Well, this was an unimaginably huge disappointment, and I'm really not used to be disappointed by a 50's Mexican horror production, especially not when the man in the director's chair is the same genius (?) responsible for one of the greatest Gothic masterpieces ever made, namely "The Curse of the Crying Woman". "Swamp of the Lost Monster" is an odd and lackluster hodgepodge of styles and genres and, despite its short running time, it's an incredibly boring effort. Horror and western story lines are already hard to combine as it is, and when the film then also tries to add in a mystery sub plot and some comical relief characters, it rapidly becomes a failure beyond imaginable proportions. The primary storyline centers on a laughably ridicule monster (some kind of hybrid between the "Creature from the Black Lagoon" and the aborted offspring of "Octaman") dragging people into a swamp and killing them. The dork in his stupid rubber suit first appeared when the corpse of a local eminent villager vanished from its coffin before the burial, yet nobody (not even the cowboy-detective or his assistant) seems to notice the link. There's another totally implausible sub plot about an old blind hag fooling the entire town into thinking she can see and a glorious, almost Academy-Award worthy role for the endlessly prancing horse. Too bad about the atmospheric filming locations and the occasional glimpses of decent photography, but the film is a total dud.
