Curse of the Swamp Creature

Curse of the Swamp Creature
Directed by Larry Buchanan
Produced by Larry Buchanan (producer)
Edwin Tobolowsky (associate producer)
Screenplay by Tony Huston
Starring See below
Music by Ronald Stein
Cinematography Ralph K. Johnson
Distributed by American International Television
Release dates
  • 1966
Running time
 80 minutes
Country United States
Language English

Curse of the Swamp Creature is a 1966 American film directed by Larry Buchanan. Although Buchanan was producing extremely low budget 16mm color remakes of American International Pictures sci-fi movies for television distribution around this time, he claimed this was an original[1] even though it bears more than a few striking similarities to the 1957 AIP film Voodoo Woman.

Buchanan later said "never make a swamp picture. Your film comes back and it's all... strange."[2]

Plot

Deep in the rural swamps of Texas the reclusive and ruthless wife-abusing mad scientist Dr. Simond Trent is conducting experiments in his laboratory on the local impoverished voodoo-worshiping black "natives" in an attempt to discover the secret to reversing evolution, feeding the failures to the alligators he keeps in his covered outdoor swimming pool. When a party of oil surveyors comes upon his isolated yet strangely suburban-style home he decides to take the final step and turn the duplicitous female leader of the expedition into a grotesque and virtually indestructible amphibious "Fish Man" so that he can take his revenge upon the world.

Cast

Soundtrack

  1. "Music" from It Conquered the World (Ronald Stein)
  2. "Music" from Invasion of the Saucer Men (Ronald Stein)

Trivia

Despite showing the monster very prominently on the posters of the film which bill it as an "underwater terror from another age", other than brief, partial glimpses down into the mist-filled glass tank where its body is being modified from its original human form, the titular burly bald, Spock-eared and slit-pupiled, protruding ping pong ball-eyed creature only appears at the climax of the film for less than five minutes before meeting its demise, and no scenes take place underwater.

And despite what many sources say, said webbed-fingered, hospital gown-clad creature was created using primitive prosthetic make-up and greyish green body paint and not the infamous cheap and phony-looking scalloped-scaled rubber wetsuit and fiercely-fanged fish head mask with painted ping pong ball eyes Buchanan later used in Creature of Destruction and 'It's Alive!'.

The movie was filmed in Uncertain, Texas where the Fly-N-Fish Lodge and Airport seen in early scenes still exists.[3]

Merchandising

A Curse of the Swamp Creature mask was one of the last items produced by the famed Don Post Studios before it went out of business in 2012.

References

  1. ↑ Buchanan, Larry: It Came From Hunger: Confessions of a Cinema Schlockmeister, McFarland & Company, ISBN 078640194X, ISBN 978-0786401949
  2. ↑ Goodsell, Greg, "The Weird and Wacky World of Larry Buchanan", Filmfax, No. 38 April/May 1993 p 64
  3. ↑ http://www.city-data.com/.../Fly-N-Fish-Lodge-Airport-Uncertain-Texas.html

External links