Attack of the Beast Creatures (1985)

Very Cool!!!

Simply A Masterpiece

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

"Attack of the Beast Creatures" is a lot better creature feature than it should be expected.**SPOILERS**Crashing in the Atlantic, John Trieste, (Robert Nolfi) Cathy, (Julia Rust) Case Quinn, (Robert Lengyel) Phillip, (Frank Murgalo) Diane, (Lisa Pak) Pat, (Frans Kal) and Mrs. Gordon, (Kay Bailey) wash ashore on a deserted island and try to figure out where they are. Exploring the island, they find that it is inhabited by a strange creature that none of them have seen before. Frantic to get away after a particularly brutal attack, they soon suffer repeated attacks as their quest to get off gets more desperate. Finally finding a way off, even as their numbers go down, they to implement it before the creatures attack.The Good News: This here wasn't anywhere near as bad as expected and is a lot of fun. The film's biggest plus is the fact that it's creatures are relentless and absolutely unafraid to launch attack after attack. The last half of the film is pretty much a gigantic assault, since they never really leave and are constantly in the faces of the victims, and the sight of seeing them launch themselves again and again onto their victims is what is needed to make creatures with as much height difference between them into viable threats. After a while, it begins to wear on that something could as dangerous as those that are in the film, due to the relentlessness and their ferocity in the attacks. These here are pretty much adverse to trying anything, from surprise attacks when they drop from the trees to the suspenseful type where they all converge to attack them and then proceed to swarm. That also leads into the brilliant tactics, since they do swarm a few victims but are also content with trying out the bite and run style, which leads to a recurring gag with one victim where they continuously target one specific body area and just bite into it whenever they want to, and the continuous use of that tactic gives them a lot more intelligence than expected. The gore here is also quite nice, which builds from what they are capable of and really looks quite nice. In addition to several of them being continually swarmed, leading to numerous bite marks and wounds all over the body, one is tripped up and lands stomach first on a sharpened branch sticking out of the ground, another has their leg bitten off, another has their body continually bitten into and devoured, one is found eaten all the way down to the skeleton and the big one is when one decides to wash their face with acidic water, melting their skin off and turning their face into a gigantic pile of red crimson goo that looks incredibly disgusting. The last big feature is the impressive atmosphere, since this one does have some great scenes built around that. The jungle search early on is really great, since there's always a feeling that something is going on but it plays the suspense off in the search to discover what is there. That is a great tactic and is done perfectly. A later scene, where the creatures first attack, is a stand-out, due to the fact that they are first seen with just the glowing eyes appearing in the distance, and slowly it becomes obvious that more and more eyes are showing up, and it really builds up expertly. From there the attack is launched, and it works due to the atmospheric build-up. All of these factors make the film so much fun.The Bad News: This here did have a few flaws with it, and most of those are centered around it's creatures. The little creatures in the film aren't that bad when they merely stand there and watch the events unfold, such as the scenes of them standing in the trees or before launching attacks, but the fact that they look terrible when in action is only confirmed to be little puppets that are nowhere near as threatening as the look suggests. As brutal as the gore is, it's only this way due to how ridiculously cheesy the creatures look in the film. The other flaw would be the cheese, which is mostly linked to the tolerance of the creature puppets. As they get a lot of screen-time at the end, it becomes even cheesier than expected, and that's due to how they look like in the scenes, which at times is laugh-inducing. These are the main things that keep the film down.The Final Verdict: This is a lot better than expected, though it's still a rather cheesy film that doesn't really have any right to be. It's there mostly for most of the cheesy creature feature fans out there, while this one will only turn off those who aren't that big on the style to begin with.Rated R: Graphic Violence and Language

What an endearing mess!! Summed up as succinctly as possible, ATTACK OF THE BEAST CREATURES concerns itself with a group of shipwreck victims who find themselves stranded on an uncharted island where they are set upon by a bunch of demonic alien Cabbige Patch dolls made up to look like Marilyn Manson. One by one the survivors are torn at, eaten, and reduced to clean-picked skeletons before they can effect any kind of rescue or escape plan. The Beast Creatures are fierce, hungry, innumerable and can seem to spawn anew whenever suffering losses: For every Beast Creature the humans whack like pulpy, exploding softballs as they fling themselves through the air, three more take their place. Eventually they are whittled down to the surviving love interest couple, who then ...But why give away the ending? That and seeing the Beast Creatures up close & in action are the main reasons to bother with this cleverly constructed little home movie/grade Z creature feature howler made by a bunch of people who went on to do nothing more in the film industry. Aside from producer turned actor turned producer again, the late Jim Brown (III), who's other cinematic endeavors consist of such revealingly titled gems as DELTA FORCE COMMANDO, it's imaginatively titled followup DELTA FORCE COMMANDO II, BEHEADED 1000 and my favorite, the Viking horror saga BERSERKER. The world lost a true visionary with his passing, and this might stand as his greatest accomplishment.One of the things that I instantly admired about the film was it's willingness to completely shred any artifice of what my be called "suspension of disbelief" and do so with such enthusiasm that you sort of forgive the film to being so ineptly executed: Visible puppeteer limbs, guide wires and thrown Beast Creatures flying in random trajectories take second place to the movie's gleeful abandoning of itself to the hazards of competence. Peter Jackson's team of 3d modelers may have worked gee, days on end to create King Kong for PETER JACKSON'S KING KONG: A PETER JACKSON MOVIE BY PETER JACKSON, but the effort in creating an actual presence on screen pales to the sight of a teeming swarm of these hand puppet Beasties clawing at the cocktail dress of the film's shapely heroine. I believe in them even though it is all fake, corny, slipshod and nappy lookin', not just because they are puppets which take up physical space (ahem, Yoda?), but because the filmmakers and cast believe in them and communicate their belief with frantic, frenzied conviction.But like a lot of other horror thrillers the question remains, is it a good movie? Well no, quite frankly. But the film was made in such a manner that it defies the usual standards by which one judges film as an art. It's not that it wallows about in the gutter dwelling on gore or whatever, it's that the film doesn't care about those standards, has a story to tell and gets about doing so without ever once making any apologies for being just a stupid, tacky, frenetic little ball of fun. And that's what the Beast Creatures are too: The movie defines it's own reality, sticks to it and doesn't bother worrying about what anyone else is going to think critically. In fact to consider such a film on actual critical terms is a waste of time -- Either you enjoy it or you don't, standing around haggling about the merits or weaknesses after wards would miss the point of the film which is just to be entertaining.6/10 for getting the job done.

This was a real treat. The film starts off a little slow, so hang in there because once the action starts you will probably choke on your beer or mountain dew out of sheer hysterical laughter. In my journey through "grade Z" movies, it is movies like Attack of the Beast Creatures that make it all worth it. This is the type of movie that I put on that "special shelf" for the friends that don't want to have to think or invest much of themselves into a film. For those friends who you would like to impress with a movie so bad, that it is just beautiful. This was made at a time when bad films were at least still shot on film. Now days "grade z" movies are shot on daddy's new digital camcorder, so they don't have any real cinematic quality. This has some cinematic quality...OK, cinematic quality in a really "grade z" kind of way.If you want Freddie Kreuger, Jason, or The Ring Meets the Grudge Part 4, then go to your local Blockbuster. Leave the trash to us trashmongers...I love it!

This is one of the most horrid movies I have ever seen and we have had some real stinkers at my Universitie's bad movie night. Truly this ranks with such horrid cinematic effluence such as "Robot Monster" which at least had the benefit of being fun to watch, this atrocious affair does not even have that going for it, and the puppet animation has to be seen to be believed it is just that terrible. The acting switches from absent to way way overdone, and the setting is obviously Eastern US and not a tropical island. The film stock itself seems to have problems, and there is no lighting except for natural light sources in each scene so some parts of the movie have almost no light in them at all. To top it off filters are sometimes put on and removed from the camera in the same scene. Even if you are a fan of terrible films stay far far away from this film as it lacks the qualities that make other such films fun to watch.