Demon of Paradise (1987)

Great Film overall

Best movie ever!

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

Even films that are blatant rip-offs of far superior films have some good merits of their own and the Jaws rip-offs are no exceptions. Films like Joe Dante's excellent "Piranha" (1978); Charles B. Griffith's campy "Up from the Depths" (1979); and the MST3K-target "Devil Fish" (1984) are basically Jaws rip-offs, but each film makes up for this by doing at least one thing right to make it their own. Whether the merits include: decent acting, likable characters, decent writing, decent characters, good creature effects, et cetera. Whatever the case may be at least one of these are present in each film (or all like in "Piranha"). Unfortunately no such merits are found in "Demon of Paradise" whatsoever.*SPOILERS* Not only is it a "Jaws" rip-off, but a its a "Creature from the Black Lagoon" rip-off that's stitched together to create a Frankenstein-esque mess. The basic plot is that it takes place in "Hawaii" (the Philippines) where hunters' illegal dynamite fishing awaken a prehistoric fish- monster-man (which looks like the secret love child of the Beast from "Krull" and the tree monster from the 1957 film, "From Hell it Came") that the locals believe to be a mythical creature. Once awake the monster begins to terrorize the locals (those dumb enough not to leave after finding the first body) and guests at a tropical resort. Now its up to Sheriff Keefer (played by Steis who looks like a failed clone of David Carradine) and the herpetologist, Annie (Witt), to track down the lethal living fossil before it kills anymore people.Throughout the course of the film there is the standard skepticism followed by a greedy moron (Cahill, the resort owner) wanting to profit on the local lore and finally an all-out hunt for the creature. In addition there's a pointless side-story involving criminals illegally making explosives which adds nothing to the main story save for colliding with the creature story at the end of a shoot-out with the cops. Once the creature's existence is confirmed the National Guard are called in only to leave save for a few troops the commander leaves with them. The movie ends with the real heroes, the National Guard, using grenades to blow the creature suit into green chunks as the two leads look on doing nothing. Yes, the creature is killed by nameless extras and not the main character. Anyway Keefer reasonably assumes it's over, but Annie "ominously" asks "have you ever cut the tail off a lizard" implying the creature might have the ability to regenerate it's entire body cut to one of the creature's arms floating down into the stream before abruptly ending. Although it sounds serviceable on a B-movie level it still fails.The main reason "Demon of Paradise" fails is because it commits the worst B-movie sin a movie like it can commit: it's boring. Why is it boring? Where to start? The two leads act as if they're on tranquilizers and the side-characters are cookie-cutter generic, annoying, or both. Even on the level of a Jaws knock-off it's exceptionally awful because it does not even make an attempt on the most basic level other films in its class made. What it results in is a rip-off that does nothing with the source material and chooses the lazy way by creating an inferior carbon copy of elements from two classics for the price of one in every way possible.In addition it makes the mistake of taking itself too seriously which one might think would make it unintentionally funny, but it doesn't go overboard and suffers for said misstep. You can find the film on a Double Feature DVD of Roger Corman's Cult Classics series alongside "Up from the Depths" which is the far superior film in the Double Feature.Simply put "Up from the Depths" succeeded by having decent acting; at least one likable character; intentionally over-the-top performances; self-awareness. Unfortunately for "Demon of Paradise" no such thing is present here leaving the boring story to trudge along as the boring set- pieces and boring, inferior carbon copied characters make no effort to get anything moving. As a result viewers are left watching an unappealing mass of waste taken from great films and asked to stare at it for over 80 minutes floating face-down in the water.

I got this film in a pack of two films, the other being a film called, "Up From the Depths". Neither film is particularly good as neither takes the course of action that would of made both films cheesy fun which is good graphic kills and lots of nudity. Sure, there is blood featured in both and sure there is a topless scene in each, but both films would have benefited by taking the Italian horror movie approach which is excess! The two films feature aquatic monsters and the other thing they have in common is that they both take place in Hawaii and another thing they share is that neither film was actually shot in Hawaii. "Up From the Depths" did an okay job of recreating Hawaii; however, this film did not. In fact, it did quite a bad job of it as they did not even bother filming in a location with the ocean, instead electing to say that the resort featured in this film was on a Hawaiian lake which did not resemble a lake in Hawaii as it was rather dirty. I thought the people looked like they were from the Philippines and I was correct as that is where this one is shot. As I said, you just did not get a Hawaii vibe from this film at all.The story has some dudes selling illegal dynamite and it is an explosion from one of this sticks that we have to deduce freed the monster. The boat setting off charges explodes and get used to that as there are more explosions featured in this film than there are on screen monster kills. The sheriff is skeptical that there is a monster while a scientist thinks there is something and the dudes selling dynamite may be going into business with the mob. A reporter decides to not report the story and instead hook up with the owner of the most depressing looking resort ever to try and lure people into the place by advertising the monster. Occasionally, the monster shows up and oftentimes the poor thing does not get to kill anyone as there is an explosion that kills everyone. At the end, the monster goes on a full on assault because it is probably tired of not getting to kill anyone.The characters in this one are another weak point in said movie. They are all rather bad. You have sheriff with a secret past that is skeptical, but wants to stop the killings. You have the scientist who wants to take in the beast alive and who sees something in one of her underwater jaunts that is so upsetting, but I couldn't tell you what it was. You have irritating newspaper guy and resort owner who at least die, but not horrifically enough. Then, like in "Up From the Depths", there is supermodel who is staying at said resort who flashes her boobies. I guess it is not too surprising that this film is similar to, "Up From the Depths" as Roger Corman had a hand in both of them and he would literally remake a couple of his films nearly shot for shot.So, this film is bad. It is hard to believe that this one was not more awesome considering that Roger also made the similarly themed, "Humanoids From the Deep" which had lots of good kills and nudity. It is like he did not even try here and instead nearly made a remake of the equally bad, "Up From the Depths" only replacing the shark monster with a humanoid monster which didn't look all that bad. Too bad they were too busy showing us illegal dynamite sellers and other pointless plot points when they could have shown more monster on the rampage scenes. Also, the ending line where the scientist says, "You ever cut the tail off a lizard" is rather lame because the monster was blown the up in this one. A lizard can grow its tail back, but said tail cannot grow a lizard and a lizard's body cannot regenerate at head!

A carnivorous reptilian humanoid brute of local legend (played by some poor zhlub in a laughably hokey and obvious rubbery suit) terrorizes a tropical resort after fishermen using dynamite awaken it from its many decades of slumber. It's up to fetching herpetologist Annie (an appealing turn by the fetching Kathyrn Witt) and skeptical no-nonsense sheriff Keefer (a likable performance by William Steis) to kill the bloodthirsty beastie. With fumbling (non)direction by Cirio H. Santiago, a plethora of dippy dialogue, a meandering narrative, poky pacing, infrequent and flatly staged monster attack set pieces, mild cheesy gore, zero tension or spooky atmosphere, loads of exotic local color tossed in as complete filler, and a priceless rousing conclusion with a commando unit of army guys opening up a king-sized barrel of raw hurtin' on the creature, this amusingly silly and schlocky piece of pure celluloid flotsam sure ain't remotely good, but still manages to be pretty enjoyable and occasionally quite sidesplitting in its hopelessly blatant ineptitude. The cast struggle gamely with the incredibly inane material, with especially admirable work by Laura Banks as bitchy and greedy resort owner Cahill, Frederick Bailey as obnoxious and opportunistic journalist Ike (Bailey also came up with the extremely asinine story), and striking blonde hottie Leslie Scarborough as vacuous pin-up model Gabby (the luscious Leslie removes her shirt and bares her beautifully bountiful breasts for the flick's yummy obligatory gratuitous topless scene). Ricardo Remias' bright cinematography gives this picture a slicker and more attractive look than it deserves (the effectively moody fog-shrouded nocturnal scenes are quite impressive). Ding Achacoso's shivery and syncopated score does the funky trick. A real tacky hoot.

Hunters become the hunted when illegal dynamite disturbs the age-old slumber of a carnivorous lizard-man. Resort owner Angela, joins forces with Sheriff Keefer to save tourists from the beast's path of death. This doesn't sound to bad, right? wrong. I am guilty of a crime many science fiction fans are guilty of. I call it "cool-box-syndrom". It's a common thing that happens, renting a movie because of a cool cover art. In this case, the cover showed a fanged reptile dragging a bathing beauty into the water.I was fooled. The monster looked nothing like the one on the cover. The plot was bad. The acting was ho-hum. The creature suit was mediocre. Some nice photography & locations, but that's not enough to make this sinker worth a renting. I now know to check with the Internet movie data base before I rent a film with good cover art.