The Monolith Monsters (1957)

All cleverness, no character. The closest we get to a real person is the newspaper man, with his wry remarks. Everyone else is barely even a stereotype and the women get the worst of it. Overall, the film feels like a science class video dramatising how research works, complete with sentimental 1950s visions of small-town unity and USAmerican gumption. The saving grace is the diorama shots of the monoliths, especially the one with geologists staring up at the black pillars in the gloaming rain, but shorts like these are few and far between. Oh, and there's an incredibly stupid finale where the conflict is that the characters don't want to save humanity until they get permission from a higher power (the state governor). It'd be smart if it wasn't so sincere.