User reviews

Only suave ladies man and eternal B-movie actor John Bromfield could get away with this role, that of plantation owner Rock Dean, who is investigating a series of attacks on workers along the Amazon River. Rock Dean isn't one to believe in legends (and with that name, you wouldn't either!), but it is said that a strange bird-like creature named Curucu lives near the river where no white man has ever tread. Along for the journey is a shapely female doctor in search of a drug that might be effective in shrinking cancerous tissue (it is currently in use by the resident headhunters, who need it to shrink something else!). Low-budget co-feature has some jungle adventure and humor, though it was misleadingly advertised by Universal as a horror movie. The credit "filmed entirely in Brazil" is also misleading, as a good portion of the running time is padded with wildlife and travelogue footage from stock. Fans of Bromfield and scream queen Beverly Garland might give this a pass. *1/2 from ****

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!

Curt Siodmak seemed to have a passion for writing B movie scripts, and and it seems he believed so much in this one that he had to direct it as well.

It's in the running for the worst movie I ever saw, with the standard jungle movie setup- Americans go on an expedition in the jungle and get attacked by a variety of jungle natives- including the paper mache looking title monster. They say this movie was shot on location in the Amazon jungle (I don't think the term "rain forest" existed in 1956). If so, I've got to hand it to the cast and crew for going above and beyond for this one. I wouldn't have wanted to risk coming back with malaria or jungle rot for this movie.

With all that being said, if you look at all the lifeless and hollow stuff coming out of Hollywood in recent years, this one just might be good enough to be classic schlock cinema now.

Good thing the producers went up the Amazon River for location shots, because headline monster Curucu amounts to a big lump of moldy cheese. Then too, for some unknown reason the screenplay tips its hand halfway through, killing what little suspense there is. But we do get a good look at comely Beverly Garland getting menaced by about everything that creeps, crawls, or oozes through the jungle. Plus, she confirms her title as the Queen of Scream with at least three ear blasters. Good thing hunky John Bromfield is on hand to handle the hero stuff. Still, the movie was something of a treat for 1956, that is, before color TV made such travelogues everyday fare. Now the movie is little more than a very obscure curiosity.

(In passing-- Catch the script's sneaky probing of modernity. Tupanico {Payne} wonders whether the Indians really are better off after entering the white man's money economy. Unless I missed something, the probing is surprisingly left unresolved. It's a provocative note in an otherwise sloppy script.)

I spend a lot of time trying to add lesser known 50's sci-fi titles to my ever growing collection. Unfortunately I came to this title. Cool title and stars Beverly Garland made by Universal - how could I miss? Although the poster looks great on this flick, find the strength to resist. The Brazilian locations are great and acting was acceptable but whoever wrote the script was a loser. This played out more like an episode of Scooby Doo(old man Smithers and all). The part that really killed me was that after they ruin the whole movie after 45 minutes, it goes on for another 35 minutes!! Seriously, for lesser known movies, check out Giant from the Unknown or Monster from Green Hell before you ever touch this garbage.

"Like nothing you have ever seen" states the tagline for this film, and it is accurate beyond belief. This film is beyond description in many ways. The story details how a plantation owner and a doctor go up the Amazon in search of a Head-shrinking tribe and a mythical beast. The beast looks incredibly inept and totally silly, as is the plot for this film. The leads are horrible, particularly Beverly Garland as the sassy doctor out to always prove herself. Her expressions, not to mention her screams, are enough reason to see the film. I cannot remember laughing so hard at a film. Although the settings are genuine, the folksy South American tune in the background throughout most of the film only serves to belittle any real tension the film might have provided. The direction is poor and the camerawork even poorer. One sequence in particular, when Garland and male lead "Rock" run up a tree to avoid being trampled by a herd of water buffaloes is a real hoot! The scenes were laid on top of each other and just look so idiotic. A great film to ridicule with friends or just for private laughs!

I liked very much horror films as a kid in the 50's and I don't think I missed many. I also have to admit that many of them really scared me though my children can't believe that now (they find them sort of funny and I can understand that if you consider what computers have done for special effects nowadays).

But the reason why I never forgot "Curucu" is that it was probably the only "horror" film that didn't scare me at all whatsoever and I went back home with a smile om my face. In fact, the monster in this one is easily the most ridiculous and absurd thing ever put on screen (there's no way to describe it, you just have to see it). Besides, even as a little boy I noticed the plot was weak, the acting was poor, the direction was bad, all facts you don't usually notice or pay attention to when you are 8 or 9 years old.

Looking back now and watching Curt Siodmak's filmography you can understand: the man was probably the worst film director ever, perhaps in the same level as Ed Wood Jr.

You simply can't believe they went all the way to the Brazilian Amazon jungle to shoot this picture!

This film is so bad it is good. Beverly Garland is the only recognizable actor and she is good - but she should have asked the studio to burn all the prints. The script makes little sense, the special effects such as they are are hokey and what little action occurs is not even interesting. I did note, however, that John Bromfield spent a significant amount of time in the film swinging a machete, hacking his way into and then back out of the Amazon rain forest - if you watch closely you will see that when he is moving deeper into the rain forest he is hacking right to left with the machete and when he is retreating out of the forest he chops left to right - so the audience wouldn't be confused. I recommend the film for late night viewing when nothing else is on except infomercials - and then leave it to the viewer's discretion as to which could be more interesting.

"Curucu, Beast of the Amazon" is pretty much what you expect from a movie by this title! Yes, it's cheap, cheesy and pretty silly stuff...and is best for folks who like seeing terrible films.

The story begins with one of the silliest looking monsters in film history killing some woman in the Amazonian region. Soon, a burly he-man (John Bromfield) is recruited to find and destroy the monster...and he ends up getting paired up with a head-strong doctor...you know, the feminist sort in the 1950s that talks a good talk but ends up falling for the lunk-head leading man! Along the way, there are a few nice jungle scenes...and some total crap scenes as well where it's obvious they are using old and badly made stock footage. The buffalo charge, in particular, is terrible...and what you'd expect from an ultra-cheapo film like this. The only real surprise is the monster itself....when you learn more about it, it turns out to be a bit of a shocker! But even this isn't enough to make me recommend the film to anyone but masochists like myself who occasionally enjoy a laughably bad movie.

By the way, despite what you see in the picture, tarantulas are NOT deadly nor are they particularly poisonous.

For those of You who speak Spanish.... As I do!.... Knowing that this movie was filmed in South America in 1955/56... You can´t help but wonder if that MEGAHIT... Released in 1954, and played incessantly on the Radio in Latin America throughout most of the 50s... inspired the TITLE and even some aspects of the BIRD-BEAST Referred to in the TITLE itself!?!¿!¿!?!

Several of the cast members are locals! (Brazilians were much cheaper to contract... I am sure!) Andrea Bayard also appeared in several Brazilian TELENOVELAS made in the 50s and 60s!)

This production absolutely cannot be watched from start to finish without a good number of unintended Belly laughs! Sure looks as though Cast and Crew had one Hell of a good time making this! But still...During the last 20 minutes, or so, of its 75 Minute TOTAL... I pretty much was hoping it would END...And put me out of my MISERY!!!

Gave it 6****** because I did get a lot of those unintended belly laughs mentioned earlier!!!

Hoping to quell the fears of superstitious natives, a rancher and a doctor head into the Amazon jungle to find a supposedly awakened demon but learn of a dangerous native tribe lurking in the area and must stop it from spreading.

Overall this was a pretty disappointing and thoroughly disappointing effort. What really tends to hold this one down is the fact that there's not a whole lot of time here spent among the confines of the genre, tending to focus far more frequently on the Adventure drama aspects of the story. The majority of the film is simply watching the two and their guide trek through the jungle and commenting on the different animals present in the area which is then shown in stock-footage inserts of the specific species told they're observing only to then be treated to widely different levels of film-stock quality to showcase that. The piranha attack is the most egregious, showing badly-framed underwater footage in black-and-white no less despite the rest of the film being in color from an angle that has nothing to do with what they pointed to but is just clumsily thrown in since it's a piranha attack footage, while shots of the animals brawling and fighting each other tends to dominate the main parts of the film that it's entirely possible to forget there's a creature at the center of the film. That aspect doesn't help the film any further as there's only two attacks by the creature in the entire film and is then twisted around into another storyline thread which is dropped off the film quite easily and early which is quite troubling and again makes it hard to believe this was supposed to be a horror effort all along. These here make this one quite hard to get into as a horror film, despite having a fairly decent amount of stuff about it. Despite only being seen twice, each of the attacks aren't all that bad and manage to get some mild suspense from them as the creature stalking them in the jungle before jumping out to launch the surprise attack makes for a few decent times here. Likewise, the film also manages to get some decent mileage out of the fantastic brawl at the end as the two rival Indian tribes get into action and begin fighting each other in a fairly large-scale scene, from the fire-laced huts and the hand-to-hand brawling and the long-range battles with the spears and arrows coming into play to make a fine action scene that's quite exciting. Even still, that also plays more into it's Adventure setting that it tends to wash away the positives here and aligns this more as a flaw here.

Today's Rating/PG: Violence.

This is one of the best examples of what grade B pictures can provide from time to time, an excellent time waster, where nothing is believable but so cool and amusing. The story seems to never end, as if the director could not finish the movie, or as if he hesitated. Good scenes, even ankward, such as the snake sequence, with Beverly Garland. The last image is of course the best example of what I say. A petty cult movie for moviegoers. Old fashioned ones. The perfume of a lost period.

Filmed on location in Eastman Color, Beverly Garland plays a doctor in Brazil who learns that if the local headhunters in Amazon territory can shrink heads then maybe the formula can be used to shrink cancer cell tissue for the cure, a rather logical, believable premise. She is accompanied by plantation owner John Bromfield who is tracking down a legendary monster that is killing and terrorizing the natives in the region. Anyone expecting a real beast will be gravely disappointed, yet this picture is unfairly maligned, mainly due to misleading ad/trailer campaign. Tribal dancing, anaconda, spiders, piranha, caiman, a jaguar, a water buffalo stampede, snake charmer, scary natives and more punctuate the adventure, and, as such, is still exciting and interesting in that genre. The spectacular Iguazú Falls (a stand-in for the fictional "Curucu Falls" in the film) is the backdrop for a sequence, featuring stunt doubles for the stars. Last scene is freaky.

Any movie that has a scene of the hero smoking while the doctor is giving him his annual medical check up has to be a classic.

There is validity to every single negative review of this picture, but who cares? Look, I love Ingmar Bergman films, but am I going to kick back with beer and nacho cheese Doritos on a summer Saturday afternoon watching "Cries And Whispers?" I didn't spend all morning cutting the grass to then crash the couch and drown myself in Swedish angst. That's for cold bleak winter nights. For summer I want a jungle, a tight pants adventuress and a hero who can spend an entire week lost in the Amazon and still not have a single day's facial hair. Yes, as everyone agrees without a doubt the movie rips you off and leaves you a chump for ever believing such a thing as truth in advertising exists. But stop crybaby'ing about it already. Get over your disappointment like a big boy and just enjoy the mustard we got. To hell with your Grey Poupon!

John Bromfield and Beverly Garland star in Curucu Beast Of The Amazon and the best thing this film has going for it is the location photography in the Amazon jungles of Brazil. One hates to think that where this film was shot might be developed over by now. Because this film surely didn't do much for the careers of either of its stars.

Bromfield is a plantation manager and Garland is a doctor and and a ridiculous looking monster is out terrorizing the natives of Bromfield's plantation. Purportedly it is Curucu a legendary monster from up the Amazon headwaters country where no white people have gone before. So Bromfield decides to play Captain Kirk and go on a mission to explore and destroy this monster that's cutting into his business.

Garland being the scientist wants to get some of that head hunter concoction which she says might be valuable to medical science. Garland had one vital asset in being cast in these films, no one could scream quite like her and she gets plenty of opportunity from the natural and man made opposition they both encounter.

The monster Curucu is one ridiculous and stupid looking beast which looks like a mixture various Halloween costumes. In this case though there is a reason and the mystery of Curucu is solved.

A few laughs are in this one, unintentional ones if you care.

1956's "Curucu, Beast of the Amazon" (pronounced CUR-Uh-Sue, working title simply "Beast of the Amazon"), Universal's most notorious genre effort of this decade, its misleading advertising earning brickbats from monster kids issued on a double bill with "The Mole People," a fall from grace for writer-director Curt Siodmak, shot on location in Brazil a year before a follow up called "Love Slaves of the Amazon." Color adds nothing but a travelogue feel to both items, John Bromfield boasting the hilarious moniker 'Rock Dean' (continuing his beefcake ways from "Revenge of the Creature" and Lon Chaney's "Manfish"), joined by pretty nurse Beverly Garland on a treacherous journey upriver along the Amazon in search of a legendary monster that frequents Curucu Falls, claiming the lives of several natives before leaving tracks back into the water. Caimans, pythons, piranha, tarantulas, jaguars, wild buffalo, headhunters, a witch doctor, and one fortuitous patient await during the endless slog through the jungle, only three brief scenes depicting the titular Beast, its rampage explained thusly: "descends from the falls to punish the people who deserted the lands of their fathers." Just after the opening credits we catch a glimpse of a manlike creature with toucan beak, feathers, tusks, fangs, and huge talons, emitting what sounds like the wail of a wild boar (or is that bore?) before clawing a woman to death; the second comes at the half hour mark, shorter and far less intriguing than the first. The final third kicks off with a shimmering glimpse of something below the water's surface, possibly 'luminous fish' (obvious optical special effects here), then Beverly gets kidnapped by the Beast, only to see it finally be revealed as...something not very beastly, nor even interesting. With nearly another 30 minutes to go this definitely comes as a devastating anticlimax, the remainder a repeat of the first half.

This silly B genre effort takes place in Brazil, where local plantation workers are panicking and heading for the hills, due to fears of a dopey-looking bird-like monster of legend. "Rock Dean" (John Bromfield, "Revenge of the Creature"), son of a landowner, ventures out into the heart of the Amazon to hopefully find & slay this beast, in order to bring the workers back. Tagging along is a determined lady doctor, Andrea Romar (the lovely 50s scream queen Beverly Garland, "Not of This Earth"), who wants to make medical use of ingredients used by jungle "headhunters".

A rather notorious disappointment for "monster kids" of the 50s, this is worth seeing at least once for its excellent location shooting, and atmosphere. Writer-director Curt Siodmak ("The Wolf Man", "I Walked with a Zombie", "Donovan's Brain", etc.) tries to use his "big twist" (which people will undoubtedly see coming ahead of time) to make a bigger statement about exploitation of the natives, but there's not really that much going on here. He also treats his leading lady in a typical fashion, making her be reasonably intelligent & stubborn, but also having her scream a lot and eventually be carried away by the monster.

The performances are adequate to the occasion. Bromfield is the kind of cool, tough customer who puffs on a cigarette during a physical exam (!), while Garland is a delight as always. Argentinian-born Tom Payne ("Love Slaves of the Amazons") is good in support, as the character "Tupanico". Lush cinematography (by Rudolf Icsey) and nice music (by Raoul Kraushaar) are definite assets.

The uninitiated may still want to give this one a look. It does seem that Siodmak was rather goofing on the whole monster movie formula, anyway. It *does* work as a bit of a fore-runner to the Italian jungle / cannibal film boom of the 70s and beyond.

Five out of 10.

Curt Siodmak's anti-fantastical approach to horror/creature features doesnt really work here. Its too dry and witless to throw away the monster element. We are then left with an average pulpy jungle adventure B-flick that goes almost completely off the rails by the end. Not awful but far from a classic.

For jungle/monster movie completists only.