“It’s never late until the sun comes up.”

Those words are spoken in the 1958 film, The Hideous Sun Demon.  Sultry pianist Trudy (Nan Peterson) may just be talking about her own nocturnal lifestyle and her job as the entertainment at a bar but those words also have a double meaning to scientist Gil McKenna (Robert Clarke).  Whenever the sun comes up, Gil is transformed into the Hideous Sun Demon!

In theory, of course, this is an interesting take on the werewolf legend or even a traditional vampire tale.  Typically, monsters aren’t supposed to come out until the sun goes down and they can move under the cover of darkness.  The werewolf is transformed by the moonlight.  The vampire is destroyed by the sun.  (Or, at least, he used to be.  Largely due to authorial laziness, many modern vampire tales have abandoned the whole idea of not being able to go out during the day.)  Gil, however, reverses the trend.  By night, he’s a handsome and brooding scientist.  By day, he’s not just the sun demon.  He’s the …. HIDEOUS SUN DEMON!

(Seriously, that can’t be good for his self-esteem.)

Like all great monsters, Gil doesn’t want to be the sun demon.  He tries to stay in his house until night falls so that he won’t be transformed into a monster.  But it’s difficult when he finds himself talking to Trudy and getting lost in their conversation.  The beach looks so nice at night but it looks even better at dawn!

Why is Gil found himself in this position?  It won’t shock you to know that Gil was once a research scientist who was working a new radioactive isotope.  That’s right …. it was the radiation!  In the 50s and the 60s, the radiation was blamed for just about everything.  There was literally nothing that the radiation couldn’t do.  The radiation woke up Godzilla.  The radiation turned a tree stump into a walking monster.  The radiation caused Col. Glen Manning to become the Amazing Colossal Man.  Wherever there was radiation, you could be sure that giant animals and deformed monsters would follow.  Tor Johnson was just fine until he drove out to Yucca Flats.  The aliens were so concerned about man’s love for radiation that they decided they had no choice but to raise the dead in an attempt to stop us from exploding atoms and the sunlight itself.  Some scientisteven  suspected that radiation — in this case, space radiation — led the first zombie apocalypse.  (Regardless, they were all messed up.)  In fact, the only thing that couldn’t be stopped by radiation was the Martian invasion.  We had to depend on good old germs for that!

As for Gil, he’s got a lot of scientists working on a cure for his condition but he knows it’s hopeless and he’s pretty bitter about it.  Poor guy.  I may not turn into a demon but I do have red hair so I could slightly relate to his feelings.  Redheads don’t tan as much as we just burn.  I guess that’s one reason why I love this time of year.  The skies are full of clouds and one can safely walk around during the daylight hours.

As for The Hideous Sun Demon, it is a ludicrous and fun B-movie, a quick 74-minute beach romp with a convincing performance from Robert Clarke and an effective monster costume.  The scientists investigating Gil’s case are all extremely sober while Gil is extremely mopey and Trudy is extremely sultry and George (Peter Similuk), a bar patron who also likes Trudy, is a true middle-aged 50s tough guy.  It’s very much a film for the 50s drive-in crowd and all the more entertaining because of it.