The Creature from the Haunted Sea

Rating:
Summary: only Roger Corman
Review: a very strange and funny little film from Roger Cormans no[not low] budget days. Set in Cuba during Castros takeover.it has crime,murder, spys and a monster you wont believe.a low cost dvd to add to your horrible horror collection.

Rating:
Summary: only Roger Corman
Review: a very strange and funny little film from Roger Cormans no[not low] budget days. Set in Cuba during Castros takeover.it has crime,murder, spys and a monster you wont believe.a low cost dvd to add to your horrible horror collection.

Rating:
Summary: Corman Cranks 'Em Out!
Review: CREATURE FROM HAUNTED SEA isn't so bad when you consider that Roger Corman made it along with two other movies (The Last Woman On Earth, and Battle Of Blood Island) almost simultaneously in Puerta Rico! The casts are interchanchable. The storylines of the three couldn't be any more different from each other! CFHS is a silly, semi-interesting spy / monster flick with what resembles a pop-eyed, rubber-gloved christmas tree as the monster! Need I say more? I like it enough to watch it every once in a while. Check it out...

Rating:
Summary: Starts out snappy enough, but quickly grows tiresome.
Review: Made as an afterthought on the trip back from some other shoot (a fairly typical Corman occurrence), CFHS is probably much too weird even for most fringe types who like Corman's other stuff to accept.
The setting is the Cuban Revolution, and Corman educates viewers on the conflict not with stock footage of some other war as Ed Wood might have done, but with Addams-style cartoons. The film's opening scenes are sharp- if easy- satire, relating a chase and the introductory meeting between the movie's nominal hero Sparks Moran and a female co-spy. Sparks is played by future Oscar-winning screenwriter Robert Towne, who brings to mind Nicolas Cage's head on Alan Alda's body, and underplays his idiotic secret agent admirably. We learn that a chest of gold has been stolen from Cuba's treasury, and Moran is infiltrating the group of militants and mobsters who are trying to sail away with it.
They get on a sailing boat, and the mobsters plan to kill off the Cuban army members one-by-one, using a made-up creature as their cover. But a real monster shows up, and they have to alter their plans.
Some of the best comedy is in this section, as we meet a crewman capable of making animal noises, hear more of Moran's noodlehead pontificating, and when the mobster's moll sings a number without stopping during a machine gun shootout. I'm not aware of another filmmaker besides Corman working in satire like this by 1960.
But then their ship crashes on some reefs and they seek refuge on an (almost) deserted isle. The movie slows down and gets repetitive here, and additional scenes were shot to pad out its running time for TV. These are of a comedic level with Ma and Pa Kettle at Waikiki or even the abysmal Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla, as two crew members meet tropical ladies they fall in love with. Whereas the earlier sections were silly but (I daresay) ahead of their time, the hijinx in this portion you've mostly seen before. By the time the monster shows up and starts killing people again, the damage is done.
A few funny deadpan wisecracks are spread throughout, of the kind that might make Clouseau seem like Einstein: "It was coming on dusk. I knew because the sun was going down." But the movie dies a death far worse than the monster could ever inflict in its middle portion.
One step down from Little Shop of Horrors, a step-and-a-half from Bucket of Blood, if this flick would've stayed on the boat or Cuba and avoided the reefs altogether, it might have surpassed them both.
Quality note: I took 1 star off this otherwise 3-star flick for the poor quality. This dvd skipped all over the place in Chapters 1 and 2 of 4, so you may wish to try another version. But probably none of them are going to be wonderful. Alas, it's public-domain Corman, after all. Caveat Emptor.

Rating:
Summary: Vintage Roger Corman
Review: Only one man could produce and direct a movie as outrageously stupid as The Creature From the Haunted Sea: Roger Corman. I might as well start with the monster. If you thought low-budget Japanese monster movies featured the most patently fake monsters in the cinematic universe, you haven't seen Corman's creature from the haunted sea. A kindergarten class could make a better monster out of shoelaces and a couple of buttons. You have to see it; I can't even begin to explain how ludicrous this monster is.

The story is also laughable. After Castro's revolution, counter-revolutionary forces have stolen the treasury of Cuba, and their plan is to sneak the gold off the island in an American boat. They choose Lorenzo because, according to their reasoning, the fact that he is an American gambler makes him beyond reproach. Lorenzo's crew is, in a word, unreal. First, there is his best girl Marybelle and her brother Happy Jack, who got his name from the twitch he developed from watching too many Humphrey Bogart movies. Next up is Pete Peterson, Jr., whom, as the narrator actually explains to us, is the son of Pete Peterson, Sr. Pete's only talent is his ability to mimic any and all kinds of animals, but he's never been the same since blowing his brain out of whack imitating a whooping crane years earlier. Then there is the "hero" of our story, an American spy who makes Maxwell Smart look like Albert Einstein. He never really understands what is going on, but he diligently reports his non-findings to headquarters using his home-made, undetectable radio set constructed using simulated hot dogs for knobs and tubes inside of dill pickles. His narration of the story is filled with incredibly philosophical statements such as "It was coming on dusk. I knew because the sun was going down." Getting back to the plot, the crooked Americans want the gold for themselves, so they hatch an elaborate plot to kill the Cuban soldiers on board one by one and make each death appear to be the work of a mythical sea creature. What they don't know is that the creature, as ridiculous as he is, actually does exist.

Featuring such unexplained oddities as a pay phone (with a steady stream of users) existing on a deserted island, this movie goes out of its way to insult the intelligence of every creature who ever harbored a conscious thought. As a result, the film is pretty darn funny at times, although one is hard pressed to see whether or not Corman intended this to be a comedy or a serious monster movie. I for one never know what Roger Corman could possible have been thinking.

Rating:
Summary: Vintage Roger Corman
Review: Only one man could produce and direct a movie as outrageously stupid as The Creature From the Haunted Sea: Roger Corman. I might as well start with the monster. If you thought low-budget Japanese monster movies featured the most patently fake monsters in the cinematic universe, you haven't seen Corman's creature from the haunted sea. A kindergarten class could make a better monster out of shoelaces and a couple of buttons. You have to see it; I can't even begin to explain how ludicrous this monster is.

The story is also laughable. After Castro's revolution, counter-revolutionary forces have stolen the treasury of Cuba, and their plan is to sneak the gold off the island in an American boat. They choose Lorenzo because, according to their reasoning, the fact that he is an American gambler makes him beyond reproach. Lorenzo's crew is, in a word, unreal. First, there is his best girl Marybelle and her brother Happy Jack, who got his name from the twitch he developed from watching too many Humphrey Bogart movies. Next up is Pete Peterson, Jr., whom, as the narrator actually explains to us, is the son of Pete Peterson, Sr. Pete's only talent is his ability to mimic any and all kinds of animals, but he's never been the same since blowing his brain out of whack imitating a whooping crane years earlier. Then there is the "hero" of our story, an American spy who makes Maxwell Smart look like Albert Einstein. He never really understands what is going on, but he diligently reports his non-findings to headquarters using his home-made, undetectable radio set constructed using simulated hot dogs for knobs and tubes inside of dill pickles. His narration of the story is filled with incredibly philosophical statements such as "It was coming on dusk. I knew because the sun was going down." Getting back to the plot, the crooked Americans want the gold for themselves, so they hatch an elaborate plot to kill the Cuban soldiers on board one by one and make each death appear to be the work of a mythical sea creature. What they don't know is that the creature, as ridiculous as he is, actually does exist.

Featuring such unexplained oddities as a pay phone (with a steady stream of users) existing on a deserted island, this movie goes out of its way to insult the intelligence of every creature who ever harbored a conscious thought. As a result, the film is pretty darn funny at times, although one is hard pressed to see whether or not Corman intended this to be a comedy or a serious monster movie. I for one never know what Roger Corman could possible have been thinking.

Rating:
Summary: BRUCE says
Review: The first time I saw this film was when I was 13 or so on a late night horror movie show in the mid sixties, I thought it was just a really dumb movie, but I liked it, I thought it was just someone trying to make a serious horror film that just turned out funny. When I saw the film for sale on DVD I just had to buy it, just to see if my boyhood memory of the film was true what I found was a film that must have been planed to be funny or at least I hope so, as a fan of really campie movies I have to rate The Creature from the Haunted Sea right up there with Plan 9 and other dumb movies, call me weird but I just like it its good for a giggle.

Rating:
Summary: Zany Corman quickie
Review: This zany little Roger Corman quickie turned up frequently on a local TV station's late, late, late show many years ago. Thinking "Creature from the Haunted Sea" was just another lousy low grade horror flick, I barely noticed it even as it flickered on the TV screen that I used, more often than not, as a night light.

But I did catch a scene in which a couple of skin-divers descended into the sea, and when I saw that one of them carried a toilet plunger, I silently mused a thoughtful "Hmm," and made a mental note to pay attention the next time it aired.

"Creature from the Haunted Sea" is a satire of adventure films as delightfully daffy as Corman's "Little Shop of Horrors," but with a more subtle approach. It's not a knee-slapper, but it is amusing, and well cast. There's Anthony Carbone doing a fiendishly silly homage to Humphrey Bogart, and future screenwriter Robert Towne as the earnest young hero. You even get a title song, a love theme containing the complete title, sung by the leading lady, Betsy Jones Moreland.

This is a movie that is probably best seen unexpectedly in the wee hours of an uneventful night. By morning, you may think it was just a silly dream.

Rating:
Summary: Zany Corman quickie
Review: This zany little Roger Corman quickie turned up frequently on a local TV station's late, late, late show many years ago. Thinking "Creature from the Haunted Sea" was just another lousy low grade horror flick, I barely noticed it even as it flickered on the TV screen that I used, more often than not, as a night light.

But I did catch a scene in which a couple of skin-divers descended into the sea, and when I saw that one of them carried a toilet plunger, I silently mused a thoughtful "Hmm," and made a mental note to pay attention the next time it aired.

"Creature from the Haunted Sea" is a satire of adventure films as delightfully daffy as Corman's "Little Shop of Horrors," but with a more subtle approach. It's not a knee-slapper, but it is amusing, and well cast. There's Anthony Carbone doing a fiendishly silly homage to Humphrey Bogart, and future screenwriter Robert Towne as the earnest young hero. You even get a title song, a love theme containing the complete title, sung by the leading lady, Betsy Jones Moreland.

This is a movie that is probably best seen unexpectedly in the wee hours of an uneventful night. By morning, you may think it was just a silly dream.

Rating:
Summary: Zany Corman quickie
Review: This zany little Roger Corman quickie turned up frequently on a local TV station's late, late, late show many years ago. Thinking "Creature from the Haunted Sea" was just another lousy low grade horror flick, I barely noticed it even as it flickered on the TV screen that I used, more often than not, as a night light.

But I did catch a scene in which a couple of skin-divers descended into the sea, and when I saw that one of them carried a toilet plunger, I silently mused a thoughtful "Hmm," and made a mental note to pay attention the next time it aired.

"Creature from the Haunted Sea" is a satire of adventure films as delightfully daffy as Corman's "Little Shop of Horrors," but with a more subtle approach. It's not a knee-slapper, but it is amusing, and well cast. There's Anthony Carbone doing a fiendishly silly homage to Humphrey Bogart, and future screenwriter Robert Towne as the earnest young hero. You even get a title song, a love theme containing the complete title, sung by the leading lady, Betsy Jones Moreland.

This is a movie that is probably best seen unexpectedly in the wee hours of an uneventful night. By morning, you may think it was just a silly dream.