Creature from the Haunted Sea (1961)

User Rating:

2.9/10   

Director:

Roger Corman

Writer:

Charles B. Griffith (screenplay)

Release Date:

June 1961 (USA)

Genre:

Comedy | Crime | Horror

Tagline:

This Gangster's "Single Partner" Isn't Even Human!

Plot:

A crook decides to bump off members of his inept crew and blame their deaths on a legendary sea creature. What he doesn't know is that the creature is real.

Plot Keywords:

Sea Monster | Boat | Cuba | Gangster | Gangster's Moll

Cast

Antony Carbone	...	Renzo Capetto
Betsy Jones-Moreland	...	Mary-Belle Monahan
Robert Towne	...	Sparks Moran / Agent XK150 / Narrator (as Edward Wain)
Beach Dickerson	...	Pete Peterson Jr. (Capeto's chief henchman) (as Beech Dickerson)
Robert Bean	...	Happy Jack Monahan (Mary-Belle's brother)
Esther Sandoval
Sonia Noemí González	...	Mango Perez (as Sonia Noemi Gonzalez)
Edmundo Rivera Álvarez	...	Gen. Tostada (as Edmund Rivera Alvarez)
Terry Nevin
Elisio López		(as Elsio Lopez)
Tanner Hunt
Blanquita Romero
Armando Rowra

Runtime:

63 min | USA:75 min (TV version)

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Canada:PG (Ontario) | USA:Unrated

Filming Locations:

Puerto Rico

Company:

Roger Corman Productions

Trivia:

The scene of the Cuban military officers saluting as the little boat they are floating in sinks was not planned; it actually began sinking as they were completing the shot. Roger Corman told the actors to stand and salute as the boat sank and filmed every moment, later stating that it 'wasn't very deep' there. He also gave high praise for the Mexican actors that played the officers for taking direction so well.

Goofs:

Revealing mistakes: When the monster attacks the ship at the end of the movie, you can see human skin where the costume sleeves didn't reach the gloves.

Quotes:

[first lines]
Sparks Moran: [narrating] I had to go the Santo Domingo bar and I had to find Agent XK-120, whom I'd never met.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Watching the Detectives (2007)

Wonderful, deliberately bad monster movie

As the back cover of a DVD of it points out, this movie parodies a dozen different movie things - social comment (the Cuban Revolution), monsters, gangsters, spies, beatniks (to some degree), impromptu singing, cameos by the film-makers, Bogart movies, even South Pacific (I think). And Betsy Jones-Moreland makes one of the great movie molls (in comedies OR dramas). This story is the first and last place I've heard the phrase "crazy-looking" - "crazy" in the "beat" sense of the word, making it a compliment - but I've always wanted to use it. And of course, there's Antony Carbone as a villain you start to feel sorry for, because he's surrounded by incompetents, and Robert Towne as the incompetent hero, who tries to make himself sound better in the narration, but fails even THEN. There are many little moments that really work - the impromptu song with the really clumsy lyrics (even though it's a romantic song, it has the title of the movie worked into it), the cameo by Roger Corman himself where he seems to be trying to make Robert Towne laugh, and of course the aliases. There's one little thing it took me a long while to notice. In one scene, "Sparks" is trying to rescue "Marybelle" (who hates him) from drowning (which she isn't). She gets fed up and hits him, and (though I'm not at all sure), instead of sounding "dubbed in", it sounds like Moreland got carried away and hit him for real. Deliberately clumsy-looking films (not just horror ones, of course) have gotten much TOO common lately (taking a lot of the novelty away from it), but Creature From The Haunted Sea really works.