Curse Of The Swamp Creature

 

Picture: C     Sound: C-     Extras: D     Film: C-

 

 

For kicks, Elite Entertainment has issued the 1966 Larry Buchanan howler Curse Of The Swamp Creature, where an expedition in the name of science turns up a mad scientist creating a monster that looks more like a bad Halloween costume than a real menace.  Though this is low budget Horror filmmaking at its most laughable, it is still more entertaining than the endlessly bad and highly overbudgeted genre disasters we have seen lately, a fact that is scarier than many actual Horror scripts.

 

The unknown cast does a half-hearted acting job throughout, though they look Shakespearian as compared to the visual effects and the sluggish pacing does not help.  Still, it is from a later golden period of bad B-movie filmmaking when you could always rely on low-budget productions to have a unique look and feel to them.  There is a fun in their awkwardness, roughness and inexperience.  They never try to be something they are not and that is ultimately art of their charm, even when Joe Bob Briggs and the MST3K team are not around.  It is still pretty bad, though and could have made the 50 Worst Movies Ever Made DVD.

 

The 1.33 X 1 image is in bad shape for its age, with a worn print, but even in all that you can tell that the film had decent color in its time.  The Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono is even worse with poor fidelity and a sound that is a good few generations down.  There are no extras, but why no spoofy commentary?

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo