CREATURE FROM THE HAUNTED SEA (1961)
Article #1125 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 4-13-2004
Posting Date: 9-10-2004
Directed by Roger Corman
Featuring Antony Carbone, Betsy Jones-Moreland, Robert Towne

When Cuban refugees try to flee with the country’s treasury after the revolution, they hook up with gangsters who have decided they want the treasure for themselves. The gangsters begin killing off the Cubans while making it look as if a monster is doing it. Unfortunately for them, a real monster is also on the loose.

Director Roger Corman and screenwriter Charles B. Griffith gave us two little comic gems, BUCKET OF BLOOD and LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS, both of which rose above their low budgets to become cult classics. This was a third attempt by the team to put together another comedy, but this one falls flat on its face. It does manage to be sporadically funny, but the script is an unfocused mess; it’s poorly paced and structured, suffers badly from its low budget, and often ends up being just weird rather than funny. Furthermore, the movie was marketed as being a serious horror film rather than a comedy, and this surely disappointed those who were expecting something else. The monster is also very bad indeed; it looks like something you’d find in a Larry Buchanan movie. On the plus side, its topical backstory is a bit unusual for this type of thing, and in some ways it seems to be parodying spy movies before they really became big. Nonetheless, this one is a failure, and those expecting a repeat of BUCKET OF BLOOD or LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS certainly won’t find it here.