Creature from the Haunted Sea

For years growing up I watched Svengoolie on late night Saturday television, reveling in the badness of the movies the show broadcast each week. They would poke fun at really awful, poorly made and typically sci-fi and horror movies that look to be made for about $12.60 (give or take a couple bucks). Much of the time, these movies were intended to be awful, and that's the fun of watching them. The opening credits sequence each week showed one shot from a movie I'd never been able to find until recently, a genuinely funny and bad movie, 1961's Creature from the Haunted Sea.

The movie comes from master of schlock himself, director and producer extraordinaire Roger Corman who handles both duties this time. At a brisk 63 minutes, this is one of the most ridiculously fun movies I've watched in awhile. Corman famously titled his autobiography 'How I Made a Hundred Movies in Hollywood and Never Lost a Dime,' and it is easy to see why. These were movies that were meant to be fun to watch, not ones you leave the theater or drive-in talking about how good the acting was or how strong the script was. You leave laughing about the wooden, hammy acting, the poorly made 'creature,' and as was the case here, the amazingly bad narration. A bad movie that knows it is bad, and it is better for it.

It's Cuba in 1959, and the Batista regime has collapsed (didn't think that was going to be in this review now, did you?), leaving army and government officials to flee the country. Exiled American mobster Renzo Capetto (Antony Carbone) has cut a deal with some of these officials to help transport the Cuban treasury out of the country. On board is his gang -- including babely girlfriend Mary-Belle (Betsy Jones-Moreland) -- and a FBI agent deep undercover, code name XK150 (Robert Towne), working to stop the mobster. Capetto has a plan though, start killing off the Cuban officials and the soldiers with them, blaming the killings on a mythical sea creature in the Gulf of Mexico. Everything seems to be going along swimmingly, but even Capetto couldn't have planned on this happening. The monster he made up? It's real, and it's gunning for them.

I think I should point something out before I get into anything. There are bad movies, and there are bad movies. Some have all the right intentions -- workable budget, good cast, promising story -- and just end up being awful, like Battlefield Earth. Others have none of the right intentions. Lowly budget, bad cast, and mind-numbingly stupid story. That's where this movie falls, but it rises above the schlock because it is trying to be that bad. It wants to be stupid. So because it seeks to be intentionally bad -- and therefore a lot more entertaining -- it is actually smart if you ask me. You have to work at being this bad, this stupid, without going too far and just being obnoxious. Who better to tread that fine line than Roger Corman? I can't think of a director/producer better suited to do it. He made a career of doing just that.

Let's start with the "creature" which has to be the most ridiculous movie monster ever. Cast member Beach Dickerson said it was made from a wetsuit, some moss, lots of Brillo pads, tennis balls for the eyes, ping pong balls for the pupils, and pipecleaners for the claws with black oilcloth applied to make him look slimy. You know what? It is a monster that looks like it is made of a wetsuit, moss, Brillo pads, and oil, probably all for about eight bucks. He's just a killing machine, going about randomly taking all these bad guys out. Capetto's creation is hilarious because the actual monster kills in exactly the same way the mobster dispatched the Cubans. So in the water, Capetto has a plunger and a rake, swimming after these unlucky Cuban exiles and taking them out. The best is saved for last so keep reading, I don't want to spoil it just now.

As was par for the course with the ridiculous story was the ridiculous casting, bad acting for the sake of bad acting. Carbony's Capetto is the straight man to it all, the "diabolical" mind behind it all.  Monahan gets to sex it up as Mary-Belle, the girlfriend and gun moll along for the adventure. Capetto's gang includes Mary-Belle's younger brother, a dim-wit named Happy Jack (Robert Bean), and an oddball who became unhinged at some point and communicates via animal noises, Pete (Dickerson). Towne as Agent XK150 is the stupidest secret agent I've ever seen, hiding his radio in raw hot dog pieces and a relish jar, telling his superiors they're heading to Bali when they're heading to Puerto Rico. His narration is a scream, describing in idiotic detail everything that's happening, including my favorite "I knew it was dusk because the sun was setting." There are other characters -- an island mama who likes animal Pete, her slutty daughter, and the Cuban general, appropriately named General Tostada -- but it doesn't matter. They're there to get eaten or attacked in some gruesome fashion.

There are countless priceless scenes I could mention here. XK150 falls for Mary-Belle who wants nothing to do with him, even when he tries to woo her, all but telling her he's a secret agent. Capetto killing Cubans with a plunger and rake. XK reads off a list of aliases, all of them virtually identical. That's probably the best thing in the whole movie, Towne's narration. He delivers it in straight-fashion, completely dead pan, letting the humor still hit you like a brick wall.  The final shot is spot-on perfect too, the creature having killed everyone but XK150 and his new love interest. XK's narration states "I got the girl, and the monster got the gold" at which point we see the creature chilling on the chest of gold/money/treasure at the bottom of the ocean. Sublimely perfect is you ask me. I loved this movie, and laughed at it more than I have a lot of comedies.  So awful, so mind-blowingly stupid that you can't help but like it.

Creature from the Haunted Sea <---trailer (1961): ***/****