Creature from the Haunted Sea Movie Review

One of Roger Corman's notorious, no-budget quickies, knocked out in days in 1961, Creature from the Haunted Sea is a failed enterprise about a group of American gangsters who are hired by a group of Cubans, following the Revolution, to smuggle a chest of gold out of their country to Puerto Rico. The gangsters plot to double-cross the Cubans by killing them and blaming their deaths on a fictitious sea monster; unfortunately for them, an actual sea monster is on hand to do the job instead, and this one doesn't discriminate by nationality.

Creature from the Haunted Sea is screen garbage in its purest distillation. Corman directs in a tongue-in-cheek style (when you see the monster, which has eyes like Hostess Sno-Balls, you begin to understand that he had to) that renders the movie unwatchable even as camp. You can't enjoy making fun of the picture because it preempts you with its just-kidding attitude. Most scenes – possibly all of them – are one-offs, and you can tell, as the film struggles to fill its meager 63-minute runtime. A note to trivia buffs: the role of Skips Moran is played by Robert Towne, future screenwriter of Chinatown.

Creature from the Haunted Sea, which is notorious for its public domain status and has thus appeared in previous, cheap editions, has now been released on DVD once again.