Curse of the Swamp Creature

Curse of the Swamp Creatures (1966)

BOMB (out of 4)

Incredibly bad film from the infamous director Larry Buchanan. One jackass goes into the Everglades to find oil when he encounters a jackass scientist mixing alligators and humans. The budget of this thing is so low that the director just used black people for his half human/half alligator creatures. When the title character finally shows up he looks pretty good but he doesn't get on the screen until the very last scene in the movie. Bad on all levels and only recommended to those who are wanting to take off five years of their life. The original film, Voodoo Woman, wasn't any good but compared to this it's a masterpiece.

I have one question regarding this movie...how much Jesus juice had John Agar consumed before agreeing to appear in this dreadful movie? This has to be the worst movie ever made, even worse than Ed Wood's classic bomb, "Plan Nine from Outer Space". At least with "Plan Nine" you can laugh while watching it. I kept waiting to laugh at how bad this monstrosity was, but it was so boring I couldn't. The acting is atrocious, the plot makes no sense, and the monster is laughable. Some movies are so bad they are great, but this movie isn't one of them. John Agar looks aged and bloated in this movie, and at times seems downright embarrassed. I was embarrassed for him! Even John Agar fans will have a hard time sitting through this one.

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.

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.

I can't begin to tell you how terrible this bottom-of-the-barrel B movie is!! I myself am a huge fan of B horror films and even I HATED this lame movie.

The plot seems to be this, a mad doctor living in the swamp tries to create a monster with his human guests. As though that wasn't a hokey enough storyline, the production values of the film are as flat as a pancake. I've seen student films of much better quality. The swamp creature of the title is beyond goofy-looking and is featured for only a few moments in the climax of the film!! Did I mention the film was dubbed something terrible? It is. One would do better to mute the movie and make-up you're own dialog, it would certainly be more entertaining!

Oh yes, and in case you want to know just what the CURSE of the Swamp Creature is, it's this movie. That's all. Augh!

BOMB out of ****