Roger Corman was the B-Movie master. He knew how to make campy low budget entertaining horror films. Several of his classics include: It Conquered The World, The Little Shop Of Horrors, and X: The Man With The X-Ray Eyes amongst others. Creatures From The Haunted Sea wasn’t one of them.
The story is pretty simple. A crook, Renzo Capetto (Antony Carbone), who comes off as a wannabe Humphrey Bogart, attempts to kill off the Cuban soldiers on his boat so he can steal their gold. In order to pull this off he creates the story of a creatures from the sea. However his plan goes south when a real creature shows up and starts killing crewmembers itself. Narrating the story is American spy Sparks Moran, real name Agent XK150, who is played by Robert Towne, most famous for writing one of the greatest films of all time, Chinatown. Too bad his acting isn’t half as good as his writing.
It’s apparent right off the bat that this film is more intended to be comedy than horror. It has an animated opening sequence and there are great lines of dialogue like “It was dusk, I knew that because the sun was going down.” Not to mention one of the henchmen communicates mostly through animal sounds. All the characters are more charactures, parodies of stereotypical characters you’ve seen in horror films and gangster movies.
Then there is the creature itself. It’s pretty much the worst creature I’ve ever seen in a film, parody or not. It’s like pile of green rages with deviled eggs for eyes. It’s completely ridiculous and certain to garner a few laughs.
The film fails as a horror, ’cause it’s not scary. It also fails as a comedy because despite the cheese, band monster and goofy characters, the story crawls along at a snails pace and the short sixty-minute running time seems to go on forever. Perhaps Corman’s intentions were good, to make fun of the genre he was famous for, but sadly he wasn’t able to pull it off.
The film is presented in 1.33:1 fullscreen and 2.0 Mono sound. The film is presented in its original black and white and a new colorized version. While I generally prefer to watch films in their original format, the color does make the film pop a little more, but not much.
Trailers You get colorized trailers for Plan 9 From Outer Space, Night Of The Living Dead, Reefer Madness, House On Haunted Hill, She and Little Shop Of Horrors.
I love bad cheesy b-movies. I’ve seen several Roger Corman films and enjoyed the very much, but I must say, whether in color or black and white, this film has very little to offer.
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Legend Films presents Creature From The Haunted Sea. Directed by Roger Corman. Starring Robert Towne, Anthony Carbone and Betsy Belle Monahan. Written by Charles B. Griffith. Running time: 60 minutes. Not Rated. Originally released in 1961. Released on DVD: October 21, 2008. Available at Amazon.
