Creature of Destruction

The 1956 film THE SHE-CREATURE might have been a little on the cheesy and incoherent side, but compared to this hysterically poor remake it looks like CITIZEN KANE. Sporting bottom-of-the-ocean production values and acting, this is another one of the wretched remakes of sincere '50s monster movies carelessly belched out by Larry Buchanan in 1966-'67. The sinister Dr. Basso is an evil hypnotist who prowls the California beaches in a moth-eaten tux and top hat that make him look like Snidely Whiplash. The grumpy, short-fused old creep makes for a very uninteresting villain. He has a woman under a spell that causes her to materialize in the very first form in which she ever walked the earth, namely, a guy in a skindiving wetsuit and a ridiculous Halloween mask with lopsided ping-pong balls stuck onto it for eyes. Inarguably one of the least convincing monsters ever used in a movie, the dimestore demon was nevertheless used in another Buchanan disaster called IT'S ALIVE! It clomps laughably along making a noise like an electric motor in need of maintenance and occasionally kills people who are silly enough to wander around the beach at night even though there have been numerous unsolved murders there. The sort-of hero is a dorky Air Force psychologist (sometimes he's called a parapsychologist) who is described as "a national hero". The science-versus-supernatural doubletalk is preposterous and never makes enough sense to invite serious consideration. At a beach party, a rock group does a song about Batman. When the goofy creature advances toward the camera, the fin sticking out of the left side of its head frequently refuses to stand out like it's supposed to. Since the beast is an early version of a reincarnated girl, it's repeatedly referred to as a female, but, just like in FRANKENSTEIN'S DAUGHTER (1958), the suit is obviously being worn by a man. Cops always find trails of seaweed leading to and from the locations of the creature's attacks but there's never an inch of seaweed hanging on the beast when we see it. In at least one scene you can hear the director whispering instructions to his actors, and at one point a strange echo effect kicks in, so bits of dialogue can be heard twice. The whole movie is grainy and sometimes suffers from severe color shifts or goes momentarily out of focus. Many shots go on too long and the actors deliver their lines in slow, stiff, aggressively unrealistic monotones. (It's probably unfair to entirely blame the actors for their weak performances, since they had only Larry Buchanan to direct them.) When a man fires a gun, we see a closeup of his hand holding the weapon but clearly NOT firing it, while a noise like someone slamming a door is dubbed in to suggest the gunshot. The script says the victims are horribly mutilated, but one dead body is found propped up on a sofa without so much as a drop of blood visible on it. Buchanan used to complain about how little time and money he was given to make these things, but even taking his limited resources into account he should have come up with something a little less awful than this. There aren't any interesting camera setups, effects, or anything else that might have added a little professionalism. As with his other features, Buchanan directs with his typical stunning personal balance of incompetence and indifference. Another fine mess brought to you by Azalea Pictures, a company with a name that sounds significantly like "assail ya".

CREATURE OF DESTRUCTION is another of Director Larry Buchanan's cinematic anvils to the cranium. This time, there's a hideous monster on a murderous rampage!

Enter Dr. John Basso (Les Tremayne), a clairvoyant practitioner of mesmerism and speaker of mumbo jumbo. Along with his assistant, Doreena (Pat Delaney), he prognosticates doom for certain humans in the area. More unexplained deaths occur. Could it have something to do with Basso and his "regression hypnosis"? The police are baffled.

A languid remake of the listless SHE CREATURE, this movie lumbers along, featuring a monster even more absurd than the original! Picture Kermit T. Frog's pop-eyed head on someone in a green wet suit, growling like a motorcycle that won't start.

Tremayne, playing his role with histrionic glee, towers above the other "actors" in the film, who recite their lines as if they'd been handed the script for the first time, seconds before filming started! Not one of Buchanan's "better" movies, it mostly consists of chatter and static. Dull as a butter knife, it saves all of its "excitement" for the less-than-stellar denouement.

Co-stars Annabelle Weenick (DON'T LOOK IN THE BASEMENT) as the woman who sits in a chair a lot.

EXTRA POINTS FOR: The rockin' beach parties that spontaneously erupt throughout the movie!...

A hypnotist and his assistant come to town, presenting an act -- real or contrived -- that features the assistant traveling back in her mind to past lives and revealing details of them to the audience. At the same time, a prehistoric monster is ravaging the community, killing beach bums right and left.

Many have written this film off as worthless and a poor remake. I can't comment on the remake aspect, because I didn't see the original. I would hardly call the film worthless, though. I found it to be highly entertaining and a very captivating story in its own right.

Yes, the film quality is poor, and if you remove the scenes of the beach parties the film doesn't even last a complete hour. But the actors are quite good, especially the man who plays the hypnotist -- giving Montag the Magnificent (from Lewis' "Wizard of Gore") a run for his money. Ultimately, of course, Montag is the better character, but only marginally.

I am still not entirely clear on the connection between the hypnotist and the sea monster (a man in a diving suit and cheesy mask). The link is explained at the end of the film, but doesn't seem to make rational sense. I'd explain that more, but I don't want to give away any twists. I would just like to say if you don't mind low quality 1960s films, this one is worth a viewing.

Within moments I was struck with how terrible the movie looked. With a monster that looks like it was made by the Blue Peter cast, random colour filters that looked appalling and a score that made me turn the volume down it was so bad.

Telling the story of a psychic, his subject and a mysterious creature (The very same one used in multiple movies to save money)

When you can't take the antagonist seriously and find yourself squinting to work out whats going on you have to question what the creators were playing at.

Sure it's not the worst of its ilk, but this is one of those that is so bad.....it's bad and doesn't even have that goofy charm to elevate it above embarassment.

The Good:

The monster is unintentional comedy

The Bad:

Light filters are bafflingly bad

Monster is laughable

Music cuts through you like a knife

Things I Learnt From This Movie:

Science is jazz

Batman is a traditional party song

A hypnotised woman's soul regresses through time and manifests as a murderous, monstrous primeval sea-creature. This cheap-looking, cheaply-made 16mm TV fodder is one of several colour remakes of fifties sci-fi shockers that AIP hired Larry Buchanan to make in the late 1960s. While not great cinema (even by genre standards) the original film, 1956's 'The She-Creature', was moderately imaginative (in a nonsensical way), timely (reincarnation stories were all the rage after the release of the best-selling book 'The Search for Bridey Murphy') and featured one of monster-maker Paul Blaisell's most memorable creations. Buchanan's penny ante celluloid reincarnation has none of these virtues - it is tedious bargain-basement retelling with a crudely made monster that is barely watchable, even by hard-core fans of crap.