Monstroid

Here's a monster movie that truly belongs in the POS file. Sometimes even top-bill actors and actresses sometimes get rooked into doing POS movies (prime example: Halle Barry and 'Cat Woman') and for 'Monstroid', it was James Mitchum and John Carradine. The director, Kenneth Hartford, starred his own kids in the movie and gave them top billing with Mitchum and Carradine to add insult to injury.

This steaming pile of doo-doo is about a big, bad American company operating a chemical plant in Colombia. The plant has been dumping untreated chemical waste into the local lake for years and of course the company execs don't care. The chemical waste has somehow spawned a rubber monster to appear from its depths, whereupon it begins chomping down on bikini-clad harlots and drunken fishermen. The company execs devise a hare-brained plan to kill the creature with a lamb carcass stuffed full of dynamite pulled along by a helicopter. No, really... I kid you not...

This is a really awful film. It is tedious and ridiculous. The file I saw was pulled off of the public domain films section of http://www.archive.org so the quality was quite poor. Even if I could have seen the master copy, however, I'm sure the film would have sucked just as bad. Most likely, John Carradine and James Mitchum cashed their checks and got falling-down drunk after this POS finally wrapped.

This movie is one of the WORST films I have EVER seen!!! While I was watching it... I wanted so bad to turn it off and throw it away but I wanted to watch the rest of it so that I could tell off of you folks just how bad it is. It all starts out with it being described as being a TRUE story!!! Give me a break!!! I rubber monster swimming in a lake grabbing people like in "Jaws" and where did he get the feet or the fin's to come up on shore in the jungle and do the same thing!!! Other than that.... it had fake acting, fake props and a large amount of no-name actors that we have never heard of or that we never will in the future. This film is so bad, it deserves a 0!!!

Played in the theatres back in 1980, and disappeared for awhile, only to surface in numerous public domain video companies. MONSTER toplines action star Jim Mitchum who is hired by Anthony Eisley (a skirt chasing executive) to go to a small village to battle a paper mache' monster that we only see the face and one leg. John Carradine has little to do as a town priest. The film boasts to be true story, but anything this crazy can't happen, can it? Cesar Romero (billed in imdb) is nowhere in this film. Keenan Wynn is billed in all video boxes, but not in the film. This monster sucks.

This is a wonderfully goofy example of a self produced, written and directed vanity project ...while I was working as a crew member John Carradine commented to me (before the burning at the stake sequence): "This is the worst piece of sh*t I've ever worked on ...and I've worked on a lot of pieces of sh*t." Also An interesting moment earlier when Jim Mitchum was having trouble with his lines and started cursing in the courtyard location of the Santuario (a religious shrine in Chimayó) - at which point one of the local "vato loco" low-rider onlookers growled "...show some respect man", which apparently caused Jim to remember where he was, as he then made a very profound and heartfelt apology for his inappropriate behavior. In any case the crew did the job on deferment and were never fully paid - but came away with plenty of particularly bizarre stories - like the night we caught the producer/director's 10 year old son entertaining himself by constructing miniature Burmese tiger traps for us to break our legs in. Like they say: "Ya gotta' love the Biz..."

I could barely keep myself from either nodding off or just turning off this turd, but I decided to stick it out if only for the reasoning that maybe *something* would happen. This is the work of a writer/producer/director/special fx, Kenneth Herts, who wants to make a statement on ecological damage while making a monster movie. That's what he wanted, anyway. What it turns out to be is a lot of acting, either slightly hammy or just mundane and without much merit, and scenes that seem to repeat themselves as the monster ATTACKS in the river waters (oh, and what luck, a woman just happens to be naked in it... even though there have already been DISAPPEARANCES!)

This is just nonsensical stuff, but I suppose it's not too harmful; it's not very obnoxious at the least and once or twice we get a semi-interesting peek at Brazilian "culture" (which is the father walking through town with his flock or other pieces of a semblance of 'hey, this is NOT America!'). But whatever hope the director had in casting Mitchum or Carradine is squandered on at best pedestrian and at worst excruciatingly banal and dumb dialog. It doesn't help that when we finally get something of a good look at the monster and the "action" happens, it too is stupidly staged and with only sleazy appeal. Usually I would feel sorry for a filmmaker who had a lot of problems getting a particular picture finished- in this case it took the better part of the mid 70s- but with Monstroid or Monster or whatever it's called... nah.

If you happen to get the Elvira DVD double-feature of this (bad print with bad transfer quality) with Blue Sunshine, make sure to skip this one. Unless, of course, you're an Elvira die-hard and can't help yourself to hear her luscious commentary; personally, I'd rather get Joel or Mike Nelson with the robots from Mystery Science Theater on this roast turkey.