Creature from the Haunted Sea

1961 monster and gangster comedy (I guess)

Rating: 5/20

Plot: "The most astounding adventure ever afflicted upon man." At least that's what the narrator told me. American gangster Renzo, for reasons that I never completely understood, finds himself on a boat with his posse and a handful of Cubans and the Cuban National Treasury. He decides to unload the Cubans one-by-one and blame it on a sea creature that, according to legend, roams the waters. He doesn't realize that a very real muppet is roaming the waters and helping him in his task.

Another Corman picture, one in which Roger really takes the piss. There was no way they worked on this for more than a week, probably while they were still writing the script. I knew I was in for something goofy while watching the animated credits during which a ridiculously harmlesss sea thing runs comically across the screen. But I still didn't realize this was even a comedy until it just got to the point where it was too ludicrous not to be one. The gangsters meet the Cubans in a rainforest after they drive to the destination in a convertible, a limo, and a Volkswagon bus. For about five minutes, I couldn't figure out what was going on because I couldn't understand what anybody was saying thanks to bad sound and thick accents. I did catch a character say, "Do you understand?" which made me answer back "No, not at all." I really need to stop talking to the movies I watch. Then some things happen and a Volkswagon bug comes along and there's a chase scene through the jungle that makes that chase scene in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull look like high art. I was still clueless, but then they ended up on the boat and everything calmed down a little bit. I had to pause the movie to take a breath. Dopiness abounds in this one. Nothing about the plot really makes that much sense. You have a CIA agent (also the narrator) working undercover with the gangsters, but he never seems to be invited to their meetings. He listens at the door, narrates that he can't understand anything that they're saying, and then is seen listening at the door anyway for several subsequent scenes anyway. He also says, "But my real name is XK150," at one point which is interesting because I almost named one of my children that. Another enlightening bit of narration: "It was dusk; I could tell because the sun was going down." None of the other characters make sense either. Renzo is pretty much a low-budget Bogart, something like a Humphrey clone that went horribly wrong and was discarded in a dumpster outside the laboratory but Corman came along and decided to use him anyway. Speaking of Bogie, there's a gang member called Happy Jack Manahan who is supposed to perpetually smile because of muscle spasms from too many Bogart pictures. I don't even know what that means, but I do know the character doesn't even smile that much in the movie. The most nonsensical character, and the character who represented the moment when Corman's tongue actually penetrated his cheek and wiggled freely in the air, was a guy whose dialogue was mostly animal imitations including "the mating call of the Himalayan Yak." The characters forget each other's names, run into each other, and butcher their lines, all things that would make an ordinary director yell "Cut!" But Corman is no ordinary director! The excellent Fred Katz (Little Shop of Horrors) provides some interesting music that at times clashes with what you see on the screen. And I haven't even talked about the frightening monster yet!



Hell yeah! I would have expected this thing to steal my cookies rather than feel in danger because of it, and I don't know how the actors kept from laughing. Maybe that's why most of the creature's appearances involved it sneaking up on the characters so that they wouldn't see him and start laughing. There were some great underwater scenes with this thing, a lot of them blocked by large fish that would swim in front of the camera. 5/20 might be a little high for this film; however, it is a comedy that made me laugh. Maybe my grade is even a little harsh. Regardless, this deepens my appreciation for the great Roger Corman.