Label: Olive Films / Paramount
Released 1958
The sleepy little lighthouse community of Piedras Blancas has a big problem when bodies begin piling up (thankfully there's the ice room at Kochek's Store for meats and groceries) and a scale from a thought-to-be-extinct prehistoric amphibian is found nearby. Could this be the work of... The Monster of Piedras Blancas? For a town photographed in black & white, Piedras Blancas is teeming with colorful characters. There's Sturges (John Harmon, Monsieur Verdoux), the lighthouse keeper who makes it a ritual to leave food out near a secluded beach cave for, well, something; Lucy (Jeanne Carmen, Born Reckless), Sturges' zaftig daughter, a free thinker who clearly doesn't pay attention to daddy's warnings about skinny dipping near the cave; Lucy's boyfriend Fred (Don Sullivan, The Giant Gila Monster), a young man more than willing to keep an eye on Lucy; and the dedicated man of science Dr. Sam Jorgensen (Les Tremayne, The Fortune Cookie) who's out to solve the mysterious murders. It will become painfully obvious to Sturges (and the unfortunate inhabitants of Piedras Blancas): never miss a feeding! The Monster of Piedras Blancas, directed by Irvin Berwick (Malibu High), co-stars Forrest Lewis (All That Heaven Allows), Frank Arvidson (The 7th Commandment) and Wayne Berwick (The Naked Monster) and is photographed by Philip Lathrop, two-time Academy Award nominee for Best Cinematography (The Americanization of Emily, Earthquake).