Horror Classic 3 of 50: CREATURE FROM THE HAUNTED SEA
Today’s movie is Creature from the Haunted Sea from 1961. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that it was directed by Roger Corman, the prolific B-movie movie master who cranked out over 572,000 films in the 1960s, including the original Little Shop of Horrors. I will not be shocked if there’s some more Corman later in this DVD set. If you’re familiar with Corman’s style, you know that his “horror” movies were very tongue-in-cheek, and Creature is no exception.
Synopsis
Our hero and narrator is an American secret agent named XK-150, who’s posing as a crooked businessman in order to infiltrate a crew led by a crime boss named Renzo Capetto. Renzo is helping some counter-revolutionary Cubans (remember, this is 1961) smuggle a trunk full of gold out of the country and across the ocean. This is explained in forest-set scene that appears to have been lit with a flashlight.
Renzo’s crew includes Happy Jack, the sexy but untouchable Marybelle, and Pete Peterson, who makes animal noises – for example, Pete will open his mouth and we’ll hear the sound effect of a lion’s roar, or a monkey screeching or the "mating call of a Himalayan yak." Renzo cooks up a scheme to grab all the gold for himself: He’ll kill one of the Cubans on the boat during the night and blame it on a made-up sea monster, insist on changing course to avoid the monster, then deliberately wreck the ship, dropping the gold in a location where can come back for it later. Unbeknownst to him, however, (but predictable to anyone who knows the title of this movie) there exists a REAL (and real ugly) sea monster lurking in the depths!
Who will end up with the gold? Who will make it out alive? Can a plunger be used to create the illusion of death by sea monter? All these questions and more will be answered in Creature from the Haunted Sea.
Is It Scary?
Naw. It’s really not supposed to be a screamfest, and Roger Corman’s films are always peppered with humor. But the thought of being dragged down to a watery death by a monster will always be unsettling.
Lessons I Learned
- Don’t steal gold from the Cuban treasury.
- Don’t kill people and blame it on a sea monster.
- Primitive tropical islands have payphones.
- Don’t sleep in the top bunk on a boat. Every time the boat lurches, you’ll sit up and bash your head on the ceiling, which is funny but probably very painful.
XK-150 takes himself pretty seriously, and his narration is odd and clever: “It was dusk. I could tell because the sun was going down.”
There’s a scene where Marybelle has a musical number. I was initially delighted, but then the song just kind of went on and on without anything interesting happening. I guess you gotta fill out that 75-minute running time somehow!
I would describe the monster’s appearance thusly: ½ grouper, ½ fettucini, ½ tattered old bathrobe bought at a yard sale.
By the time the ship’s crew washes up on the island, there’s quite a soap opera going on: Renzo, the Cuban general, and XK-150 all have the hots for Marybelle. Peter falls in love with island native Tina (who can also make animal sounds), but she’s married. Happy Jack digs Carmelita, who shows up to help them get off the island, but she’s only interested in making out with XK-150, so Tina introduces Jack to her daughter Mango, who’s named after a fruit and who confesses that she’s only pretending to like Jack so he’ll buy some island souvenirs, but she confesses in Spanish and he can’t understand so he proposes to her. You got all that? As far as I know, the monster has no romantic interests. Maybe he could find a nice giant jellyfish and settle down somewhere.
The opening credits are animated, as is the scene immediately following, which explains the current political situation in
There's a scene where XK-150 is using the aforementioned payphone, and after he hangs up a man walks by wearing a trenchcoat and splashing through puddles. I have no idea what the point of that was.
Letter grade for Creature from the
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