Curse of the Swamp Creature

Although Dr. Simon Trent, in the 1966 shlock classic "Curse of the Swamp Creature," is a completely obnoxious, homicidal, bullying madman, you've got to at least give him credit for one thing: He keeps his pet alligators well fed! Every time one of his experiments on evolution reversal or possibly the creation of an artificially gilled fishman (I'm not quite clear on this point) goes awry--which is pretty darn often, actually--his human test subject gets tossed into his front-yard gator pool. A production of American International Television (was this thing actually a TV movie?!?!), this lame little cheapie is a real challenge to sit through. No wonder star John Agar, here a geologist looking for oil near Trent's bayou retreat, seems to be having difficulty keeping his eyes open. Cult actress Francine York is on hand, too, playing Trent's captive wife, and her many charms are mostly wasted here. The film is only 80 minutes long, and yet still feels padded with endless shots of voodoo dancers, alligators, and swamp cruising. Throw in a singularly lame-looking monster who only appears in the picture's final five minutes, the lamest quicksand scene ever committed to film, remarkably poor dialogue, egregious day-for-night shots, incessantly annoying voodoo drumming, and completely uninspired direction by Larry Buchanan and you've got the makings of a real swamp mess indeed. My beloved "Psychotronic Encyclopedia" says that this movie is "an all-time favorite of American insomniacs," and I think I now understand why. This snoozer should put anyone to sleep!

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 ****

One of Larry Buchanan's notorious "Azalea" films for TV, this atrociously shot monster movie is a third-rate retread of VOODOO WOMAN, itself a second-rate quickie which wasn't exactly begging for resurrection. It stars John Agar( which usually means John Carradine was sick with the flu) as a swamp-dwelling scientist conducting the usual quack experiments which require fresh corpses. When a group of small-time criminals arrive in this remote little neck of the bayou, they quickly find themselves in quite a bind with the crazed doctor. Meanwhile, the swamp-rat locals beat ceaselessly on their bongos o' voodoo with dazzling inexpertise.

Our mad doctor's dabbling yields a preposterous looking monster(imagine a hard-luck distant cousin of THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON), and it doesn't even become active until the last five minutes of this plodding, flavorless insult to cinema. Only the most sworn procurers of old-school monster-schlock need apply.

2.5/10. Make-a-doodie-yucky-peeeee-yeeeuw.

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.

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.