Just one more movie review...

From: tschibasch <tschibasch_at_yahoo.com_at_hypermail.org>
Date: Thu, 27 Apr 2006 21:50:31 -0000

Sorry, guys.

The Creeping Terror (1964) was shot in California. I wanted to post
this review I got off a horror film website, since it is one of my
all-time favorite movies. For years I tried to get a copy of it,
eventually snagging something on Ebay. This is one of the most amazing
films I have ever seen. Even worse than MANOS! Please read below:


The Creeping Terror
There are movies that insult your intelligence, or present you with
inane dialogue, bad direction, non-existent plots, and sloppy acting.
Some movies may contain one or more of these factors...some contain
all in varying degrees.

But in The Creeping Terror, each factor is included and ramped up to a
"Spinal Tap 11". Undoubtedly, The Creeping Terror is the worst movie I
have ever seen. It takes badness to a level previously thought
unattainable. Motion pictures of this anti-calibre (Manos: The Hands
of Fate is another example though even THAT is better than this
ultra-turkey) are so mind-bendingly awful they achieve a kind of
transcendent brilliance that is impossible to describe in words. It
takes real effort to make a movie this bad, folks.

Anyway, here is the 'plot': Reversed stock footage of an old Mercury
rocket crash lands in Angel County, California, and disgorges a
hideous man-eating creature that resembles a squashed fish finger or
deformed Chinese dragon puppet. You can see it is a giant carpet with
people underneath doing the maneuvering. The pantomime menace crawls
with painful slowness about the countryside, killing people by somehow
encouraging them to not run away, but rather force themselves into its
bottomless maw. As the crawling alien snacks on the populace, the
government tries to keep the threat under wraps. It assigns a
scientist who is younger than one might think, an army commander with
a troop of six men and a newly-wed deputy sheriff to combat the invasion.

A good portion of The Creeping Terror is a little overexposed, as if
it was not processed properly. They obviously saved a bundle on
developing costs! Also, the soundtrack was lost after shooting was
completed (the recording equipment fell off a fishing boat into Lake
Tahoe, as a matter of fact). But this unexpected loss was a truly
inspired accident. In the place of dialogue, we get *incredibly*
earnest narration. Our voiceover guy swerves giddily off-topic at any
moment, mind you. For instance, in the midst of the non-action, the
voiceover and the movie stop to deliver a bizarre homily on the
virtues of marriage. This is accompanied by a scene where the deputy
and his new bride make out like demons in front of the former's best
friend, who looks on uncomfortably. The scene is creepy, an apt word
especially with a title like this movie has. Voiceover Guy keeps you
amused as the flick staggers through its short-but-interminable
duration, detailing what our heroes are discussing as they mouth the
words. Some events that desperately need explanation are not narrated,
while others that do not need it are given a full narration. There's
no pattern to the use of voiceover any more than there is a pattern to
the plot.

Monster movies from the 50s and 60s always contain some sort of sexual
moral, and Creeping Terror is no exception. Most of the carpet
monster's victims are eaten while they're necking or dancing. Yes, the
hysterically drawn-out jive dance massacre near the end of the film
(which comes complete with irrelevant greaser fistfight) shows us
clearly that if you're going to boogie on down to the devil's music in
the mid-60s, you should fully expect to be consumed by a meandering
carpet slug from Venus.

There are many fantastically awful bits in the movie I could
mention...the death of Fat Grandpa, the anti-tree rage attack said fat
person's grandson has shortly before the slaying, the experimental
music that replaces narration for most of the movie's last third, the
scenes where the army guys pretend to fire their toy guns at the
alien...and the truly demented scene where the deputy sheriff
ineffectually beats the control panels of the UFO with his gun...and
later a steel pipe... for an uninterrupted two minutes without the
slightest success. The concluding narration, where Dr Bradford's hope
for the future of Humanity is detailed by the narrator, rivals or
beats any of the crazy speeches in the films of Ed Wood. Students of
fetishism may see some significance in the way the director lingers on
shots of female legs sticking out of the alien's mouth. Lovers of bad
cinema must see it! There is NO film worse, trust me.
Received on 2006-04-27 14:51:29