Secret Basement Lab: June 2020

Poster for the Sam Katzman produced
The Man Who Turned To Stone, 1957.

Monster movies have always needed new fields to farm regarding the menace of their product. Once you've exhausted all of the most prominent literary ghouls and goblins, stretched their source material threadbare with almost-unrelated sequels and spin-offs; once invaders from beyond the stars or beneath the waves lose their impact; once the vengeful spirits of slain lovers no longer successfully haunt the halls of the local theaters, nor the sound of voodoo drums is able to conjure the beat of feet to the cinema, it's time to look for other sources of box office bank.

There is plenty of folklore to glean (or culturally appropriate, depending on whom you talk to) in regards to the animation of inanimate objects via possession by wayward souls or demons, or other supernatural means. Cultures the world over have various poppets, dolls and fetish figures, like the Kongolese nkisi figures, that are allegedly vessels–or prisons, depending on the context–for spirits. We've seen these ideas repurposed into everything from the killer Zuni fetish doll from the 1975 television movie Trilogy Of Terror, to the seemingly endless list of possessed doll/mannequin/ventriloquist dummy films from 1945's Dead Of Night, to the bread and butter of Charles Band's Full Moon Features company with their Puppet Master and Demonic Toys franchises. There is also the Golem. Fairly prominent in the pop cultural zeitgeist, Golem is a word that roughly translates from Hebrew to mean "shapeless mass", and in Jewish folklore, has a plethora of permutations based on the context of the usage; but the one we're interested in here is the one regarding a clay figure brought to life via supernatural means to serve its master. Sort of an earthen zombie if you will.

Paul Wegener as Der Golem.

The concept of the Golem itself was adapted early to the silver screen by director/actor Paul Wegener in 1915 with Der Golem, the first of a trilogy of silent films, followed by Der Golem und die Tänzerin (The Golem and the Dancing Girl) (1917) and, Die Golem, wie er in die Welt kam (The Golem: How He Came Into The World) (1920), of which the final film is the only known to exist in a complete and intact version (see it here). The Golem mythos was revisited in 1937's Le Golem directed by Julien Duvivier, and in a French telefilm in 1967; and in between when the American b-movie boom of the mid-1950s came a-calling, it was looked to again for inspiration.

In 1958, Edward L. Cahn (Sam Katzman perennial who directed Creature With The Atom Brain and Zombies of Mora Tau, as well as classics like Invasion Of The Saucer Men and The Four Skulls Of Jonathan Drake) directed Richard Anderson in Curse Of The Faceless Man, (trailer here) about a calcified Pompeiian warrior who comes back to life to reclaim to current reincarnation of his ancient love. More or less a version of Universal's The Mummy (1932), but with the rock-coated corpse of a dead slave in place of a revived Egyptian. A year prior, we had the Sam Katzman-produced The Man Who Turned To Stone (trailer here) about a group of devious doctors who've found a way to prolong their own existence for centuries by draining the vitality out of other humans, which they currently (in regards to the plot) are doing to girls at a reform school. Without rejuvenation, the docs start to petrify and take on a decidedly Zacherley-esque appearance. That same year, moviegoers were also threatened by The Monolith Monsters, (trailer here) a Universal b-picture starring Grant Williams and Lola Albright, in which a small southern California desert town is menaced by water-thirsty space crystals that petrify (literally) anyone who touches them in contact with water. In 1967 a very Norman Bates-ish Roddy McDowall helped reawaken the Golem mythos with It!, also known as Anger Of The Golem or Curse Of The Golem, in which he awakens The Golem of Prague to do his bidding (trailer here).

The peplum films of the early-to-mid 60s feature plenty of rock men for our oiled up muscle men to battle, like in 1964's Hercules Against The Moon Men and the Mario Bava directed 1961 feature Hercules In The Haunted World.

I suppose the allure of these stone monsters is that they seem invincible, and we the audience are supposed to sit, anxiously watching, wondering how our protagonists are going to defeat something that is impervious to temperature, bullets, fire, wooden stakes, etcetera. When the villain is unfeeling, in every sense of the word, it's akin to trying to defeat Superman; alas, each of the aforementioned creeps have their own Kryptonite which the heroes successfully find, or accidentally stumble into, before the running time is up.

Nkisi Nkondi (Power Figure), from the collection
of the Brooklyn Museum

The list of similar films is far too long to try and collate a comprehensive list of, and ultimately a pointless task. If you're looking for a good monster made of rock movie, the ones listed above should be a good start. If you're more into possessed killer trees, might I recommend From Hell It Came or the infamous Evil Dead.