Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10 beta 3/9/83; site nsc.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!floyd!harpo!seismo!hao!hplabs!menlo70!nsc!foster
From: foster@nsc.UUCP (Jerry Foster)
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: FAVE SF MOVIES
Message-ID: <704@nsc.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 24-Feb-84 19:37:20 EST
Article-I.D.: nsc.704
Posted: Fri Feb 24 19:37:20 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 2-Mar-84 11:53:18 EST
Organization: National Semiconductor, Sunnyvale
Lines: 43



Along with other obscure sf movies, I would like to  include
"The MONOLITH MONSTERS" as a personal favorite.

Made as one of a plethora of  low  budget  black  and  white
sci-fi films in the middle fifties, this one had no intelli-
gence at all in it (that's  alien  intelligence,  not  human
intelligence,  although  I  sometimes wonder about Hollywood
movie producers).

The movies of the period all had some kind of monster, be it
humanoid, beastial, insectial(?), amoebic, demonic, robotic,
or whatever, beating the stuffing  out  of  the  local  homo
sapiens.

The typical Hollywood title  notwithstanding,  the  MONOLITH
MONSTERS  were  not  monsters  at all, they were ROCKS!  Yes
folks, twenty years before people learned to love and  cher-
ish  pet rocks, Hollywood was showing the world how fearsome
a rock could be!

Actually, they were  crystals  which  came  to  earth  in  a
meteorite  and  did  what  crystals  are supposed to do in a
suitable environment, they grew.....and  grew.....and  grew.
They grew from baseball size to thick cylinders 60 feet tall
in a matter of minutes and then  succumbed  to  a  perfectly
normal  phenomenon .... gravity.  When they got to be a cer-
tain size, they couldn't maintain their  shape  anymore  and
they crashed to the ground, (beating the stuffing out of the
local homo sapiens) and breaking up into thousands of  base-
ball sized pieces which immediately started to grow again.

The catalytic element which caused them to  grow  was  water
(not  too difficult for people to understand and easy on the
budget).  The element which stopped them  from  growing  and
covering  the  earth (there had to be one you know) was salt
(same comment as for water).

The plot wasn't as intricate as 2001/2010  and  the  special
effects  were far short of a Lucasfilm, but it was different
enough at the time to catch my attention.