Piedras Blancas

 

 

 (imdb)

THE MONSTER OF PIEDRAS BLANCAS-1959-After a huge claw appears from behind a rock, lighthouse keeper Sturges (John Harmon) warns some locals to stay away from his place. After the credits the headless bodies of two brothers are found on the beach of the California coastal town Piedras Blancas. Constable Matson (Forrest Lewis) is stumped but locals think Sturgis might have something to do with it. Sturgis gets upset when talkative grocer Kochek (Frank Arvidson) didn't save him any meat scraps. Strugis' daughter Lucy (Jeanne Carmen) works at the local cafe and hangs around Fred (Don Sullivan from THE GIANT GILA MONSTER). The local doc (Les Tremayne) says both corpses were drained of blood and he's puzzled. While Fred and Lucy frolic on the beach, Sturgis puts a pail full of fish on the rocks. At night Lucy decides to go for a swim and the creature's claw appears again. The creature kills Kochek (we only see its shadow) and a little boy Jimmy (the director's son) discovers the headless body while they are burying the brothers. Later after Sturgis is found unconscious on the rocks, a little girl is murdered. When the constable goes to investigate Kochek's meat locker, he gets a big surprise. The monster was hiding in there and emerges carrying a severed head! The constable is wounded but not too badly. While Sturgis is convalescing, he tells Lucy there really is a monster and he's been feeding it for years! 

This  great low budget horror film has a memorable scary monster and a great cast of likable characters. Great climax! 

This was the first film directed by Irvin Berwick, formerly a dialogue coach working with William Castle and Jack Arnold. He and make-up artist Jack Kevan (the film's pro-ducer) decided to make their own movie and formed their own production company. Berwick's son Wayne later made MICROWAVE MASSACRE (1979).

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Revenge in The Sunshine State

REVENGE OF THE CREATURE-1955-In the this first sequel to THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON, Captain Lucas (Nestor Paiva) once again takes an expedition to the Amazon to try and find "The Gill Man". Two guys are looking to bring him/it back to the States. After one of the guys Joe Hayes (John Bromfield) is almost killed underwater, they use dynamite to stun the creature and take him back to an aquarium in Florida. Dr. Clete Ferguson (John Agar) goes to study it. At first The Gill Man is in a coma but when he comes out of it the trouble starts. He/It nearly takes Joe out again but he's held in check by a chain fastened to the bottom of  his tank-prison and put on display with barracudas and sharks. Ferguson meets Helen Dobson (Lori Nelson, in THE DAY THE WORLD ENDED the same year) who's doing her thesis on fish. While their romance booms, the two do reflex experiments on the the creature and he/it seems to take a shine to Helen who feels sorry for the monster. "I pity him sometimes. He's so alone". Eventually the scaly one, in a hormonal rage breaks out of the tank, kills Joe and terrorizes customers. He takes to the country looking for Helen. Locating her briefly he watches her undress and kills her dog. He stalks Helen and Ferguson while they're out dancing and invades the club kidnapping his beloved. He finds having a relationship with an oxygen breathing female a little difficult and when they both need air he falls prey to the Florida police. It looks like he's killed in a hail of bullets and drifts lifelessly away (but we know better). The two air breathing lovers are reunited.

REVENGE's plot of  "The Gill Man in civilization" isn't bad for a sequel especially since the original took place entirely in the jungle. There are some lapses in logic. The aquarium seems to handle the situation all wrong just asking for mayhem. And since the creature was plucked from his natural habitat and placed in a tank to be probed and prodded by "men of science" couldn't they have had a little more sympathy for the green guy? Ok, it was the Fifties....

It was nice to see original director Jack Arnold back for part 2 and this really help avoid some of the pitfalls sequels sometime have. His scenes of the creature prowling around at night are excellent.

Two men portray the creature in this film. Ricou Browning plays him underwater and Tom Hennesy played him on land. Both have cameo roles in the production. Of course Clint Eastwood has one small scene with Agar as a lab tech who can't find a mouse.

Jack Arnold directed both Agar and Paiva in TARANTULA the same year.

THE CREATURE WALKS AMONG US would follow...

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Corman Quickie

THE CREATURE FROM THE HAUNTED SEA-1961-A crooked captain Renzo Capetto (Anthony Carbone trying to imitate Bogart) and his motley crew including his girlfriend Mary-Belle (Betsy Jones-Moreland), her dumb brother Happy Jack (Robert Bean) and Pete (Beach Dickerson), guy who makes animal noises (dubbed in) help two Cuban generals illegally transport a chest of money out of the country. A bunch of locals are also aboard though one of them is actually a government agent X-15 (Edward Wain aka future writer director Robert Towne). Capetto decides to do away with The Cubans and blame it on a monster he creates. Unfortunately for everyone a real monster shows up. 

There's lots of dumb comic dialogue (by Charles Griffith), slapstick and non-action in this hastily directed effort by Roger Corman (who has a cameo) and shot in Puerto Rico back to back with THE LAST WOMAN ON EARTH and BATTLE OF BLOOD ISLAND in around 5 days! One of my least favorites. It was planned to be a straight horror movie but changed by Corman at the last minute.

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Creature

CREATURE-2011-Three obnoxious couples heading for New Orleans take a detour and wind up being terrorized by some insane hillbillies while a swamp creature (who was once a man) prowls around killing. It's later revealed that one of the guys on the road trip is actually part of clan and is leading the others to a spot so the inbred crackers can perform a blood sacrifice. This is sort of a rip-off of Rob Zombie's HOUSE OF 1000 CORPSES and in the movie's only highlight Sid Haig plays a character similar to his "Capt. Spauding" in 1000!

There's nudity and gore but there's also a lot of yelling and the ending is ridiculous. It's the only movie (so far) directed by Fred Andrews, a TV production designer.

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Before Larry Cohen's Killer Babies

IT’S ALIVE-1969-This infamous horror film was made by director Larry Buchanan right after completing a batch of direct to TV remakes of AIP '50's horror films.

Two tourists, Norman (Corveth Ousterhouse) and Leila (Shirley Bonne) from the city get lost on a back road somewhere in Texas. They wind up being held prisoner by a loony farmer (Buchanan regular Bill Thurman) who has a prehistoric monster living in a smoky cave under his house. A helpful paleontologist named Wayne (Tommy Kirk) tries to help but gets captured too. The monster (Thurman doing double duty) is goofy and rubbery with fangs and ping pong ball eyes! Thurman’s over the top acting is the real highlight of this awful film (“Perhaps you know of my creature? It’s great and powerful! My greatest discovery!”) but it also features Ann McAdams (later in DON’T LOOK IN THE BASEMENT) as Thurman’s abused servant who narrates a long flashback.(with no dialogue; just her narration and some incidental music) which explains how she became the farmer’s servant.

In one scene she tries to escape by throwing some liquid in Thurman's face but right before that happens you can see his face is already wet! The scene they used must have been take 2!

Former Disney teen star Tommy Kirk was at the nadir of his career having already starred in Buchanan’s MARS NEEDS WOMEN in 1967. A few years later he’d star in Al Adamson’s BLOOD OF GHASTLY HORROR. I’ve read the plot seems to be based on a short story by Richard Matheson.

Buchanan (who provides some un-credited narration during the credits) made the Bergman influenced (?) STRAWBERRIES NEED RAIN next.

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Z Marks The Spot

ZAAT-(1975)-In Jacksonville, Florida a weird scientist plans to take over the world. We hear his thoughts about "his fish friends" while different species are shown. The dialogue is great! "Fish, mighty hunter of the deep. I love you". He calls a shark his friend and says "Soon I'll swim with you". After this intro we see the scientist on shore (his voice doesn't match his wimpy stature). Since he said he admired the shark it only seems natural his experiment for world domination must involve him turning into a shark-man right?

Wrong! He instead uses his special formula called "Zaat" to transform himself into a walking catfish man! It's a big green emo-tionaless monster (with a fur collar) that kind of looks like something from the TV show "Voyage To The Bottom of The Sea"!

Once transformed he decides to take a break from conquering humans to killing a few. Namely some former colleagues who called him insane. Everytime he kills footage of sea life is intercut.

Meanwhile an African American scientist (Gerald Cruse) and a redneck sheriff (Paul Galloway) investigate the walking catfish pheomena that is plaguing the local hicks. After killing the men who wronged him Zaat goes looking for a mate. His first experiment goes wrong and his victim dies. Husband and wife government agents are called in to figure out who's doing the killing. They set up several traps and talk a lot. The sheriff can't believe a monster is responsible and somehow con-veniently forgets to mention that a local doctor name Leopold was once doing secret exper-iments trying to cross humans with fish!

He manages to remember ("I never thought about it..till a second ago") just in time for the climax where Zaat decides the female agent should become his Mrs. The three male leads all die. Zaat is morally wounded (apparently) and goes to the sea to die. The female agent follows him into the water (I guess the last experiment worked!). The End.



I first saw ZAAT in a theater on 42nd Street in Manhattan in the early '80's under the title THE BLOOD WATERS OF DR. Z. People were shouting and laughing the whole time so I shouldn't have been surprised when the next time it resurfaced was in an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 but I was!

I was even more surprised when TCM showed it one night around 3 AM!

ZAAT isn't that bad as bad movies go. The monster is kind of funny, there are some lapses in editing and in one or two scenes it looks like the monster is waiting for his cue (the actor Wade Popwell probably couldn't hear very well with that monster suit on) but the acting is ok and there's some gore. The highlight is the monster's movements (going up stairs, freaking out in a pharmacy, operating a board with flashing lights) and his hysterical revenge and fish loving tinged dialogue!

According to IMDB only one actor in ZAAT ever appeared in another movie. This seemed to apply to most of the crew also except for Director of Photograpy Jack McGowan who had shot CHILDREN SHOULDN'T PLAY WITH DEAD THING, DEATH DREAM and DERANGED.

Triple threat director/screenwriter/producer Don Barton was content to rest on his laurels after this and never made another movie. Too bad!

There's actually a website about it!: http://www.zaatmovie.com/

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