El monstruo asesino

Here's a monster movie that truly belongs in the POS file. Sometimes even top-bill actors and actresses sometimes get rooked into doing POS movies (prime example: Halle Barry and 'Cat Woman') and for 'Monstroid', it was James Mitchum and John Carradine. The director, Kenneth Hartford, starred his own kids in the movie and gave them top billing with Mitchum and Carradine to add insult to injury.

This steaming pile of doo-doo is about a big, bad American company operating a chemical plant in Colombia. The plant has been dumping untreated chemical waste into the local lake for years and of course the company execs don't care. The chemical waste has somehow spawned a rubber monster to appear from its depths, whereupon it begins chomping down on bikini-clad harlots and drunken fishermen. The company execs devise a hare-brained plan to kill the creature with a lamb carcass stuffed full of dynamite pulled along by a helicopter. No, really... I kid you not...

This is a really awful film. It is tedious and ridiculous. The file I saw was pulled off of the public domain films section of http://www.archive.org so the quality was quite poor. Even if I could have seen the master copy, however, I'm sure the film would have sucked just as bad. Most likely, John Carradine and James Mitchum cashed their checks and got falling-down drunk after this POS finally wrapped.

Where can we begin... This film starts off in Colombia with a young couple dancing to festive music in the night. As is natural in this situation, their frolicking is interrupted as the man is attacked and killed by a shadowy fish/lizard creature. Que loud scream and..."MONSTER". While the begining is far from unique, the camera work gave me some nostalgic vibes from similar 70's films and I thought that maybe, just maybe there was hope for this diamond in the rough. Alas...I suppose when you buy a 30 year old video tape for a dollar at an antique store, you get what you pay for. After a brief intro telling us how this is all based on a "true" story, we are introduced to a group of business men discussing the state of their mine in Colombia. Apparently talk of lake monsters and witchcraft have disrupted the flow of cash and the board 'ain't' happy about it. SO add in some environmental issues, religious views and an annoying nerdy kid who believes in the lake monster and you've got yourself...well... a mess. "The monster manages to "get in touch" with three or four individuals. These scenes aren't too bad, but they are few and far between the hour of talking. Even a witch burning doesn't do much to speed this film up. First problem. If you're going to have a movie called "monster", please make said monster not laughable. It's early scenes were brief, actually managing to keep the tension up, but believe me, the big reveal is sort of a let down. Imagine the Lock Ness monster mixed with a lizard and a catfish and you'll have some idea. Now once the creature is revealed, certainly our "hero's" will face off with it personally right...RIGHT!!! Nope, the best way is to pump a lamb full of dynamite and go fishing. I do have a slight problem with this. Obviously, if a creature has been surviving for thousands of years without having been discovered, and it is capable of going for a little stroll on land, it must be somewhat intelligent. So why does the creature decide to go out for a bite to eat and reveal itself when it is surrounded and being followed by a helicopter? Perhaps he was a media whore... Of course our hero manages to accidentally drop detonator in the water, causing him to brave a swim. Personally this was just stupidity on his part, and I was rooting for the Monster. Alas this occasionally clever beast decides to play around with a guy in a boat rather than take care of the real threat. SO the beast goes Kaboom. There is much rejoicing...unfortunately they don't realize that Monsters like to lay hundreds of eggs in a clearly visible and poorly protected area which can hatch spontaneously releasing offspring which are actually too large to fit in the supposed eggs they came from. Everybody up to speed? Don't worry about it. Personally I didn't hate this film as much as I have others. In this case the makers were simply over enthusiastic with their budget constraints. The plot could have worked and the film could have been a little scary with more money and better casting. One little factoid I noticed, is that women have progressed considerably since the 70's. In this movie, secretaries are called darlin' and honey, and have their posteriors fondled in ways that would see a modern man carried off for a chat with a grand jury.

Played in the theatres back in 1980, and disappeared for awhile, only to surface in numerous public domain video companies. MONSTER toplines action star Jim Mitchum who is hired by Anthony Eisley (a skirt chasing executive) to go to a small village to battle a paper mache' monster that we only see the face and one leg. John Carradine has little to do as a town priest. The film boasts to be true story, but anything this crazy can't happen, can it? Cesar Romero (billed in imdb) is nowhere in this film. Keenan Wynn is billed in all video boxes, but not in the film. This monster sucks.

I could barely keep myself from either nodding off or just turning off this turd, but I decided to stick it out if only for the reasoning that maybe *something* would happen. This is the work of a writer/producer/director/special fx, Kenneth Herts, who wants to make a statement on ecological damage while making a monster movie. That's what he wanted, anyway. What it turns out to be is a lot of acting, either slightly hammy or just mundane and without much merit, and scenes that seem to repeat themselves as the monster ATTACKS in the river waters (oh, and what luck, a woman just happens to be naked in it... even though there have already been DISAPPEARANCES!)

This is just nonsensical stuff, but I suppose it's not too harmful; it's not very obnoxious at the least and once or twice we get a semi-interesting peek at Brazilian "culture" (which is the father walking through town with his flock or other pieces of a semblance of 'hey, this is NOT America!'). But whatever hope the director had in casting Mitchum or Carradine is squandered on at best pedestrian and at worst excruciatingly banal and dumb dialog. It doesn't help that when we finally get something of a good look at the monster and the "action" happens, it too is stupidly staged and with only sleazy appeal. Usually I would feel sorry for a filmmaker who had a lot of problems getting a particular picture finished- in this case it took the better part of the mid 70s- but with Monstroid or Monster or whatever it's called... nah.

If you happen to get the Elvira DVD double-feature of this (bad print with bad transfer quality) with Blue Sunshine, make sure to skip this one. Unless, of course, you're an Elvira die-hard and can't help yourself to hear her luscious commentary; personally, I'd rather get Joel or Mike Nelson with the robots from Mystery Science Theater on this roast turkey.

It's sad to see former stars reduced to "acting" in films like this. Well let's see here, we've got James Mitchum, and John Carradine in a movie about a Colombian lake monster. Sounds interesting, huh, wrong, the stars play second banana to a monster clearly made for less than the budget of your average candy bar. What's worse is that the film is so dark, half of the time you can't see what little action there is. For unintentional yuks this is one of those movies that can't be beat, but if your in the mood for a surreal horror thriller look elsewhere.