Directed by: John Sherwood
Starring: Grant Williams, Lola Albright, Les Tremayne
It sure seems like all these 50’s sci-fi/horror movies are all the same, but then again, you can say the same thing about all horror movies from any decade, pretty much. Since they’re just so damn cheap and still somehow viable to audiences with the simplest possible characters and plots, there’s really no reason for people to try very hard when they make ’em. So why have I wasted so many hours of my life watching the same shit over and over again? There are some questions which have no answers, and some which I would rather not know the answers to.
A bunch of scientists in lab coats try to figure out why a meteorite seems to grow every time it gets exposed to water, and how it turns people who touch it into statues. It turns out that the rocks eat selenium, and that’s what makes skin, and that’s why it freezes people in place. Also, after about an hour of movie, they eventually realize that it’s water that activates the rocks, despite the fact that it’s the most obvious thing and has been since the beginning of the film. Also it turns out that saltwater will destroy them, so they put a bunch of salt in a lake and blow up the dam holding it back so it destroys all the rest of the rocks. There are no monsters in this movie.
No monsters, but all the junk science you can fit into an hour and a half! It feels like the writer heard some garbage about what skin is made out of, then made a movie about it. Combine that with some shrinky-dinks from space, and there ya go, another dumb movie where some idiots stand around in a lab for most of the film.
Films in Boxes 
Leave a comment