Monster aus der Tiefe

Monster (1979)

* (out of 4)

One of the great joys of VHS was walking into an old video store and uncovering a film that probably had no right to be on VHS. You can find many of these gems now on DVD but this film, also known as MONSTROID: IT CAME FROM THE LAKE, has a special place in my heart because I discovered it at a very young age and I must admit that it really blew my mind as at the time I had no idea movies could be so bad. The film is pretty simple as a cement company in Columbia are dumping waste into the lake and soon people start to go missing. Some believe it's activists but the truth is that a large sea monster is eating people. Apparently this movie began filming in 1971 but ran out of money so they picked up a few shots here and there for the next several years before finally hitting drive-ins in 1979. This might explain some of the badness because the movie will be going along and then something will happen that makes no sense to the previous scene you just watched. There's no doubt that this is one of the dumbest, more insane and outright laughable movies ever made so if you're a fan of trash then this here is a must see. Within the first five minutes we're told twice that this is based on a true story. From this point on we get countless bad actors getting eaten by this creature. Speaking of the creature, you'd have to rank him right up there with the one in THE GIANT CLAW for one of the worst in history. This thing really does look like a big turd and it's constantly changing sizes and shapes. I'm going to guess they were trying to give it a Godzilla look but they failed pretty bad. The scenes where he's suppose to be eating people are priceless as are the moments when people see him in the water swimming around. For some reason this thing needed four credited screenwriters including Herbert L. Strock who many will remember for directing such films as HOW TO MAKE A MONSTER and I WAS A TEENAGE FRANKENSTEIN. The cast includes Robert Mitchum's son James and we get John Carradine playing a priest. God bless Carradine because no matter how bad the movie is you just know he's going to bring in some charm. As horrid as this movie is it's pretty much bad enough to where everyone should check it out just so they can say they've seen one of the worst monsters in film history.

I saw Monstroid yesterday, but now I can hardly remember it. That's rarely a good sign, especially since I wasn't even drunk while watching it. It seems that initial filming took place some time before the bulk of the film but was postponed by various problems before the producers decided to take another stab at it. They shouldn't really have bothered, because Monstroid pretty much stinks, its greatest achievement being that it just about manages to rise above totally tedious. The plot is a standard affair of pollution in a lake resulting in a monster that eats a couple of people, with added edge of corporate guilt and native superstition. It could have been an interesting culture clash, management fish out of water getting to grips with a populace ambivalent towards their work (in this case its a cement factory) and the possibility of being responsible for far worse things than they imagined but predictably enough no tension of this kind is present, nor indeed is any tension of any other kind. Characters drift across the screen like dead leaves in a dull draft, they talk and talk but nothing of interest comes out, they relate in uninteresting ways and advance the plot in uninteresting ways, and since the plot isn't interesting to begin with it makes the whole thing even more of a drag. Things aren't completely terrible though, the actors show a fair level of commitment and there's a nice amount of local colour as well as good scenery. John Carradine plays a local priest with a nice level of righteous fire, his scenes are all kinds of tacky fun, while Jim Mitchum and Anthony Eisley put in some effort as goodies, both are pretty colorless but there's at least the scent of effort there and they come across well enough. There are some fairly attractive women at times as well, though no nudity which totally sucks as an f bomb tirade by one of the characters shows that this clearly wasn't intended as a PG joint, and there isn't any gore so nudity was really the main thing that could have saved the film. I kinda liked the monster as well, it doesn't get a lot of screen time but its a fun Nessie style creation and in one scene it even has hands which gets a thumbs up from me. But on the whole this one is pretty gash and I wouldn't recommend it except to crap movie completists like myself.

It's sad to see former stars reduced to "acting" in films like this. Well let's see here, we've got James Mitchum, and John Carradine in a movie about a Colombian lake monster. Sounds interesting, huh, wrong, the stars play second banana to a monster clearly made for less than the budget of your average candy bar. What's worse is that the film is so dark, half of the time you can't see what little action there is. For unintentional yuks this is one of those movies that can't be beat, but if your in the mood for a surreal horror thriller look elsewhere.

Here's a monster movie that truly belongs in the POS file. Sometimes even top-bill actors and actresses sometimes get rooked into doing POS movies (prime example: Halle Barry and 'Cat Woman') and for 'Monstroid', it was James Mitchum and John Carradine. The director, Kenneth Hartford, starred his own kids in the movie and gave them top billing with Mitchum and Carradine to add insult to injury.

This steaming pile of doo-doo is about a big, bad American company operating a chemical plant in Colombia. The plant has been dumping untreated chemical waste into the local lake for years and of course the company execs don't care. The chemical waste has somehow spawned a rubber monster to appear from its depths, whereupon it begins chomping down on bikini-clad harlots and drunken fishermen. The company execs devise a hare-brained plan to kill the creature with a lamb carcass stuffed full of dynamite pulled along by a helicopter. No, really... I kid you not...

This is a really awful film. It is tedious and ridiculous. The file I saw was pulled off of the public domain films section of http://www.archive.org so the quality was quite poor. Even if I could have seen the master copy, however, I'm sure the film would have sucked just as bad. Most likely, John Carradine and James Mitchum cashed their checks and got falling-down drunk after this POS finally wrapped.

Monster is a mind numbingly awful movie about an evil American concrete factory (are there any else in Hollywood?) polluting the waters of the small Colombian town of Chimayo somehow creating a catfish-like beast with a predilection for lamb and loose women. James Mitchum is Bill Travis the man who is sent down to Chimayo by his foul-mouthed boss Barnes who himself can't keep his hands off of his secretary's rear to get to the bottom (pun intended) of the story. While in Chimayo Bill must contend with an annoying reporter who apparently broadcasts all of her stories in perfect English directly back to America. I guess in the seventies there was a market for news from small South American towns. There is also a radical named Sanchez that wishes to sabotage the factory for polluting the water which, by the way, also supplies the town with jobs for the locals, but why let cold hearted economics get in the way of touchy-feely enviro-marxism. Pete the factory boss is unwittingly aided by the monster when he has sex with his ex-girlfriend on the beach, tells her that he is seeing the mayor's daughter Juanita and it's over between them, then she is promptly eaten that night. A little side action without the evidence. My hat is off to you Sir. John Carradine rounds out the cast as a priest that believes the monster is sent by God to punish sinners. You can see the contempt he has for being in this movie in his face. Might as well filmed him running to the local currency exchange to see if his check didn't bounce.

Supposedly based on a true story, so much so they say it twice in the opening credits, this film is awful on all fronts. Filming began in 1971 and was abandoned until eight years later when Kenneth Hartford put his foot on the throat of Monster by adding his two annoying children as new characters, even putting his daughter, Andrea in top billing with Mitchum and Carradine. The sound quality is nonexistent and most of the scenes seem as if someone smeared tar over the camera before filming. This is made even more tedious during the many scenes done at night. The monster itself is laughable as it rears its ugly rubbery head for the anticlimactic ending. James Mitchum along with his brother Chris are proof that nepotism in the acting industry needs to be curtailed. Utterly unwatchable dreck. Shame on you John Carradine.