Curse of the Swamp Creature

CURSE was an education. Prior to seeing this film in the middle of the night, I had never seen a movie so inept, so awful that I could not watch it. As I recall, the only reason I kept watching the thing was the forlorn hope that at some point the movie might redeem itself. Nope. Acting? Everyone pretty much gives the performance level of an initial readthrough at a summer stock company. Location photography? For a desolate swamp, this place is awfully suburban. The Swamp Creature? Hoo boy..... the mask looked like a football with a couple pingpong balls for eyes and a tiny little mouth with a couple of fangs sticking out. How the creature was suppose to breathe and eat, let alone attack anyone is beyond me. John Agar had to be at the nadir of his career when he did this one. If you're an Agar fan, avoid this one. If you do see it and you want to remain an Agar fan, convince yourself it was Agar's doppelganger Arthur Franz who made the flick instead.

People say that "Plan 9 From Outer Space" is the worst film ever? I beg to differ. Larry Buchanan's mad scientist flick makes Plan 9 look like Citizen Kane! I think this film definitely gives Plan 9 a run for its money.

Just take a look at what you're getting here -- among other things, you have a mad scientist in the Louisiana swamp using his co-workers as guinea pigs for his evolution experiments, a deaf-mute girl, American blacks doing an African "curse the dr." dance while burning an effigy, a guy who gets cut up with a log cutter (off-screen), ping pong ball-eyed monsters, alligators in a swimming pool, and John Agar! Be sure and watch for the guy who answers and carries on a conversation on a telephone that never rings -- they apparently forgot to put the sound effect in during post-production (trust me -- it won't be the only time). The swanky '60s costumes and music are absurd, and the performances have to be seen to be believed. Films don't often get worse than this one.

I love this movie. It is so ridiculously bad that it can actually pull me out of a grumpy mood. If you like Ed Wood or Ray Dennis Steckler or Ted Mikels, you'll love this. If you like quality motion pictures with plots that make sense, realistic special effects, and Oscar-caliber acting, well...I warned you.

Director Larry Buchanan's Curse of the Swamp Creature is a worthy companion to the parade of "swamp-stomping mad scientist trying to shake off meddlesome interloper" films which populate one of horror's tiniest genres. It's not hard to make waves in such a small pond, and Curse of the Swamp Creature certainly doesn't disappoint devoted horror fans, many of whom follow Larry Buchanan as a kind of successor to Schlock horror's undisputed Grand Champion, Ed Wood.

The Curse of the Swamp Creature is that he lives at all. In the murkiest reaches of Louisiana's bayou a reclusive scientist experiments with the genetic map and creates a sort of man-phibian out of one of his apprentices. Meanwhile a cadre of well-meaning interlopers and less-well-meaning con-artists threatens the Doctor's harmonious freak-making activities and themselves become fodder for future human-animal hybrids. If they don't stop him, no one will be safe from "The Curse of the Swamp Creature."

All of the elements of good "bad" cinema are here in spades. Dopey acting, campy dialog, silly monsters, and interior sets that look like someone's Grandma's house got invaded over the weekend and turned into an evil laboratory brimming with everything one would need to do radical genetic engineering. Well, maybe not everything. But he does have an aquarium and some test tubes.

So these people are going thru the jungle/bayou looking for the mad scientist's house, going thru thick leaves they have to cut back, for hours or days...then they come to the mad scientist's house and it has a manicured lawn, a sidewalk leading up to the front door, trimmed bushes, a ranch house like it was from suburbia! Evidently when shooting or editing they had no stock shots of houses so they went next door to some real estate office and snagged one to use.

This is an example of how hilarious this film is - there's more stuff like this in there.

The clothes, the poor make-up and masks...I wonder if when they made these type of "horror films" they knew they would be hilarious.

What kind of mess do you get when you mix a mad scientist, his dim-witted but beautiful wife, angry local "swamp people" doing a voodoo dance, endless drumming almost throughout the film (the "taka-ta-taka, taka-ta-taka, taka-ta-taka" will drive you nuts), a geologist and some scheming locals, and of course a green bug-eyed monster? Why you wind up with Curse of the Swamp People, that's what! A geologist looking for oil in the swamps somewhere (Louisiana?) joins up with some locals intent on weaseling their way into a cut of the oil profits. They arrange for a guide to take them deep into the swamp where a mad scientist lives in a large house with a beautifully manicured lawn(!?). The mad scientist, Dr. Trent, is creating creatures by making some kind of alligator/fish-men.Unfortunately for him, most of his experiments have ended up in failure, but no problem - he disposes of them in his swimming pool full of hungry alligators.

Dr. Trent is close to perfecting his methods when he is unexpectedly visited by the geologist et al. At the same time the locals get fed up with him picking off their neighbors for his experiments, and they resolve to use voodoo and 24-hour drum beats to get their revenge.

As is typical for these low-budget creature-feature films of the 50s and 60s, you don't see the creature itself until almost the end of the movie, and it is completely laughable - it looks sort of like a less bulky version of Shrek, with bulging slit eyes.

As bad as the film is, I found myself entertained. It's many gaffs are easy and frequently spotted, such as the electric meter on the side of the doctor's house (if he lives so far back in the boonies, then how is it that he is 'on the grid', and why doesn't the meter reader wind up as a part of his monster experiments?). I found it kind of fun to watch, so I felt generous and gave it a 3.