Ah, the fifties! Films featured things that are impossible to understand these days. For example, the simple fact that the lead hero undergoes a medical exam in the doctor's cabinet with a cigarette in his mouth. Doctors and scientists even happily smoked along! It's an absurd sight nowadays, but sixty-five years ago it was the most normal thing in the world. Unfortunately, however, other behaviors were also typical for the era, like the belittling and the (not-so-) subtle discrimination of women. Beverly Garland, in the female lead, superficially may seem like a tough and eloquent gal, but the men in front and behind the cameras clearly just wanted her to be the cute little lady who shrieks and seeks shelter into the strong masculine arms of her savior Rock Dean. It's really infuriating to see how Garland's character is forced into kissing John Bromfeld, or how she must produce lines like "Of course I'm afraid! I'm a woman". 65 years later, we sadly still can't say discrimination and racism have been entirely extinct, but at least the women became a lot more forceful.
Oh yeah, apart from all that, "Curucu Beast of the Amazon" is also a miserable and utmost annoying piece of low-budget junk! Luckily for his descendants, the name of Curt Siodmak is usually linked to being the writer of masterful horror genre classics, like "The Wolf Man" or "I Walked with a Zombie". Few people know that he also directed a handful of utterly cheap flicks like this one or "Bride of the Gorilla". I own two versions of the film (one in color and the other in black & white) but they are both dull and dumb. The entire crew treated themselves to a trip to Brazil, but I'm guessing the screenplay only got written on the plane. There's drivel about places hidden deep in the Amazon jungle "where no white man ever set foot before" and much ado about a bird-like creature that supposedly hunts down plantation workers. The denouement is beyond pathetic and all the jungle padding footage nearly puts you to sleep. The only astounding moment in the film is when Rock Dean uses a shotgun (!) to kill a tarantula! He shoots the poor thing at close range and there isn't even a hole in the tent; - all hail the spider of steel!
