The Monolith Monsters is a 1957 American black-and-white science fiction film from Universal-International, produced by Howard Christie, directed by John Sherwood, and starring Grant Williams and Lola Albright. The film is based on a story by Jack Arnold and Robert M. Fresco, with a screenplay by Fresco and Norman Jolley.The Monolith Monsters tells the story of a large meteorite that crashes in a Southern California desert and explodes into hundreds of black fragments which have strange properties. When those fragments are exposed to water, they grow extremely large and tall. The fragments also begin to cause some of the inhabitants of a nearby small town to petrify. The unfolding story becomes one of human survival against an encroaching unnatural disaster that, if not stopped, could become an ecological nightmare, and pose a threat to all of humanity.