Curucu, Beast of the Amazon

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.

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.

One of my sci-fi/horror/fantasy reviews written 50 years ago: Directed and Written by Curt Siodmak; Produced by Richard Kay and Harry Rybnick for Universal-International release. Photography by Rudolf Icsey; Edited by Terry Morse; Music by Raoul Kraushaar. Starring: John Bromfield, Beverly Garland, Tom Payne, Harvey Chalk, Larri Thomas, Wilson Viana, Frank Bevan, Sergio de Oliveira, Robert Aurel and Andrea Bayard.

The natives' mythical monster causes trouble until his true identity is ferreted out. Having John Bromfield and Beverly Garland head up the otherwise no-name cast spells B-movie heaven.

Curucu, Beast of the Amazon (1956)

** (out of 4)

John Bromfield and Beverly Garland travel up the Amazon to kill the title character, a large parrot like creature. Many older horror fans call this one of the most disappointing monster films of the decade due to a couple twists in the plot. I picked up on those twists pretty early and they were stupid but the real interesting thing is that this really seemed like an early version of the infamous Cannibal Holocaust. The best thing about the film is that it was shot in the Amazon, which means we get all sorts of shots with various animals ranging from pythons to huge spiders. With this comes several animal death scenes that won't make PETA members too happy.

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 ****