Curucu, Beast of the Amazon (1956)

What a freaking movie. So many twists and turns. Absolutely intense from start to finish.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

"Curucu, Beast of the Amazon" is pretty much what you expect from a movie by this title! Yes, it's cheap, cheesy and pretty silly stuff...and is best for folks who like seeing terrible films.The story begins with one of the silliest looking monsters in film history killing some woman in the Amazonian region. Soon, a burly he-man (John Bromfield) is recruited to find and destroy the monster...and he ends up getting paired up with a head-strong doctor...you know, the feminist sort in the 1950s that talks a good talk but ends up falling for the lunk-head leading man! Along the way, there are a few nice jungle scenes...and some total crap scenes as well where it's obvious they are using old and badly made stock footage. The buffalo charge, in particular, is terrible...and what you'd expect from an ultra-cheapo film like this. The only real surprise is the monster itself....when you learn more about it, it turns out to be a bit of a shocker! But even this isn't enough to make me recommend the film to anyone but masochists like myself who occasionally enjoy a laughably bad movie. By the way, despite what you see in the picture, tarantulas are NOT deadly nor are they particularly poisonous.

"Can't get a man, so she gets a career." So says male chauvinist John Bromfield about the female doctor behind a screen, and flabbergasted when Beverly Garland opens it up, giving the death stare of all death stares. But she's a tough chick, able to withstand huge snakes, spiders and other jungle creatures as she heads into the Amazon with Bromfield to determine what kind of monster or beast...or worse...is attacking the local tribes people. Once the secret is revealed, it should be all over, but unfortunately, there are several more reels to get through.I'll give this credit in the sense that they did their best to find the best color stock footage to match the new footage, blending it in almost convincingly. The jungle settings are pretty but there's really little mystery in this cartoonish adventure. Once again, Garland is a sight to behold, but the creature is nowhere the campy sight of the vegetable monster she came up against in "It Conquered the World". The scantily clad natives are a muscular erotic sight, but unfortunately, this is the type of schlock that turned movie audiences away and put them in front of their newly bought television screens where, when something was bad, at least you didn't have to pay for it.

This film is so bad it is good. Beverly Garland is the only recognizable actor and she is good - but she should have asked the studio to burn all the prints. The script makes little sense, the special effects such as they are are hokey and what little action occurs is not even interesting. I did note, however, that John Bromfield spent a significant amount of time in the film swinging a machete, hacking his way into and then back out of the Amazon rain forest - if you watch closely you will see that when he is moving deeper into the rain forest he is hacking right to left with the machete and when he is retreating out of the forest he chops left to right - so the audience wouldn't be confused. I recommend the film for late night viewing when nothing else is on except infomercials - and then leave it to the viewer's discretion as to which could be more interesting.

Note: *SPOILER* Back in the early seventies this film turned up on "The Late Late Show" and I set my alarm and got up to watch it. After this film was over I was almost sorry I did. The only reason I didn't totally regret getting up at 4 in the morning to watch this was that at least I could truthfully say to my fellow monster movie loving friends that I had seen it. Except for the attractive color photography and real Brazilian locations, this film is a dud in almost every way. The "monster" is silly looking, the acting never rises above adequate and most of the time its less than that, and the dialog is lame. But thats not what irked me when I was twelve, I had seen lots of cheap monster movies with silly looking monsters and I had come to expect that. What irked me was the films cheat ending. The monster is revealed to be at the end simply a man in a costume trying to scare people away. All the fantastic stuff turns out to be a hoax. When will film makers ever learn? Every now and then somebody makes this kind film where the fantastic element turns out to be a trick. Although I can't recall any recent theatrical movies that employed this lately, it still turns in made for T.V./cable/video movies now and then. I can't think of a film, with the exception of MARK OF THE VAMPIRE (1935), with this "Ha! Ha! We fooled ya!" kind of story that was any good. I never liked this kind of film and most people I know don't either, although movie makers think we do. The only kind of people who like this kind of film other than some film makers, are the kind of ignorant self important high brow types who have contempt for all forms of science fiction and horror films. Their attitude is that "there are no monsters, ghosts, aliens etc in real life" so having the fantastic elements revealed to be a trick is supposed to make the film more believable. But it doesn't. In these kind of films it stretches the viewers credibility more to accept that someone could employ successfully the kinds of tricks needed to pull off a hoax of the type shown in these films, than to accept that something supernatural or fantastic is really going on. As in many of these films, the phony fantastic goings on are almost always employed to scare people from what ever it is the hoaxers are trying to keep hidden. Of course, in real life, reports of monsters, aliens, haunted houses, etc., almost always do the opposite. A report of "big foot" or a lake with a monster usually attracts hordes of reporters, investigators, and the just plain curious. So these kinds of films are not more believable. The only thing they do is make the viewer feel cheated.