CURSE OF THE SWAMP CREATURE (1968)

CURSE OF THE SWAMP CREATURE (1968)

Tagline: Moasasouri - a monster from another age...with terrifying destructive powers...his victims fight for their lives in a silent, eerie underwater battleground!

(Sci-Fi, Horror, Have You Visited Our State Of The Art Alligator Pool?) [G]

Note: This movie did not get an MPAA rating, but is overall pretty tame. I think if it came out in theaters it would get a [G] rating. 

You’re looking for your brother, then join your brother…feed him to the alligators. 

Oh man, so wow, okay. Let me settle down for a second. Okay, so in this one, we are taken to the rural swamps of Texas where a madman named Dr. Simond Trent is doing experiments on local people that he is able to capture in town. His goal is to discover the secret of the Oceana theory of evolution. As it happens a geologist is in the area for surveys and runs into some shady bar patrons looking to capitalize on the oil that might be found in the swamps, he is killed in a scuffle and now one of the bar patrons named Brenda is going to fake being the wife of the killed geologist. A second geologist named Barry Rogers comes into town and they are looking to exploit his knowledge instead. It doesn’t take long before they run into the sinister Dr. Simond and his captive wife Pat Trent. Will they survive the terror of the swamp creature, (which we don’t really have yet), but don’t worry, we will find one around this flick somewhere? Everybody got all that?

This is the movie you come to if you want to find one of the creepiest but unconvincing villains around.  Jeff Alexander plays Dr. Simond and is about as good in the role as I would be if I ever tried acting. I mean, this dude sucks at least in this role. He is creepy, but the acting is terrible. Alexander is best known for ZONTAR: THE THING FROM VENUS. This is not to say that the movie doesn’t have a few good actors in it. We do get the legendary John Agar who plays Barry Rogers. I think he is fine in this role; he just ended up in a movie with one of the worst scripts of all time. We also get the incomparable Francine York who plays Pat Trent. She is more of a victim in all this than anything else. Francine is probably most famous for SPACE PROBE TAURUS, but was in over 120 movies and TV projects and was acting all the way up to 2017. To round out the main cast we have Shirley McLine who plays Brenda Simmons. She is actually good in this role, but only appeared in 3 movies in her entire career. One of those was the infamous ATTACK OF THE EYE CREATURES which I haven’t reviewed yet but is considered notoriously bad. 

Regarding the score, I have to give it low rankings not because it’s bad, but because it’s borrowed from IT CONQUERED THE WORLD and INVASION OF THE SAUCER MEN. There is a ton of annoying drum playing in this movie which is due to some locals in the area seemingly just playing them day and night to keep people away. I don’t have a problem with the drums per se, it’s the fact that they are playing constantly uprooting the tone of the movie that is the issue. 

The pacing of this one is pretty decent, but there is a ton of anticipation built up for nearly zero reason. We only see the swamp creature in the final 6 minutes of the movie and this thing is really goofy looking. The script is ridiculously nuts even just in the aspect that it’s very clear that Dr. Simond is crazy yet Barry doesn’t pick up on it? It doesn’t make any sense. The other thing that doesn’t make any sense is that the whole community knows that Dr. Simond is evil and whenever they decide to take an action against him; the person that is worried or upset always goes to do it alone? Why not take the whole community way before the final scene? This movie also has this weird sidetrack story where a dude is randomly trying to rape a woman just because he likes her dancing? What the crap? 

Anyway – I have watched this movie twice and it didn’t get any better the second time. It does have an interesting concept, but I need to see a lot more swamp creature in my swamp creature movie. 

This thing gets a 2 out of 7. I can’t in good faith recommend it at all even if you are just trying to find something goofy to watch.

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