![]() ![]() When the monster's insatiable hunger upsets his scheme, Capetto decides to sink his boat into 30 feet of water off the shore of a small island and then to retrieve the gold later. However, he does not know that there really is a shaggy, pop-eyed sea monster lurking in the very waters where he plans to do the dirty deed and that the creature may make his plan all too easy to pull off. Unfortunately, despite his other role as the story's omniscient narrator, Sparks is too much the Maxwell Smart-style bumbler to figure out what is going on because of his own incompetence and his hopeless infatuation with the completely uninterested Mary-Belle, who regards his attempts to rescue her from a life of crime with an amused contempt.Ĭapetto plans to steal the fortune in gold and then to claim that the mythical "Creature from the Haunted Sea" rose and devoured the loyalists, but it is he and his crew who murder the Cuban soldiers with sharpened, claw-like gardening tools and leave behind "footprints" made with a toilet plunger and a mixture of olive oil and green ink. (Beach Dickerson), who constantly does animal impressions. Legend has ended my hunt for Corman’s Creature and I can only hope someday they do the same for that dreaded Beast from the Haunted Cave that I never seem to run across.During the Cuban Revolution, deported American gambler and racketeer Renzo Capetto (Anthony Carbone) comes up with a get-rich-quick scheme and uses his yacht to help a group of loyalists headed by General Tostada (Edmundo Rivera Alvarez) escape with Cuba's national treasury, which they plan to use to stage a counterrevolution.Īmerican secret agent XK150, using the alias Sparks Moran (Robert Towne, credited as Edward Wain), has infiltrated the gang which consists of Capeto's brazenly felonious blond girlfriend Mary-Belle Monahan (Betsy Jones-Moreland) her deceptively clean-cut younger brother Happy Jack (Robert Bean) and a gullible, good-natured, and homicidal oaf named Pete Peterson Jr. I’ve been hooked on this drive-in junk ever since I stumbled upon my first Killer Creature Double Feature Madacy disc and Creature from the Haunted Sea didn’t completely disappoint in stunning ineptness, but everyone should tread into this Sea with extreme caution. It’s admirable that Legend would give such a low-regarded film a nice colorized treatment considering that even in color, the film would never attract any modern fans. I’ve heard a previous release of Creature was in non-anamorphic widescreen, but again, it doesn’t really matter. ![]() Rounding out the disc are trailers for other Legend releases, and don’t forget, the original black and white presentation is also present. Both the audio and video are by no means crisp, but this is Creature from the Haunted Sea it doesn’t really matter. The disc itself looks pretty good, there’s a bit of grain, age and rare image problems on its full-frame transfer while the audio is mostly distinct. A good portion of the flick takes place in the tropics, and it’s great to admire the scenery in full color. The film isn’t atmospheric in the least, and I actually found myself enjoying the colorized version better than the original black and white. His rubber blades bend incredibly obviously during strangulation scenes, and I must say it suits the silliness and tomfoolery of the film perfectly.Īs a veteran of public domain DVD releases, Creature from the Haunted Sea (along with the similarly titled Corman production, Beast from the Haunted Cave) has somehow eluded me and I was overjoyed when Legend announced they would be colorizing this dollar-store title. The monster in Creature from the Haunted Sea is a green hodgepodge of cloth and string accompanied by some claws that are strangely similar to Freddy’s Krueger gloves. These monstrous garbs are always great for entertainment, if only to ogle the plain badness of trash bags and astro-turf or if you’re lucky, some charming mediocrity. For what it’s worth, the main appeal I’ve always found in the really low budget drive-in films is just letting myself become entranced at the sheer awfulness of the monster costumes they entail. Those familiar with only the Poe pictures of Corman’s directorial canon will be stunned at the sub-par quality of the script and the shoddy monster costume, but there’s some fun to be had if you go into the film with a little Attack of the Giant Leeches-type experience under your belt. Rather than having just a straightforward drive-in extravaganza, the film spoofs inane crime dramas of the era and brings in the standard hairy cucumber monster for a few cheap pops. Creature from the Haunted Sea is cheap, even for Roger Corman.
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