Jason goes to the Niles Film Museum to see THE MILPITAS MONSTER

It just so happened that it was my birthday last Sunday (yes, Halloween), and I spent it first by napping a few hours after the Indiefest/Cellspace horror movie half-marathon. And then I saw something else (besides me) that was created in 1974--a movie made by high-schoolers in the small Bay Area city of Milpitas.

So I'd been warned literally for weeks to go in with low expectations. But the fact is, THE MILPITAS MONSTER was not as bad as I expected. Yeah, there's not much budget, there aren't many real actors (just a Bob Wilkins cameo), and the special effects are laughable. But there's an energy and sense of good-natured civic pride and self-deprecating humor (Milpitas is described as the Bay Area's "breadbasket" and "waste basket"). Plus they got the mayor and chief of police to show up, and this was back in the time when high school kids could make a movie with a drunk main character/comic relief. Oh, and there's an environmental message or something--The monster comes about from pollution.

This was presented partly in support of the efforts to produce THE NILES MONSTER. Here's hoping that gets made, Niles deserves a giant rodent terrorizing it....maybe that came out wrong.

Running Time: 80 minutes

My Total Minutes: 214,108