The Monster of Piedras Blancas
Tags: murder

Plot synopsis:
The movie opens with a long shot of a lighthouse along the California coast. A reptilian claw comes up from behind a rock outcropping and grabs a metal bowl on a chain. The keeper, Sturges (John Harmon) exits the lighthouse, checks his watch, and prepares to mount his bike for a ride into town. He notices some kids walking along the cliffs and shoos them away, warning them not to come back. The credits roll.A group of people are gathered around a small fishing boat on the beach, gawking. One man observes, "Heads ripped clean off." Constable George Matson (Forrest Lewis) notes that the bodies look like they have no blood. Sturges bikes to Kochek's Store. He gives Kochek (Frank Arvidson), the storekeeper, his list of supplies. Kochek asks Sturges about the Rinaldi Brothers, the two bodies found on the beach. Kochek claims he found them. When Sturges asks about his meat scraps, he is told they were sold to someone else. As they finish business, two men bring the corpses of the Rinaldi Brothers into the store in a wheelbarrow. Kochek puts them in the refrigerator to keep until an autopsy can be completed. Sturges walks his bike down the road to the Wings Café. He goes in to see his daughter, Lucille (Jeanne Carmen) who works behind the counter. Constable Matson is the owner, and Lucy tells her father she has to work late. Sturges is worried about her return home in the dark. He has good reason to be concerned, as he is harboring a grim secret. Lucy assures her Dad she'll be fine, Fred (Don Sullivan) will bring her home safely in his Jeep. Fred is a biology student and talks Lucy into joining him later collecting specimens from the ocean. Constable Matson asks to speak to Sturges before he leaves. He questions him about the Rinaldi Brothers and whether he saw them and knows anything about the circumstances of their deaths. Sturges lies and says he doesn't know anything.Dr. Sam Jorgenson (Les Tremayne) finishes his exam of the Rinaldi Brothers at Kochek's store. He confirms that their heads were cleanly and expertly severed--Death was instantaneous. Kochek tells them of the legend of the Monster of Piedras Blancas. Matson warns Kochek to keep his stories to himself; the town's upset enough already.Fred and Lucy arrive at the beach. She spreads a blanket and sets out lunch. They talk about the investigation. Sturges chains a metal dish to the rocks and tosses a few fish out as bait. He then leaves the cliffs. Matson and Dr. Jorgenson meet at the café. He tells the constable there was one final matter about the autopsy. He says the main artery was such that something pumped out all the blood from the victims. Fred brings Lucy back to work in his Jeep. Matson asks Fred to come in for a talk. That evening Fred brings Lucy home. Sturges doesn't like Fred. She tells Fred she's been away at boarding school for ten years and only recently started coming home for summer vacations. Fred drives off and Lucy decides to go for a swim, instead of going directly inside. She leaves her clothes on the rocks. We see the arm and claw of the creature as it paws her clothes. Her father calls her; she returns from the surf, dresses and goes inside. When she mentions that she had the strangest sensation she was being watched, her father gives her a stern lecture about swimming at night and threatens to ship her back to boarding school. She has no idea her dad has been feeding the creature.At Kochek's store that night the creature enters and kills the shop owner. The next morning the Rinaldi Brothers funeral is underway. The two caskets are brought from the church. A mother tells her crippled son Jimmy (Wayne Berwick) that he doesn't have to come to the cemetery for the graveside service. He picks up a piece of wood and begins whittling. He spots a quarter on the street and retrieves it. He takes his new found wealth into the store to buy candy and calls Mr. Kochek. He wanders around when he gets no reply. Then in the office area he spots the headless corpse and runs from the store straight to the cemetery. He tells Dr. Jorgenson, who is officiating at the service, that Kochek was murdered. They assemble at the store and Matson confirms the death. He asks the Doctor to examine the shop keeper. He tells Eddie (Pete Dunn) to go outside. Eddie is visibly upset and perhaps nauseous. Fred arrives at the store. They look around and try to establish time of death--they estimate 2:00 a.m. Dr. Jorgenson calls Fred over to examine something. He thinks it might be a fish scale, but too large. They decide to return to the doctor's office to perform some tests. Matson tells Eddie to come back in and move the body to the ice room then lock up and go home.At the doctor's home, Jorgenson and Fred examine the scale. Matson is there and is getting impatient and voices his frustration at how long the tests are taking. They tell Matson the scale is similar to an extinct amphibious reptile. Lucy runs to the doctor's house calling for Matson. She found her father at the bottom of the cliffs near a cave and he is unconscious. They pile into Fred's Jeep and race to the lighthouse. Jorgenson, Matson and Fred revive Sturges and move him back to the lighthouse. They set him on the couch. Lucy notices the dog, Ring, is missing. Sturges and his dog are inseparable. Fred tells Matson and Jorgenson to take his Jeep, he will stay with Lucy. Fred tells Sturges that Kochek was murdered and asks about the legend.Matson and the doctor arrive back in town and see a man carrying the body of a little girl followed by a crowd of townsfolk. He places the girl's body on a table in the café. The man is in shock, but apparently the little girl, his daughter, was also a victim of the monster. He does manage to relay that her mother sent her to the store. The doctor and Matson leave to go check with Eddie. They left him at the store after Kochek's death.Fred and Lucy discuss the circumstances of her ten year absence from town at boarding school. Fred insists on searching the caves near the lighthouse. Lucy objects to this, because her father has strict orders that no one is to go in or near those caves. They argue, and she tells Fred he shouldn't come back to the lighthouse again. Matson and a few of the town's people call for Eddie at the store. A small crowd has gathered outside. Matson goes into the ice room. We hear a roar, and Matson screams. He exits wounded, followed by the monster (Pete Dunn in a second role) carrying the head of Eddie in his right claw. One member of the crowd takes a swing at the monster with a meat cleaver. They find a scale on the cleaver later. Matson proclaims, "I guess we've found our killer."Matson takes the Jeep to get Fred. Fred is examining the rocks and finds the chain, but the dish is missing. Matson warns Lucy to lock herself inside. There have been two more murders. Matson finds Fred and tells him about the monster. Fred and Matson leave in the Jeep. Lucy looks in on her father. They arrive at the café and Matson gives Fred a rifle and he grabs a pistol from behind the counter. They form a six man posse and search for the creature. They spot his foot prints in the sand, enter a cave and find another severed head. Two of the posse have been attacked and injured. They decide to regroup the next day with more men.Sturges finally tells Lucy that many years ago he explored a cave and walked many miles to an opening near the lighthouse. He heard something like heavy breathing. The next day he left some fish and the day after they were gone. He left fish daily and then got meat scraps from Kochek to feed the creature. Lucy finally concludes that her father had been feeding the creature all these years. That's why he sent her to boarding school--for her own safety. Lucy helps her dad up to tend the beacon. He tells her to bolt the door downstairs. Lucy goes out to feed her dog. She leaves his food dish outside the door. She doesn't realize Ring is dead.The doctor, Matson, and Fred devise a plan to capture the creature using a net. The creature comes to the lighthouse and forces the front door. He enters and heads for the stairs to the light. Lucy calls out thinking it is her father. The creature turns around. Lucy opens her bedroom door and is startled to see the creature and screams. Sturges hears the screams of his daughter.Matson returns to the Garage and finds the doctor, Fred and the owner working on the net. Matson tells Fred to call Lucy; he did not see the lighthouse light on and is concerned. Fred telephones and gets no answer. Fred and Jorgenson take the Jeep to the lighthouse; Matson forms a posse and meets them later.The monster carries Lucy outside. Sturges see this from the top of the lighthouse. He pitches a lantern at the creature and strikes it on the head. The creature puts Lucy down and walks back to the lighthouse to deal with his tormentor. Sturges meets it on the staircase and fires his rifle into the creature with little effect. It chases Sturges back up the spiral staircase to the light. Lucy runs for help and encounters Fred and the doctor. Sturges gets outside via a steel door and bolts it from the outside. The posse and Fred, Lucy and the doctor arrive at the lighthouse. The creature bangs on the steel door. It forces the door and chases Sturges up a ladder on top of the light. It picks Sturges up and tosses him off the lighthouse. Fred has gotten up in the lighthouse and outside and confronts the monster with his rifle. He notices a flashlight beam from below seems to distract the creature. He orders Lucy to turn on the beacon. The light blinds the creature and as it reels back against the railing, Fred pushes it over with the butt end of his rifle. It crashes into the water below. Fred and Lucy embrace, and we close with a shot of the lighthouse.

Review: You have one of the better amphibious creature costumes designed by Jack Kevan (No zipper!!), a great sea coast location, decapitations and gore, some very decent acting by A-list party girl and pin-up queen Jeanne Carmen, and last but not least, Les Tremayne - He is only in 85% of all classic B-horror/sci-fi films of the 1950s!
John Harmon as Sturges, the crusty lighthouse keeper who feeds the hungry cave-dwelling beast meat scraps from the local deli, does a credible job here as a man who has closed off all emotions to the world, including those of his fetching daughter Lucy (Carmen), in exchange for companionship with the hungry creature.
John Harmon plays a crusty lighthouse keeper who lives with his daughter and secretly feeds a monster of a prehistoric fish-man heritage scraps and fish.
The story is pretty straightforward with everything from one-dimensional characters to the obligatory romance between the lighthouse keeper's daughter and a serendipitous biochemist versed in prehistoric fish species(played by Do Sullivan who you may...or more likely may not...remember as Chase in The Giant Gila Monster...no singing in this one fortunately!).
Very entertaining movie,gives you a real feel for the time it was made.Was one of Don Sullivan's best and makes you wonder, if Steve McQueen could advance from " Blob " what ever happened to Don Sullivan?
My friends and I first saw this movie late on night while camping out in the backyard with an extension cord stretched to an old b/w and the scene where the monster comes out with the head scared us to death!.
In a few minutes the monster comes waltzing out of some industrial size refridgerator carrying some guys head in his hand.....that was all it took....as the blood rushed to my head I did the 50 yard dash to the doors in world record time and never looked back.
But if you're in the mood and want to see a pretty good man in a monster suit movie, this will fit the bill..
Its a rather dull film about a Black Lagoon-type creature who goes around killing people.
The first, when the monster comes bursting out of a door is a moment of shock and horror equal to the similar scene in "The Thing".
In "Keep Watching the Skies", Bill Warren criticized the film as lacking a logical plot and explanation for the monster, but he is wrong!
However dull, a lot of thought went into the plotting of this film and, had the script been better, this could have been a scare classic..
I had never heard of this movie until I met the object of aforesaid Monster at a fan convention here in the bay area a few years ago...
I told her I hadn't seen it, but I'd sure love to, and she said the guy who worked on "Creature from the Black Lagoon" had also done the monster suit for this movie.
When asked about her father's career after "Monster from Piedras Blancas", she said he moved into other types of film, to which a vocal part of the audience shouted "PORN!!!"OK, the film itself is a somewhat better than average exploitation horror flick.
The monster suit, which allows for a great deal of animation and motion, is a wonder -- it easily blows away everything else in the movie, including the much cheaper gore type effects such as decapitated heads.
A lot of the stuff in the movie seems pretty goofy, and I doubt that anyone involved took the film too seriously; it almost comes off as a comedy, kind of like but not as much so as some of Corman's movies from the time (most notably "Not of This Earth").All in all, a good show.
Moreover, Berwick deserves extra praise for his take-no-prisoners attitude: There's one remarkably gruesome moment involving a decapitated head and a few startling outbursts of brutal violence (this movie even goes as far as to kill both a little girl and a cute dog!).
The solid cast do a good job of portraying the entertaining array of quirky and colorful characters: Les Tremayne as the pragmatic Dr. Sam Jorgenson, Forrest Lewis as the baffled Constable George Matson, John Harmon as cranky lighthouse keeper Sturges, Jeanne Harmon as the spunky and liberated Lucille, Don Sullivan as the amiable Fred, and Frank Arvidson as talkative and excitable storekeeper Kochek.
1959's "Monster of Piedras Blancas" remains one of my favorite horror/sci-fi films from my childhood.
The monster, which looks like a nastier version of "The Creature from the Black Lagoon," invades a sleepy lighthouse town.
The superstitious lighthouse keeper is worried for the safety of his beautiful teenage daughter, so he leaves food for the monster, who dwells in a nearby cave.As stated, this was clearly inspired at least in part by the Creature.
A generally underrated monster flick from 1959, The Monster of Piedras Blancas is often compared to the undeniably similar Creature From the Black Lagoon, with this film invariably coming out second best.
Certainly, Creature From the Black Lagoon is a true classic and The Monster of Piedras Blancas rarely equals its more famous cousin, but nonetheless this is a very good little film with a lot going for it on its own terms.
Don Sullivan plays Lucy's boyfriend, Fred, and veteran b-movie actor Les Tremayne is a local doctor.
John Harmon turns in a surprisingly effective performance as Lucy's father Sturges, the local lighthouse keeper, a man with many secrets and who knows more about the Monster than anyone suspects.
The only real weaknesses of the film are its obvious low budget and a somewhat lagging pace that does make the movie feel a bit longer than its short run time of 71 minutes.
But overall, this is a pretty good monster movie that meets most of the genre requirements.
Unfortunately, this is a difficult movie to find, but if you can track it down, the Monster From Piedras Blancas is a surprisingly effective chiller..
In THE MONSTER OF PIEDRAS BLANCAS, a series of grisly decapitation deaths occur in a small seaside town.
Suspiciously, the local lighthouse keeper has been feeding meat scraps to a certain big-clawed creature.
Co-stars Don Sullivan (THE GIANT GILA MONSTER, TEENAGE ZOMBIES) as Fred and Les Tremayne (WAR OF THE WORLDS, THE SLIME PEOPLE) as Dr. Jorgenson..
Yes it is no Star Wars or Close Encounter of the Third Kind but it is a fun film to enjoy from A simpler time and place and if only one could use their imagination and put themselves Inside This film for a little over an hour then they just might enjoy it a lot more.
It's got great atmosphere and pacing and the overall acting is good and the creature Is great for its time but again if you did not grow up in the 50's then most likely you really cannot appreciate this fine film!
A 7ft tall, prehistoric, amphibious reptile terrorises the folk of a coastal town in its search for red meat, which it now prefers over its old diet of fish thanks to being fed scraps by lonely lighthouse keeper Sturges (John Harmon).
After killing several people in its quest for protein (by removing the victims' heads with inexplicable surgical precision), the scaly beast is eventually hunted down by a group of gun-toting locals, but not before it carries off Sturges's daughter Lucy (Jeanne Carmen) in time-honoured movie-monster fashion.An independent horror flick produced by ex-Universal employees Irvin Berwick and Jack Kevan, The Monster of Piedras Blancas was clearly influenced by The Creature From The Black Lagoon (1954), for which Kevan helped create the iconic gill-man costume; Piedras Blancas's monster isn't quite on a par with 'The Creature', however, having been cobbled together using moulds made for earlier films The Mole People and This Island Earth, and the film lacks the excellent production values and great pacing of the Universal classic.But although matters move slowly to start with, threatening to send the viewer to sleep at times, hang on in there 'cos things gradually pick up: Jeanne Carmen provides the film with some 'cheesecake' when she is spied upon by the monster; there's an early example of graphic gore which must've proved quite shocking in the '50s (the monster appears holding a bloody severed head, albeit in black and white); and the final struggle between Lucy's beau Fred (Don Sullivan) and the monster atop the lighthouse is a real hoot.
But instead kills, actually decapitates, anyone that comes near the lighthouse.Some good fear moments when you see the creature from the distance at dusk.
**SPOILERS** There's this blood sucking monster on the loose in and around the Piedras Blancas by the old lighthouse outside of the little sea front town of Windswept.
The monster living in the caves was minding it's own business for years until the lighthouse keeper Sturges, who discovered the monsters's hiding place.
Later when old man was unable to get the monster meat from the towns grocery store owner Kochek ,who stopped giving him free scraps , it just went out looking and hunting the townspeople for it's next meal.
The usual 1950's black & white monster movie with a lot more "meat" to it then you would have expected.
Sturges becomes paranoid when his young daughter Lucy comes home to the lighthouse to spend her summer vacation there from college.It's doesn't take that long when Lucy, skinny dipping outside the Pledros Blancus caves, is spotted by the monster who develops a strong liking for her or was it Lucy's underclothes.
By the time the movie is over the monster had already finished off a half dozen or so other townspeople including the guilt-ridden lighthouse keeper Sturges.
The monster, called Eddie in the movies credits, was pretty scary looking but his movements on land were so slow and clumsy that it was a miracle that he could catch anyone, including himself; as he stumbled and bumbled around the rocks and sand outside his home in the Pledras Blancas.
With the monster in one scene nonchalantly walking out of a store with the head of the store clerk dangling from him claw-like hand and then leaving it in it's cave to be eaten by sea crabs.The ending of the movie was a bit too unbelievable with the monster chasing Lucy to the top of the lighthouse.
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.
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..
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.
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.
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.
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.
***SPOILERS*** ***SPOILERS*** Really fun, enjoyable film about a legendary monster prowling around a coastal town.
John Harmon, usually a supporting character in B-westerns, is good as the lighthouse keeper who discovers the creature.
California coastal community of Piedras Blancas is suffering a string of beheadings to the locals (it literally goes for the jugular), and it's possible the lighthouse keeper (John Harmon) has known about its existence, living in a cavern nearby, and kept it secret.
This kind of film was begging for a Universal Studios budget and a helmer like Jack Arnold to move the plot along more effectively.
A Gothic feel aids in making this more intriguing than the usual low-budget drive-in fare, with some great character performances including Les Tremayne as the doctor and John Harmon as the light house keeper.
Killing by unknown assailant starts to happen in the town near the light house of Piedras Blancas.
Little do the people of the town know, the cause of this incident started when the owner of the butcher shop refused the sale of scrap meat to the light house attendant.
It looks very much like the creature that appeared on the movie "It !
Not a big budget movie, but it has decent story and good acting.
Now, I can say without hesitation, Holy f'ng sh*t!!!.The only thing I can compare it to from the time was watching the Giant Behemoth turn people to ash, and the Monster That Challenged the World chew through a door to get at mother and child, like Jack Nicholson a couple of decades later.
All together, these were and remain, to my astonished eyes, the trinity of blind irrational terror.In a few short years, it would be Horror Hotel that produced the real nightmares, but that image of the Monster of Piedras Blancas, with head in hand, is burned deep into my psyche to this day..
A real nice little scary as hell monster flick that has stuck with me over the years.
This was a nice little low budget film that I grew to know and love.
Lighthouse keeper discovers monster in cave.
Lighthouse keeper starts to feed monster from local grocery butcher store.
Grocery store owner cuts off meat scraps for lighthouse keeper Monster guts hungry and decides to eat up the town.
Piedras Blancas is the name of the point North of there, where the light house is actually located above San Simeon.
There turn out to be the responsibility of a legendary monster, which lives in a nearby cave and is fed by the local lighthouse keeper.
After the monster kills more people, there is a confrontation on top of the lighthouse at the end...The cast includes 50's sci-fi regular Les Tremayne (The War Of The Worlds, The Monolith Monsters), Forrest Lewis and John Harmon.The monster in this movie looks very similar to the Gill Man from Creature From The Black Lagoon.Although a little slow moving in parts, I certainly enjoyed The Monster Of Pidras Blancas and is rather creepy at times too.
Low budget creature feature which pushed the envelope of gore at the time...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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..
Her sex life must have been beyond imagining.John Harmon, as her suitor and (maybe) an oceanographer -- the plot doesn't make it clear -- gives probably the best performance in the movie, right up there with Les Tremayne as the local doctor who is puzzled over the mutilated bodies that turn up at the beach from time to time.
Harmon, on the other hand, sounds almost believable, and doesn't look like a dork either but rather some kind of uncanny triangulation involving Mark Stevens, David Schwimmer, and Peter Gallagher.It's a small seaside town on the California coast, Piedras Blancas, with a nice lighthouse run by the heroine's embittered and mysterious father.
The actual light house is at Point Conception, where the coast takes a sudden eastern bend, and at the time of filming would have been run by the U.
The monster looks like a close relative of the creature from the Black Lagoon only more ridiculous.