Welcome to Tubi Tuesday. An ongoing experiment where we dig into some of the weird, underrated, and downright abysmal movies we don’t think our real life friends would let us talk at length about. At the time of writing, this movie is streaming for free on Tubi, the home of Super Bowl LIX!
Directed By: Ray Kellogg
Starring: A Real Lizard That Doesn’t Know He’s In A Movie
Screenplay By: Didn’t look it up. They’re likely dead and won’t be mad at me.
For Fans Of: 50’s sci-fi movies that are actually just about necking in a small town, MST3K, pet lizards
Thing I Find Funny: They blow him up.
If you aren’t going to Tubi to educate yourself on low budget creature features made between the years of 1901 and 2026, then you simply aren’t using the website the way it was intended to be used. A key part of this monster miseducation is checking out at least one where the filmmakers used a real animal on a small set instead of creating the beast out of special effects.
Look how cute this guy is!
Giant Gila Monster is about a, well, gila monster that is mutated to be the size of a small kaiju. It wreaks havoc on a rural town until it is stopped by a couple who barely manage to bring it down. It destroys some stuff, eats some animals, etc. It’s also really boring!
This movie falls into the classic category of “movie where the thing from the cover is just kind of not around much and instead everyone has big meetings to discuss what to do about the crazy thing that is not around much.” I will find a much cleaner way to discuss this genre of film because if we ever get into old-school kaiju movies on this series, we will be referencing it A LOT.
It also has a MST3K episode, that is also on Tubi, if you want to vibe out and see this animal in action but don’t want to worry about silly stuff like paying attention or respecting cinema of the atomic age.
Okay, so why am I covering this one? Because the last 5 minutes kick ass. Spoilers ahead for a movie made before The Beatles formed.
Our heroic couple are trapped in a building besieged by the titular monster. He is only able to get his little noggin through the wall and is just kind of looking at them like “hey guys.”
Then, the protagonist of the movie has the clever scientific idea of stopping the monster by… blowing it up. He sends a car of explosives careening into the adorable lizard and blows it into a million pieces. The film then ends with him literally doing an evil proud smile as he looks upon his handiwork.
It really makes the case that maybe, just maybe, the actual giant gila monster, was man all along.