Creature from the Haunted Sea (1961)

Excellent film with a gripping story!

Beautiful, moving film.

I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

Roger Corman's movies are supposed to be bad, but usually aren't boring. This looks like a hastily put together mish-mash of film he shot and couldn't use. I saw the movie poster and thought it was a 50s - 60s type schlocky sci-fi/horror flick that he's known for. It is a movie in a collection of B sci-fi/horror movies on DVD. Right off the bat, the intro does not seem to fit the genre. Even the opening screen credits look ridiculous. There's a lot of hammy and cheesy acting throughout and if you have the patience to watch it until the end, then a creature finally does come out. It looks nothing like the movie poster. It's difficult to watch because of the convoluted story and uneven pacing. I can't recommend this for viewing for any 50s - 60s horror/sci-fi movie buff or Roger Corman fan. Afterward, I read on wikipedia that it did poorly at the box office due to misleading advertising. Also, Robert Towne worked with Corman in The Last Woman on Earth in 1960. That movie wasn't bad. Afterward, they got together and created this fiasco.

Once this thing came to a conclusion, I sat for a minute and thought about how I wanted to punch Corman and Griffith in their respective chops for inflicting this movie on me. Based on the lines the actors spout at various points in the movie, this is apparently supposed to be a comedy of sorts, the same way "Little Shop Of Horrors" and "Bucket Of Blood" were horror-comedies. Well, for whatever reasons, those movies worked, and boy this one sure doesn't. Comedy is hard. Timing is everything in a comedy, and a spoof only works if the timing and art direction in it are better than whatever the subject of the spoof is. With its washed out, smeary photography and muddy, barely understandable vocals, and barely-there non- performances, it's obvious in the first minute that this movie is too raw and unpolished to get the timing right. A few more takes, a little bit better blocking, a few rewrites of a couple of the dopier scenes in the screenplay...even a more careful edit to weed out some of the dead air and draggy spots..."Creature" might have been at least mildly amusing. Or if they'd given up on the comedy and done a straight monster flick, it would have been a "5" instead of the "3". "Creature" isn't even especially good for a movie shot in less than 10 days. You can give this one a miss if you see it offered on cable or a late night horror host show.

This is pre-Airplane humor. Anyone who thinks this is a "monster movie" will be sadly disappointed. My first clue? The very first scene has a guy getting his shoes shined. And what is he wearing? White canvas sneakers. There are lots of quirky dialog that doesn't even need MST3000K to make jokes about. "Did you get that?" "Right. Where do I turn for the decoder pin?" "Left." "Left?" "Right." "Right". And the classic, "It was dusk. I could tell because the sun was going down."Nothing in this movie was intended to be "horror". But if you listen closely and watch, you'll find plenty to laugh about. Kind of clever, actually.

Much as one admires Roger Corman's shrewd entrepreneurial qualities and the prescient nurturing of various up-and-coming talents, admittedly, his own non-Poe horror output is alarmingly erratic – so that, on the one hand, you had undeniable classics such as NOT OF THIS EARTH (1957), A BUCKET OF BLOOD (1959) and THE LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS (1960) and, on the other, the likes of the goofy IT CONQUERED THE WORLD (1956), the dull ATTACK OF THE CRAB MONSTERS (1957) and this one, which is at once heavy-handed and silly! The film is a remake of the director's own NAKED PARADISE (1957) but made in the vein of Monte Hellman's BEAST FROM HAUNTED CAVE (1959), which had added a monster to PARADISE's central heist plot. Besides, it followed on from the afore-mentioned BUCKET and SHOP with respect to the comic tone adopted throughout (all three, as well as BEAST, were scripted by Charles B. Griffith); as with the latter, too, its borderline feature-length was expanded for TV showings (adding some 12 minutes in all) and this chore was assigned to none other than fledgling director Hellman! Another notable name here is that of hero Edward Wain, actually Robert Towne(!), who would soon carve a reputation for himself as an ace scriptwriter (penning Corman's masterpiece THE TOMB OF LIGEIA {1964} and eventually winning an Oscar for Roman Polanski's own best work CHINATOWN {1974}) and occasional director.Corman was quick to incorporate topical issues (if only in a superficial manner) into the narrative – in this case, the Cuban Missile Crisis: in fact, the film features several authoritative or vaguely sinister Latin American types. One more definite influence, however, is Howard Hawks' adaptation of the Ernest Hemingway adventure TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT (1944) – whether consciously or not, the protagonist here (Anthony Carbone) looks quite a bit like the iconic star of that one i.e. Humphrey Bogart! Wain is ostensibly a secret agent investigating the transport by boat of stolen Cuban gold: he has apparently gained Carbone's confidence and yet, unless he is confessing his love for the criminal's moll(!), he mostly keeps to the sidelines. The greedy skipper wants to get rid of his foreign associates and, to this end, commissions his underling to kill one of the crew members and place the blame at the foot of a legendary sea monster (what he does not know is that the latter is very much real and that Carbone and his men have been targeted for 'breaching' its territorial waters)!Unfortunately, the creature is among the loopiest ever conceived: CONQUERED and CRAB's were similarly outré, but this one actually belongs alongside the notorious ROBOT MONSTER (1953) in the annals of non-scary film fiends! The other low-point here, then, is the truly execrable comedy relief: it is not that some of the lines and situations prove unamusing but, along the way, we are improbably treated to a henchman with a penchant for communicating via animal sounds (who is later involved in a bit of jungle romance with a similarly-inclined{!?} South Sea woman) and the moll's klutzy younger brother (who, of course, becomes enamored of the native's daughter)…not to mention, coming up with lame quirky touches such as having Corman himself appear unbilled as a perennially-grinning man wearing shades waiting to use the phone on the South American island and a man in a suit walking along the rocks by the sea and purposefully stepping into every puddle he comes across! Yet another female character is introduced during these latter scenes, just so she can be with Wain for the finale – after the monster has killed virtually the entire cast (unlike BEAST FROM HAUNTED CAVE, the leading lady in this case was apparently deemed too much of a harlot to be allowed to survive!) and is thus left in sole possession of the conveniently-sunken treasure.Of Corman's remaining genre efforts, I have the following still unwatched in my collection: DAY TIME ENDED (1955), WAR OF THE SATELLITES (1958), TEENAGE CAVE MAN (1958; though I had checked out Larry Clark's 'controversial' 2002 TV remake) and LAST WOMAN ON EARTH (1960; which was shot back-to-back with the film under review and even retains the same three leads!).