harmon) jumps on his bicycle and pedals toward town.

Along the way, he comes across a sizable crowd gathered around a small boat that’s run aground. When Sturges doesn’t stop, we peel away and stay behind with this group as they observe Constable Matson (Lewis) taking in the grim scene. Apparently, the boat had belonged to the Finaldi brothers; and I say ‘had’ belonged to because even though both men are still present aboard the boat, they’ve both been savagely decapitated! And to deepen this grisly mystery even further, both dismembered heads are currently missing.

Here, as the town doctor examines the bodies, given the mode of death, Sam Jorgenson (Tremayne) -- better known as Doc Jorgenson in the local vernacular, is both amazed and confused by the lack of blood evidence inside the boat. I mean, You’d think with that kind of severe trauma the vessel would be drenched in the stuff, but the interior is bone dry.

Now, since this kind of homicide is above the means of a small town constable, Matson tells Doc Jorgenson to move the recovered bodies into the freezer of Kochek’s general store until the State Police arrive. He then tries to disperse the agitated crowd of onlookers, who’ve already found him a prime suspect and demand the immediate arrest of Sturges. For not only is the old lighthouse keeper a reclusive kook, he’s also the town’s resident boogeyman. (Evidenced by the way he treated those teenagers earlier.) Matson takes this all under advisement by basically ignoring it -- at least for now.

Meanwhile, Sturges arrives at Kochek’s store, where he picks up his weekly supply of sundries. But while ringing him up, Kochek (Arvidson) asks if he saw what happened to the Finaldis. Certain that some evil is afoot, seems the superstitious grocer believes the old legends of the Monster of Piedras Blancas are true; but Sturges scoffs at this notion, saying it was probably just a freak boating accident. [Checks notes, Insert “This was no boating accident!” joke here. And done.] 

But Kochek is unconvinced and presses on with more questions. Like, What happened to that other couple who disappeared recently? The monster got ‘em, that’s what happened, he insists. Ignoring all this blathering (-- and Mr. Sturges, I believe you are going to ignore this problem until it swims up and bites you on the ass), and seeing that his customary order is short, the old hermit asks for his usual supply of surplus meat scraps. Here, when Kochek apologizes and says he already gave them away to someone else, Sturges gets disproportionately apocalyptic over this news and warns the grocer he'll be sorry for cheating him -- he typed ominously, and then leaves in a huff.

Now, before heading back to the lighthouse, Sturges stops at the local cafe, where his daughter, Lucy (Carmen), works as a waitress. Still upset at Kochek’s innocuous blunder, he cryptically warns the girl to be home before dark -- as if her life depended on it. Then, Matson stops in, who asks Sturges if he knows anything about the Finaldi’s “boating accident.” But beyond claiming that he warned the victims to stay away from the dangerous riptide where they were found, Sturges has nothing all that helpful to offer.

After they both leave, Lucy turns her attention back to Fred (Sullivan), who asks if she would like to accompany him to the beach and help collect some more samples. Now, I don’t believe this is a loaded euphemism or anything. No. Even though it’s never really made clear what kind of samples he was after, but I believe we’re supposed to infer that Fred is some kind of marine biologist from a nearby university out doing field research; during which these two have taken a shine to each other, which is why Lucy says this is a great idea and starts to pack them a picnic lunch for later. All caught up? Hooray!

Meanwhile, Matson consults with Doc Jorgenson, who, while not a pathologist, gives his impression on what could’ve happened to the Finaldis. And his two running theories are, one, it was some kind of freak accident, or two, and more likely, there’s a homicidal lunatic running loose, chopping people’s heads off. And Jorgenson is leaning toward the latter because it appears someone -- or something -- literally ripped the heads clean off and, as crazy as it sounds, sucked all the blood out of the bodies, using the exposed arteries and veins in the neck stump like some kind of gruesome silly straw.

With that, the two men mutually agree to keep this evidence and observations between themselves. Here, Jorgenson also warns Matson to keep a tighter lid on Kochek and his fanciful monster stories or they’ll soon have a mass panic on their hands, too.

Back at the lighthouse, a fretful Sturges lays out some fish scraps around the rocks where we saw that monstrous hand earlier. And here we realize those meat scraps he was fretting over weren’t for his dog but were for something else entirely as the sun sets and the old man woefully looks out toward the sea -- and fears what lies beneath it...

As we touched on in our last review of She Demons (1958), Jack Pierce, after serving 15 years as the dean of Universal Studios’ makeup department, who spawned dozens of cinematic monsters, had been squeezed out by management and replaced by Bud Westmore.

At the time, Universal had been taken over by William Goetz in 1946, who worked hard to rebrand the studio as the more upscale Universal International. A move that would ultimately backfire as Goetz’s more ambitious films fizzled and the studio was kept afloat by the cheaper franchises he’d tried to get rid off -- Ma and Pa Kettle (1949), Francis the Talking Mule (1950) and the Abbott and Costello comedies, including Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948). Thus, Goetz was soon out but Westmore stayed on and helped usher the studio into the 1950s.

Now, one of the reasons Westmore was hired in the first place was to solely cash in on his last name. Since the silents the Westmores were a household name in Hollywood. His father, George Westmore, was a Wig-maker to the Stars and revolutionized motion picture makeup with the simple step of individualizing applications for each actor, to enhance their features, instead of the standard, en masse approach.

And following in their father’s footsteps, his sons pushed things even further; brother Monte at RKO; brother Percival at Warners; brother Ernest at 20th Century Fox; and brother Wally at Paramount. And since all of the other prestige studios had a Westmore, surely Universal needed one, too. 

And so, Goetz plucked brother Bud from lowly Producers Releasing Corporation, one of the cornerstones of Poverty Row, where he had worked since 1945, starting with Dangerous Intruder (1945). He would then serve as Director of Make-Up on things ranging from Strangler of the Swamp (1946), to The Devil Bat's Daughter (1946), to Philo Vance's Secret Mission (1947) -- his last feature for PRC.

Westmore’s first picture at Universal was one of those Abbott and Costello vehicles, The Wistful Widow of Wagon Gap (1947). He would also work on several film noir classics -- Ride the Pink Horse (1947), The Naked City (1948), along with a couple seminal westerns from Anthony Mann -- Winchester ‘73 (1950), Bend of the River (1952), and Douglas Sirk's Technicolor melodramas -- Magnificent Obsession (1954), All that Heaven Allows (1955). 

Bud Westmore (left), Metaluna Mutant (right).

But where Westmore would really leave his mark on film history was with his work on Universal’s Creature Feature revival -- another aspect of the studio Goetz had tried to unsuccessfully bury, starting with It Came from Outer Space (1953), which was produced by William Alland and directed by Jack Arnold -- the two main architects of this resurgence.

Now, I use the term “work on” rather loosely. For while Pierce was definitely hands on, Westmore was more hands off once he got to Universal -- unless there was a publicity camera within sniffing distance; and then he was there, brush in hand, crowding everyone else out of frame. “Where billing of creature contributors was concerned, Bud Westmore was the whole show,” said author D. Earl Worth (The Sleaze Creatures, 1995). “Makeup was in his family and Westmore artists shared a last name that enhanced Bud’s administrative status.”

The Gill-Man (left), Jack Kevan (right).

And worse yet, the way the studio system worked back then, the sole makeup credit always went to the head of the department. And so, for the longest time, Westmore was lionized for dreaming up all those wonderful alien invaders and rampaging monsters, stealing credit from several others’ hard work -- one of them being Jack Kevan.

“Westmore didn’t actually do pictures,” recalled veteran cinematographer Phillip Lathrop -- Girls on the Loose (1958), and later, The Pink Panther (1963), Point Blank (1967). In an interview with Ted Newsom (Filmfax, January, 1990), Lathrop continued, saying, “Westmore was the head of the department, but Kevan and those guys were the real makeup men. [Kevan] wanted to step up, be in front, be head of the department maybe, but he had to fight the Westmores of the world.”

A native of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Kevan got his start working as an uncredited assistant makeup artist at the Westmore-less MGM, cooking up designs for the kooky denizens of Munchkin Land, the Emerald City, and all points in-between for The Wizard of Oz (1939); the misanthropic makeup for the Spencer Tracy version of Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1941); and designed the decomposing face of the devious subject matter in The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945).

Kevan then went to work for Westmore at Universal, where he assisted on the makeups for the Frankenstein Monster and the Wolf Man for Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein and once again tackled the mad doctor’s alter ego in Abbott and Costello meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1953). He would also get to bring all of Lon Chaney Sr.’s infamous grotesqueries -- The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923), the Phantom of the Opera (1925), and the (faux) vampire from London After Midnight (1927), back to life via James Cagney in the biopic, Man of a Thousand Faces (1957).

Thus, it was Kevan, with the help of Bill Mueller, Millicent Patrick, Bob Dawn, Tom Case, Bob Hickman and countless other artists and technicians that brought those alien invaders and otherworldly mutants to life in It Came from Outer Space and This Island Earth (1955), got the dinosaurs roaming in The Land Unknown (1957), made the Devonian Gill-Man lust and swim in Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954), and got the monsters ready to dig in The Mole People (1956), along with the atomic mutations in Tarantula (1955) and the bestial throwback Neanderthal Man in Monster on the Campus (1958).

“The only comparable contemporary artists were Ray Harryhausen at Columbia and Paul Blaisdell at American International, whose creations were equally distinctive and personal,” insisted Newsom. “Yet Kevan was never mentioned in the studio publicity, and only rarely shared the limelight with his boss.”

 Jack Kevan (left), Mr. Hyde (seated), Bud Westmore (right).

There are so many apocryphal stories concerning Westmore’s tenure and insecurities -- none of them good. According to film historian Tom Weaver (Horror Film Board, April 21, 2006), Jan Merlin, while working on The List of Adrian Messenger (1963), claimed all the other makeup men would give Westmore the finger whenever he left the room. Another claims Westmore would always give his staff the day off whenever the studio’s publicity department wanted to stop by.

And as the story continues, it didn’t take Kevan long to figure this out and started disrupting these private photo shoots by merely showing up and getting himself into those pictures, too. But what isn’t apocryphal was how Westmore had Patrick fired for stealing his limelight after the studio decided to play up her contributions to the designs on the Gill-Man for Creature from the Black Lagoon -- one of the most iconic monster suits ever created. Don’t believe me? Here’s what the Gill-Man looked like before and after Patrick got involved.

And the craziest thing is, Bud Westmore wasn’t even Goetz’s first choice for the job at Universal. Nope. He wanted his older brother, Ernest Westmore. Unfortunately for Ernest, his twin brother Percival, in a fit of jealousy, conspired with Bud to sabotage this by getting Ernest drunk the night before his interview with Goetz. (Sadly, alcoholism was another family trait for the Westmores.)

"It would take a psychiatrist to figure Bud out,” said younger brother Frank Westmore in his scathing biography, The Westmores of Hollywood (1976). “But knowing him as well as I did, I don't think he ever got over feeling guilty about the way he had become the head of the Universal makeup department instead of Ern … Bud did his work as well as anyone else, but I could sense his insecurity. Whenever someone he had hired began to show signs of independent inventiveness, Bud would either fire him or resort to his famous 'silent treatment,' making the makeup artist's life so miserable in general that he would quit."

Bud Westmore (left), Quasimodo (center), Jack Kevan (right).

According to Newsom, and several other sources, Kevan was constantly chafed by Westmore’s brutal tactics and this anonymous studio policy. “A gifted painter and sculptor, it was his instinct for the grotesque that made Universal International’s monsters of the 1950s [so memorable]: flaring nostrils, gnarled, oversized hands, human-animals that would’ve felt at home on Dr. Moreau’s island.”

“On the Creature pictures, [Kevan] was the guy on set, the Beastie’s Keeper,” said Arnold (Filmfax, January, 1990), who famously directed Creature from the Black Lagoon, Revenge of the Creature (1955), This Island Earth, Tarantula, The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957) and Monster on the Campus.

But Arnold jumped ship to Paramount in 1958 as Universal continued to struggle financially. In fact, things had gotten so bad the studio officially shuttered for a period that same year, selling the studio lot to the Music Corporation of America conglomerate, who would officially take over Universal International completely by 1962 -- rebranding itself as MCA/Universal. In the interim, to cut costs, a lot of contracts were terminated, studio departments were shut down, and employees were laid off, including Kevan.

Meanwhile, Irvin Berwick was another Universal employee who didn’t survive this purge. By the age of ten it became apparent that Berwick was a prodigy when it came to playing the piano, but his true love was the theater. He studied acting under Elia Kazan, but eventually settled into directing plays that he, himself, would star in, telling Newsom, “Since I couldn’t find anyone who I felt could do justice to the lead roles, well, I ended up doing them myself.”

 From Filmfax Magazine (January, 1990).

A talent scout from Columbia saw one of these productions and offered to make him a director for the studio. But while that thread stalled out, fate intervened when Berwick wound up at PRC as a dialogue coach for Lew Landers’ I’m from Arkansas (1944). Berwick had found his niche and would continue to work as a dialogue instructor with Landers. “We did 45 films in five years; that’s nine per year!”

Berwick left PRC for Universal in 1950, beginning with the Louis King western, Frenchie (1950), and he first worked with Arnold on Girls in the Night (1953). “I’ve worked on more of Jack’s pictures than any other person,” Berwick told Newsom. “Eleven films out of 25.” And it was while filming Creature from the Black Lagoon that Berwick first met Kevan. The two hit it off, became friends, and would often discuss their current career trajectories. Berwick still wanted to direct features, and Kevan wanted more control and credit for the work he was doing. And to those ends, since the writing was clearly on the wall at a moribund Universal, the two decided to strike out on their own and make some independent features.

The Grand Island Independent (April 29, 1954).

As to what the inaugural feature for the newly christened VanWick Productions would be about, the answer was obvious. “It was suggested by Creature from the Black Lagoon, of course,” said Berwick. “[Kevan] had done the Creature suit, Arnold had directed those films, and they made a great deal of money for Universal. So we figured we’d do our own monster picture.”

But Berwick, who would direct, and Kevan, who would serve as producer and FX coordinator, and scriptwriter H. Haile Chace weren’t all that interested in subtext, subtlety, or making their monster misunderstood or sympathetic. Nope. The creature for The Monster of Piedras Blancas (1959) was an unrepentant butcher, whose reign of terror was just getting started as we return to the beach, where Fred and Lucy have just wrapped up their picnic lunch.

The boy then leads the girl into the crashing surf, where they clumsily try to reenact the infamous love making scene between Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr in From Here to Eternity (1953). And once their fingers are sufficiently pruned and all the *ahem* “samples” have been properly collected -- if you know what I mean, and as a wise man once said, I think you do, they pack up and Fred drives Lucy home. But she doesn’t invite him into the lighthouse due to her flaky father, who doesn’t know about them seeing each other yet.

But as they part with a kiss, Lucy promises to remedy this prickly conundrum as soon as possible. However, easier said than done as the hesitant girl swiftly detours down to the water for a little skinny-dipping. And after she strips and runs into the surf, those same sinister and inhuman hands reappear and start clawing through her discarded clothes.

Meanwhile, as the sun sets, and with her return well overdue, a worried Sturges calls for Lucy from the lighthouse. Hearing this, Lucy scrambles back to her clothes. But as she gets dressed, the girl hears some strange, preternatural breathing from something hidden among the rocks. Spooked, Lucy hi-tails it back to the lighthouse, where she relates this to her father -- sure that someone was spying on her.

Now, Sturges completely flips out over this debriefing. But he directs his rage not on the spy but at his daughter, threatening that if she ever does anything so foolish again it's right back to that boarding school for her. He then banishes Lucy to the confines of her bedroom for the foreseeable future.

But as a shell-shocked Lucy tries to process what just happened, whatever was spying on her at the beach has since moved on into town, casting a monstrous shadow that slowly moves along the buildings of main street. When this shadow reaches Kochek's store, inside, the owner is pouring over his record books until his attention is drawn to the front door. He looks up, too late, and can’t even muster a scream before the monster strikes.

The next day, as the Finaldi’s funeral procession moves past Kochek’s store, a young boy picks up some discarded change, sneaks off, and heads inside to exchange his loot for some candy. But finding the store empty, Jimmy (Berwick’s own son, Wayne,) calls out for Mr. Kochek -- until he finds his dismembered body and flees with a shriek, eventually catching up with his mother at the cemetery, where he breathlessly informs Mr. Kochek is not only dead but he also doesn't have a head anymore!

Again, there is no blood evidence at the crime scene. And with a sizable crowd gathering outside, Matson posts Eddie, his sole deputy (Dunn), at the door to keep everyone else out -- except for Fred, who’s been asked to come inside because the only trace evidence Doc Jorgenson could find was a chunk of something that resembled a fish’s scale.

Hoping Fred can identify it, they leave Eddie behind to handle the scene and oversee moving the body into the freezer while they retire to Jorgenson’s office to analyze their find. And after a slow and tedious and pretty damned ridiculous examination, Fred says the scale sample matches some fossilized remains of the Diplovertebron -- an extinct, crocodile-like amphibian, that have been found in the caves along the coast near the lighthouse.

Here, a confused Matson is about to ask some obvious questions when Lucy suddenly bursts in, looking for Doc Jorgenson. Seems her father has suffered a terrible accident, taking a fall off the cliffs near the lighthouse, where Lucy found him and then went for help.

The others assist in getting Sturges back home, where Doc Jorgenson thankfully confirms the injuries to his arm and leg weren’t fractures. But when Matson starts asking what happened and where he was during the estimated time of Kochek’s death, Sturges loses his temper, clams up, and kicks them all out. But Fred lingers behind to help Lucy handle her irritated father until he calms down. And when he does, the old man finally breaks his silence:

Seems that after he sent Lucy to bed the night before, Sturges wanted to see if there really was somebody down among the rocks like she said. He then must have slipped and fell off the cliff during this search. Here, I pause to point out that if he really fell off the cliff where they found him, Sturges would most certainly be dead and partially liquefied, making one wonder if he really did fall or if he ran into something “else” that caused his injuries.

But when Fred asks if he believes in the old monster legend that haunts Piedras Blancas, Sturges immediately clams up again -- until Fred offers he might just check out those caves along the coast for himself, invoking Sturges’ wrath once again, who forbids him from doing this, insisting there’s nothing there. With that, they leave the obviously upset old man alone to rest. 

Meanwhile, Fred turns his full attention to Lucy, wanting to know why her widowed father sent his only daughter off to that dreaded boarding school in the first place? Unsure of where this sudden line of questioning is coming from, or where it's headed, Lucy answers carefully, saying how she used to wander the beaches around the lighthouse by herself, all the time, until her father suddenly forbade her from doing this anymore not long after her mother died.

But then one day, she snuck off to the beach by herself again -- only this time, she got lost in the honeycomb of caves perforating the cliffs for an indefinite period. And when her frantic father finally found her, the very next day she was packed-up and shipped-off to that boarding school, where she would spend the next ten years until her recent liberation.

Thus and so, when adding the ominous portent of that story with Sturges’ other weird and antisocial behavior, Fred quickly deduces Lucy's father must be hiding something sinister in those caves. 

Now, obviously, this accusatory conclusion doesn’t sit very well with his new girlfriend, which is then compounded when Fred declares his intentions of exploring those verboten caves anyway -- despite her father’s insistent warnings. And so, now really, very, and totally upset with him, Lucy warns that if Fred does go through with this plan to not even bother with ever coming back!

Meantime, back in town, the mysterious monster has struck again -- this time killing and beheading a little girl. Later, while questioning the grieving father, between sobs, Matson learns the victim was on the way to Kochek’s store when she first disappeared. (And I'm about 96% sure the father was played by Berwick, getting his Hitchcock on.) Thus, with their only lead, Matson and Doc Jorgenson return to the general store, where they discover his deputy has disappeared, too.

Checking inside the walk-in freezer last, Matson barely gets inside before he's greeted with a monstrous roar, sending a massive jolt through everyone else gathered there. (And I’ll admit it, this startled me, too, on first viewing.) Here, the Constable violently stumbles back out, grabbing at his chest where the creature had viciously struck him. 

Then! The monster finally reveals itself -- well, sort of, at least from the neck down and the knees up, who then rampages out of the darkened freezer with the missing deputy’s dismembered head still clutched in its hand!

As everyone else scatters, one of the townsfolk steps up to save Matson, grabs a meat cleaver off the counter, and takes a whack at the monster. But he’s quickly knocked away before he can land another blow. Meantime, as the monster chases everyone else outside, Doc Jorgenson rushes to check on Matson, who tells him to check on the other man first. 

Well, turns out the brave soul with the meat cleaver now has a probable broken back; but they do find more of those scales on the cleaver’s blade. Thus, if it wasn’t obvious enough already, they’ve definitely found their killer.

With that, after rounding up Fred and a few more men, Matson leads his armed posse off in pursuit of the monster, tracking it to the beach. Here, the men then pair-off and split-up to cover more ground. And as Matson and Fred search along the sand, they come upon a cave -- and hear something rustling around inside! Further inspection finds the discarded head of the latest victim, currently being assaulted by a giant crab. Disgusted by this icky milieu, Fred shoots the crab. (Who was innocent, dammit.)

Thus, with the deadly crab menace rectified thanks to the due diligence of some dill-hole, the two men then hear more gunfire coming from further up the bluffs. But they’re already too late as the monster has claimed another exsanguinated victim and critically injured another. And so, with the casualties rising exponentially, Matson calls off the search until morning, allowing them time to gather more reinforcements. (And how long does it take for the State Patrol to get there again?)

Back at the lighthouse, after some prodding, Sturges finally makes a full confession to Lucy: seems shortly after her mother died, her father actually did find something in one of those caves. Rationalizing that if he fed the beast it wouldn’t hurt him, the old man started laying out a buffet of the fish he caught. But on the days he didn’t catch anything, he started feeding the monster leftover meat scraps, which turned out to be a huge mistake. For once it got a taste for red-meat, the thing would no longer eat the fish.

Thus, feeling somewhat responsible for changing the monster’s diet, and in a sense, causing the current rampage, Sturges is assured by Lucy that none of this was his fault. (Are you sure about that?) Her father then rambles on and on about how he kept feeding the monster because he was so lonely after losing his wife, making it some kind of ersatz pet. 

But Sturges snaps out of this stupor when he realizes it’s now dark outside and the warning beacon atop the lighthouse hasn’t been turned on yet. Here, Lucy helps the old man get out of bed, and then assists him up the long and winding stairs.

Meanwhile, back in town, Fred has a few theories that he’s been bouncing off of Matson and Doc Jorgenson -- and none of them make a whole lot of sense as they argue over whether or not the Diplovertebron that Walks Like a Man is a rational, thinking animal; because rational animals are more dangerous, ‘natch. (Right.) And at some point they hit upon the conclusion that capturing the monster would prove easier than trying to kill it -- they’re not even sure if they can kill it after its armored hide shrugged off the meat cleaver and all of those bullets. And so, all they need is a very large net and some bait.

At the lighthouse, while her father works to engage the beacon, down below, as Lucy puts out some leftover scraps for the family dog -- alas, Ring, the dog in question, is no longer with us, and a familiar shadow with some canine blood on its hands lurks along the lighthouse wall. We’re then entreated to a big ol’ piece of cheesecake as Lucy moves to her bedroom -- but she barely has time to change into her nightie before the monster suddenly invades her room!

Now, it should be noted that the monster was polite enough to knock on Lucy’s bedroom door first before barging in (-- seems pretty rational to me, vindicating Fred’s crackpot theory); even waited for her to open it before entering. And here, we finally get a good hard look at the monster’s ugly noggin while the girl fainted dead away at the mere sight of it.

Yep, so far we had only seen its hands, torso, and pigeon-toed feet; and now, finally, the head, complete with its spectacular drooling problem. Do we in the audience faint, too? Nope. Just sensing some acute deja-vu as there’s something awfully familiar about the anatomy of the Monster of Piedras Blancas. (More on this in a sec.)

Back in town, noticing the lighthouse beacon still isn’t lit yet, Fred tries to call Lucy. But when no one answers, fearing the worst, Matson sends Fred and Doc Jorgenson on ahead while he tries to round up some more help. And they’d best hurry, too, because the monster currently has Lucy cradled in its claws and is marching off toward the sea!

Up above, on the parapet, Sturges spots them; and in his panic, even though it’s an incredible distance, he throws a lantern at them, which gongs the monster right square on-top of the head! (Score! And give that man a Kewpie doll!)

Angered by this, the monster drops Lucy and then stomps back toward the lighthouse to kill his former food source. Here, the two combatants square off about halfway up the stairway, where Sturges manages to keep the monster at bay with his rifle until he runs out of bullets. Retreating back up the stairs, the creature follows the old man just as the others arrive and find Lucy.

Up above, Sturges makes it onto the parapet and locks the huge steel door behind him. Yelling at the others below, he says to seal the house up and then they’ll have the monster trapped. Of course, that means Sturges will essentially be stuck up on the roof, too. 

Alas, as the others conspire to get him down with a rope, the monster makes quick work of that door and then closes in on its victim.

Meanwhile, Fred runs inside to help, but only makes it up to the parapet in time to see the monster seize and throw Sturges over the side and to his doom below -- listening as Lucy screams from release to impact. 

Then, when the monster comes after him next, after emptying his shotgun, our hero shines his flashlight into the monster’s eyes; and when this causes an adverse reaction, Fred calls to Lucy, telling her to turn the big light on.

And once the master switch is thrown, and the amplified light washes over the creature, blinding it, Fred clobbers the thing with the butt of his shotgun, causing the creature to topple over the railing and fall into the crashing surf below. And as the monster’s body disappears beneath the waves, the two young lovers embrace. (And are you sure it's dead? I mean, that thing does live in the water after all and -- ah, forget it.)

Often criticized for being nothing more than a cheap and bloody carbon copy of The Creature From the Black Lagoon, but despite its inherent flaws and obvious budgetary limitations, The Monster from Piedras Blancas is a highly entertaining film and not without its own merits. If my Spanish doesn’t fail me, I believe Piedras Blancas means “white cliffs” -- but The Monster of the White Cliffs just doesn’t have the same punch, now, does it? Of course, the reason those cliffs were white in the first place is because they’re all covered in a metric ton of bird-shit. It’s true. The film kills nearly half a reel explaining this fact in great detail.

Now, apparently, there really was/is a Piedras Blancas along the coast of California -- Point Piedras Blancas, to be precise, near San Simeon, which was visited by Berwick and Kevan and their wives while out on a Sunday road-trip, scouting possible filming locations. But while Piedras Blancas served to punch up the title, the actual lighthouse there was unsuitable for what they needed. And so, an alternative location was found about 130-miles south at Point Conception, somewhere between Lompoc and Santa Barbara.

This scouting expedition also led them through the small, seaside town of Cayucos -- Cayucos by the Sea to the locals. And with its idyllic view of the ocean, simple shop fronts, wooden slat sidewalks, flat one lane streets, and an overall sleepy atmosphere, Cayucos appeared to be a place strangely out of time -- timeless even, even for 1959, which Berwick felt would be a perfect spot for a monster rampage.

Cautious at first, Berwick cooked-up a false front, initially assuring the city elders that they were there scouting locations for a soon to be televised ‘nature documentary’ on the local geography. “You don’t like to call too much attention to yourself,” said Berwick. “People may not have approved of us shooting a monster picture in their little town.

“Years later, when I shot Hitchhike to Hell (1977), about a homicidal rapist, a highway patrolman cruised over to ask what we were doing. I explained that I was helping out on a student-film documentary that warned against the evils of hitchhiking.” And then, “He congratulated us on doing our civic duty and drove on. Of course, he had no idea we were shooting without permits, that we were doing an exploitation picture with violence, nudity, all of that. You learn to keep these things to yourself.”

But Berwick needn’t have worried as the Cayocus townsfolk openly and wholeheartedly embraced the production, monster and all, serving as extras -- the part of Kocheck was played by a local, Frank Arvidson, and they even converted the local cafe into a commissary for cast and crew. No, the only problem the production had locally was with the United States Coast Guard -- namely Commander Bob Cannon, who ran the lighthouse at Point Conception.

Basically, Cannon had given them free rein to film all around the location, and they even had permission to shoot inside the lighthouse itself -- the interior rooms, the stairway, and the upper parapets, except for the very top, where the actual beacon was located, fearing it might be damaged. But as the legend goes, Berwick needed to set up the camera inside the lantern panes to get a few shots for his climax after the monster falls to its doom and the two young lovers embrace.

And as the legend continues, according to Berwick, “We needed to make a shot from the inside of the light, through the glass, to use on the fade out. But this commander just would not allow it. So [Kevan] took him to the local bar, started buying him drinks, shooting the breeze, and kept him sloshed and away from the lighthouse, and that’s how we were able to get the shot.”

To finance the film, Berwick and Kevan put their $29,000 budget together piecemeal by getting friends and co-workers to pitch in. Said Berwick, “It was a collection of very small investments, $1000 here, a $1000 there, maybe a few people invested $1500 or $2000.”

And while this was an independent production, Universal International’s fingerprints were still all over it as the studio graciously loaned out equipment and materials, and the film was crewed by a lot of the studios’ current cast-offs -- most of them investors in the feature: cinematographer Phil Lathrop, editor George Gitens, prop master Roy Keys, and sound mixer Joe Lapis. But the long held rumor that Ben Chapman served as the film’s production manager has proved erroneous. Chapman, of course, played the Gill-Man while he was on land in Creature from the Black Lagoon, while Ricou Browning filled the suit for all the underwater scenes shot in Florida.

“I started as a [Director of Photography] in ‘58, under contract at Universal,” said Lathrop in the Newsom piece. “This was one of the first shows I did after that in early 1959. We were all Universal people. We were all like a family; that’s the way it was at Universal back then; the same gaffers, the same sound people, so everybody was used to working together.”

And once the cameras started rolling, the picture was completed just six days later. “We started on Monday, ran through to the next Sunday," remembered Lathrop. "It was done so quickly. I recall we had a couple of meetings at Kevan’s house in Beverly Hills, then hopped into this bus and were off.”

And with this time crunch and budget limitations, Lathrop’s choices on how to shoot the film were rather limited. “Out of necessity, we ended up doing a sort of documentary look to the photography.” This worked out well because the film itself looked great. The set-up and angles are always interesting, and the film is impregnated with a gloomy atmosphere that Lathrop captures perfectly.

“Everybody was working for nothing, a crazy set-up,” said Lathrop. “I never put money into it, because it always takes such a long, long time to get it back.” But perhaps Lathrop should have, because according to Berwick, “Everyone got paid on the shoot, and everyone who had money in the picture made money, which isn’t always the case with these pictures.”

Somewhat strangely, Universal International took a pass on distributing The Monster of Piedras Blancas once it was finished. And so, Berwick and Kevan settled on Filmservice Distributors Corporation, who paired it up with Roul Haig’s low-rent crime drama set in the swamps of the Okefenokee (1959). And to help punch up the advertising materials, Berwick arranged to have Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine bestow upon his picture the first and only “Shock Award,” which came as a surprise to the monster magazine’s chief writer and editor, Forrest J. Ackerman.

“I was walking down a street in Brooklyn,” Ackerman recalled to Newsom. “And I saw a poster for a film with a ‘Shock Award’ on it from my magazine. I had no idea what that was. That was the first time I’d ever heard about it. I think maybe the producer took my publisher (James Warren) out for drinks or something.” And when the film finally hit theaters, good or bad, I don’t think audiences realized what was about to hit them.

According to several reports, for the longest time, Berwick was always reluctant to discuss The Monster of Piedras Blancas -- not wanting to say anything that would offend or draw the ire of his longtime friend and mentor, Jack Arnold, who obviously had influence on the feature. But Arnold bore no ill will toward Berwick or the production and he eventually began to open up about it.

Do I think it was a blatant, wholesale rip-off? No. Not really. No more than Creature was a rip-off of, say, King Kong (1933) or Robot Monster (1953) -- or any other Creature Feature where the monster falls hard for the girl. But there is one indisputable thing that The Monster of Piedras Blancas did steal from the Gill-Man -- and not just him.

Now, if you look closely at the monster as the film progresses, with each metered-out revelation it becomes easier to spot its patchwork origins: the torso and legs originally belonged to the Gill-Man; its hands were cribbed from the Mole People, and its shoulder armor and feet began life as a Metaluna Mutant.

All in an effort to help cut costs, Kevan just reused some of the old molds to cobble his “new” monster together. Only the head was an original piece -- though I would argue this also began life as one of the Mole People. (The egg-shaped noggin’ gives it away.) The head design was purposefully hideous, showing-off the usual Kevan flare, with the heavy brow, squinty eyes, and a toothy mouth held in a permanent, snarling rictus.

But despite the recycling, the monster suit was technically sound and holds up remarkably well on film as the creature buzzsaws through half the cast -- on the rare occasions when you actually do get to see it, that is, as Berwick played it pretty stingy by deliberately keeping the monster off-screen or showing only its silhouette before the climax. “You have to do that for atmosphere,” Berwick told Newsom. “If you brought the thing out right away, there’d be no big fright if you kept seeing it; you’d get used to it. So the first time you really see the monster’s face is when the girl sees it and screams.”

This gamble paid off, I think, with a couple of great shock moments; first when the monster barges out of the freezer, and second, when Lucy inadvertently invites it into her bedroom, drool and all. “It was just water,” said Berwick. “But it works.”

Pete Dunn had the honor of wearing the suit in the film. I'll also assume that's Dunn making the monster's constant war-whoop. Said Berwick, “He was a stuntman, and he desperately wanted a part.” And so, “Dunn also played the [deputy] who gets his head torn off. So, in effect, he’s holding his own head. He was such a bad actor, but the stunt work was great.”

Due to overheating issues, Dunn could only handle being sealed up inside the suit for about ten minutes at a time. Again, the suit was well designed with well articulated appendages, allowing for a lot of freedom of movement, evidenced by the climax, where the monster scales to the top of the lighthouse.

I’ll assume Kevan also sculpted the film’s infamous decapitated head that haunted many a matinee survivor back in the day; and the film used the prop to great effect, swinging it right into the audiences’ collective faces when first introduced. Also loved the bit with the crab feeding on it in the cave. And if the rumors are true, the film could’ve been even more grisly with a scene where we follow Matson into the freezer, where he finds the headless deputy hanging from a meathook, which, alas, wound up on the cutting room floor. Again, if those rumors are true.

And while I did find it funny how they kept stacking all the bodies in Kochek’s freezer -- ‘cuz, man, by the end, it had to be getting awfully crowded in there, and I fully realize the violent decapitations are the cornerstone of this film’s reputation, but the implication of what we don’t get to see is actually much worse. Remember, a little girl was also killed in the same fashion, beheaded, with all the juices sucked out her arteries. And to Berwick’s credit, he doesn't overplay this hand -- or head, leaving more to the imagination. And honestly, if they had pushed it any further, I fear it would have become even more obvious and laughable instead of just wonderfully, wonderfully gross.

Beyond these gruesome flourishes, Chace’s script holds no real surprises and covers a lot of the same ground where other monsters had already tread. The shock moment with the freezer door is borrowed from The Thing from Another World (1951), and the aftermath of the little girl’s death is right out of Frankenstein (1931). But according to Worth, the film did have some ambitions beyond a bunch of severed heads:

“The Monster of Piedras Blancas was a slow-paced but fascinating study of accumulated repressions breaking loose. For Sturges, the monster was a living thing he could co-exist with because both were isolated. The monster exploited their union just to keep its belly full until its palate grew jaded and, after having tasted human blood, savored Lucy’s charms.” Thus, “When the monster wanted something belonging to Sturges it couldn’t have before -- Lucy -- Sturges had to face his dubious ‘friend’ for what it really was.”

That might be grasping for profundity just a tad, but there was also a bit during Sturges’ confession where he might’ve thought the monster was his wife reincarnated or something? Maybe? Sorry. The film gets a little muddy here. But luckily, despite some bizarre motivations, a ton of gobbledy-gook exposition, and a few plot-holes you could drive an armored truck through, Berwick’s cast was able to make some hay out of this nonsense.

Once again relying on old friends he’d worked with before, who would graciously work for scale to help keep costs down, Berwick cast Les Tremayne (Doc Jorgenson), Forrest Lewis (Sturges) and John Harmon (Matson) as three of his leads. All three were a little on the “seasoned side” for this kinda picture but all gave good performances -- Treymane had this kinda role down to a science by now, and they all play well off of each other.

And I’ve always liked Don Sullivan because from this, to The Giant Gila Monster (1959), to The Rebel Set (1959), he always played the same likable and affable dope. (And at least he doesn’t try to sing in this one.) He handles the brunt of the exposition well and, apparently, there were several newspaper accounts in the late 1950s where several Diplovertebron fossils were recently discovered in Pennsylvania, which might have served as inspiration for Chace. 

In fact, one local newspaper ran an April Fool’s Story in 1958, where one of the monsters was alive and well and running amok.

 Berwick? Coincidence? Maaaaaaybeeeee...

Anyhoo, Sullivan also has great chemistry with his co-star, Jeanne Carmen. Born into a family of cotton sharecroppers near Paragould Arkansas, Carmen ran away from home at the age of 13 in 1933. She eventually wound-up in New York, where she got a job as a dancer in several off-Broadway productions, including Bert Lahr’s Burlesque in 1948. 

And over the next few years she would gain both popularity and notoriety with her work as a model and pin-up girl in the likes of Wink, He, Titter and Beauty Parade. And in 1950, the Tropical Fruit Company named Carmen "Miss Orange Whip" as a publicity stunt for their recently debuted Orange Whip fountain drink.

Around this same time Carmen moved to Las Vegas, hanging around with mobsters like Johnny Roselli, where she discovered a natural talent for golf and started hustling on the links before joining up with fellow pro, Jack Redmond; and together, they started touring the country, where Carmen would serve as a trick-shot artist, never missing a put, or teeing off on a ball held in Redmond’s mouth. And when this partnership fell apart, Carmen moved to Hollywood, where she had affairs with the likes of Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra, which resulted in an unwanted pregnancy and an abortion, and became fast friends with Marylin Monroe.

Meantime, Carmen had appeared uncredited as a Venus Beauty in Strip-o-rama (1953), and then made her official big screen debut in Sam Newfield’s The Three Outlaws (1956) -- and, hey, who wouldn’t want to see a movie where Neville Brand and Alan Hale Jr. play Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid? She would also appear in the Mamie Van Doren vehicle Untamed Youth (1957) and as “Tassles Terhune” in the Diana Barrymore biopic, Too Much, Too Soon (1958), before landing the role of Lucy Sturges in The Monster of Piedras Blancas. A role that didn’t require much except show a little skin, scream, and act terrified. But Carmen was up to the task, and all the behind the scenes photos I’ve come across shows she was having an absolute ball.

A few more uncredited roles followed for Carmen -- The Devil’s Hand (1961) and House of Women (1962). And according to Carmen’s own legend, Marilyn Monroe called her the night she “allegedly” committed suicide in 1962. After which, Carmen sort of dropped off the face of the Earth for nearly a decade, resurfacing some ten years later, living in Arizona, raising a family.

Originally, VanWick Productions had the ambition of producing five pictures when first conceived, but Berwick and Kevan only managed one more feature together, the solid neo-noir The 7th Commandment (1961). After that, Kevan got out of the business altogether and started his own cosmetics firm. And until his death in 1997, Kevan politely but adamantly refused all overtures to discuss his tenure in the monster-making business.

Berwick, meanwhile, stayed in the game, producing and directing Strange Compulsion (1964), a psychological thriller about voyeurism, and The Street is My Beat (1966), where a young woman discovers her new husband is a pimp, who plans to trick her out. He would also do the aforementioned Hitchhike to Hell for the notorious Bob Cresse and Boxoffice International, as well as the totally whackadoodle Malibu High (1979) for Harry Novak and Crown International, where a high school student starts sleeping with her teachers to improve her grades, which leads her down the road of prostitution and, eventually, a life as a covert assassin because of … reasons. Said Berwick, “I got a reputation for being on time and on budget.”

Berwick’s last feature was serving as an associate producer on Larry Buchanan’s The Loch Ness Horror (1982), where Lake Tahoe subs in for the highlands of Scotland and a giant inflatable pool-toy subs in for Nessie, which are all wrapped up in a plot too dumb to even try and explain it here.

It should also probably be noted that young Wayne Berwick, who played little Jimmy in The Monster of Piedras Blancas, eventually followed in the old man’s footsteps, too, directing the totally demented Microwave Massacre (1979) and The Naked Monster (2005).

The younger Berwick had also tried for years to get a sequel for The Monster of Piedras Blancas off the ground but the rights could not be cleared with the National Telefilm Association, who first put the film into TV-syndication back in the ‘60s, and who now owns everything. However, the monster did reappear in the TV-series Flipper (1964-1967) -- slightly modified, where you get to see it in color and actually underwater, as part of a monster movie being shot in the episode Flipper’s Monster (Season 1, Episode 30), which was directed by, of all people, Ricou Browning, which, I guess, kinda brings us full circle.

Relegated to lurking in the shadow of its more well known older brother since its first release back in ‘59, The Monster of Piedras Blancas is nowhere near as good as Creature from the Black Lagoon by any stretch of the imagination but it does deserve some time in the light of your TV screen. Or, if you’re in the mood for a road trip, it’s my understanding that the town of Cayucos holds a bi-annual screening every 4th of July and Halloween -- at least according to Berwick. So, you might want to call ahead before committing.

Originally posted on October 5, 2001, at 3B Theater.

The Monster of Piedras Blancas (1959) Vanwick Productions :: Filmservice Distributors Corporation / P: Jack Kevan / D: Irvin Berwick / W: H. Haile Chace / C: Philip Lathrop / E: George Gittens / S: Don Sullivan, Jeanne Carmen, Les Tremayne, Forrest Lewis, Pete Dunn, John Harmon, Wayne Berwick