Creature from the Haunted Sea (1961)

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

A Masterpiece!

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

B-Movie King Roger Corman had already started making some quality films by this point in his career, having made "Fall of the House of Usher" and "Machine-Gun Kelly," but this film feels more along the lines of his earlier schlocky films, such as "Attack of the Crab Monsters" or "The Brain Eaters." The story follows super spy Robert Towne (yes, that Robert Town, who wrote "Chinatown," "Tequila Sunrise," "Shampoo" and other modern film classics) as Sparks Moran / Agent XK150, who offers to help a group of Cuban nationals escape the revolution with their ill-gotten riches, but who is instead plotting to kill them and blame their deaths on a mystical sea creature. But wait! Things get weird when said mythical sea creature actually show up and is actually a real thing! Written by Charles B. Griffith, who'd later go on to write or co-write "Death Race 2000" "The Wild Angels" and "Eat My Dust," the script thankfully doesn't take itself too seriously (some of the Spanish names are tells that they were not taking this too serious: Colonel Cabeza Grande "Big Head" and Isla de Barracho "Island of the Drunk"). However, the production values on this Corman production are so cheap that the film really does look like amateur hour. It also doesn't help when the actors in front of the camera don't have much talent ("House of Usher" had Vincent Price and "Machine-Gun Kelly" had a young Charles Bronson). Overall, this is more interesting to watch as a curiosity than it is as an actual entertaining film.

Once this thing came to a conclusion, I sat for a minute and thought about how I wanted to punch Corman and Griffith in their respective chops for inflicting this movie on me. Based on the lines the actors spout at various points in the movie, this is apparently supposed to be a comedy of sorts, the same way "Little Shop Of Horrors" and "Bucket Of Blood" were horror-comedies. Well, for whatever reasons, those movies worked, and boy this one sure doesn't. Comedy is hard. Timing is everything in a comedy, and a spoof only works if the timing and art direction in it are better than whatever the subject of the spoof is. With its washed out, smeary photography and muddy, barely understandable vocals, and barely-there non- performances, it's obvious in the first minute that this movie is too raw and unpolished to get the timing right. A few more takes, a little bit better blocking, a few rewrites of a couple of the dopier scenes in the screenplay...even a more careful edit to weed out some of the dead air and draggy spots..."Creature" might have been at least mildly amusing. Or if they'd given up on the comedy and done a straight monster flick, it would have been a "5" instead of the "3". "Creature" isn't even especially good for a movie shot in less than 10 days. You can give this one a miss if you see it offered on cable or a late night horror host show.

All you have to do is look at stills of this extremely cheaply made science fiction/horror comedy, and you can see the cheap ideas that went into making it. Yet, as bad as it is, it seems to have been the first of many silly looking sea monsters, this one so obvious that it looks like a giant Muppet. In fact something tells me, that when Jim Henson saw this movie he got the idea of creating Cookie Monster. The plot surrounding the film truly is lame. It has to do with a fake scheme to scare people away by pretending that a sea monster exist in the area, but unbeknownst to the stupid perpetrators of this idiotic plot, there really is a monster, and how he can come out of the water with his coat looking so dry, is one of the most outlandish ideas in these type of films. It's funny that the monster looks more cuddly than scary, even if he is bigger than his victims. The acting, if you can even call it that, is so bad, everybody speaking in mono syllabic terms and acting so childish. When the people on this boat actually land on an island with primitive huts that do look like something out of Gilligan's Island, complete with coconut trees, you know you are in the Land of the Lost. I know that Roger Corman wasn't going for art with these films, only to make a quick buck. There is not a bright idea in the entire film, with the entire cast of adults acting like buffoons throughout, imitating elephants, chickens and big monkeys. The island sequence even has a subplot ripped off from South Pacific that has to be seen to be believed. There is no way even if this was made to be serious that I could take it serious, that everything about it is so silly and juvenile, that I can't believe that any adults that went to see this film at a drive in without a make-out partner could make it throughout the entire film without going to the refreshment stand. One of the characters seems to be trying to emulate Jerry Lewis, and comes off extremely badly. Unfortunately the silly looking monster doesn't even appear all that much. But there are some good laughs at the expense of the film, and I am certainly glad that I wasn't stuck on this island with the bunch of idiots seemingly castaway here. I prefer to take my chances with Gilligan and the skipper.

The movie is a deliberately bad b-rated comedy crime-horror. It was made for giggles and not meant to be a great crime-drama (it simply spoofs crime-dramas).I had a couple of laughs with the film so the movie is not all that bad but it's not all that good either. For me it was missing something; I think it was missing a bit more comedy-horror because the comedy crime-drama seemed to dominate the film. Maybe it was just me expecting more of a comedy-horror since that is how this film's genre is labeled.Don't expect to see the creature/monster often either because you will not. That might be part of my disappointment with the film - not enough monster.There is an overall drabness to the film too - as if there was some other element missing to make the film stand out a bit more. It's not an overly dull film but it is a bit on the drab side.I felt the movie had the potential to be funnier than it really was. It's not a down right awful film but it is not a b-rated film that stands out in the crowd of "bad but good" b-rated horror flicks.I would say this is a good morning or afternoon film for those who would like to watch it for the first time. And, for me personally, the movie really is good for a one time watch just to say "I've seen the film".4.5/10