Beast Creatures

Despite what you may have read or heard, this silly low-budgeter is a great rental despite whatever shortcomings it has. However, you might have an impossible time trying to track down a tape because this has been out of circulation for years.

Filmed in 1983, this concerns the struggle for survival among a small group of shipwreck survivors on a secluded island (really inland Fairfield, Connecticut, where this was filmed). A seemingly innocent water stream is actually full of acid as one poor parched man soon finds out, and worse, the island is home a cult of small, killer, TRILOGY OF TERROR-style dolls. The dolls have red faces, long black hair, glow-in-the-dark eyes and sharp pointy teeth. Their jaws open so they can screech and their arms move up and down when they scurry through the woods, but other than that, they are hilariously immobile.

I don't want to get too much into the story, but some of the assault/ambush techniques devised by the little critters are very amusing and the low-level POV camera-work and eerie music score service the entertaining story very well. This film is a blast!

Score: 6 out of 10

What an endearing mess!! Summed up as succinctly as possible, ATTACK OF THE BEAST CREATURES concerns itself with a group of shipwreck victims who find themselves stranded on an uncharted island where they are set upon by a bunch of demonic alien Cabbige Patch dolls made up to look like Marilyn Manson. One by one the survivors are torn at, eaten, and reduced to clean-picked skeletons before they can effect any kind of rescue or escape plan. The Beast Creatures are fierce, hungry, innumerable and can seem to spawn anew whenever suffering losses: For every Beast Creature the humans whack like pulpy, exploding softballs as they fling themselves through the air, three more take their place. Eventually they are whittled down to the surviving love interest couple, who then ...

But why give away the ending? That and seeing the Beast Creatures up close & in action are the main reasons to bother with this cleverly constructed little home movie/grade Z creature feature howler made by a bunch of people who went on to do nothing more in the film industry. Aside from producer turned actor turned producer again, the late Jim Brown (III), who's other cinematic endeavors consist of such revealingly titled gems as DELTA FORCE COMMANDO, it's imaginatively titled followup DELTA FORCE COMMANDO II, BEHEADED 1000 and my favorite, the Viking horror saga BERSERKER. The world lost a true visionary with his passing, and this might stand as his greatest accomplishment.

One of the things that I instantly admired about the film was it's willingness to completely shred any artifice of what my be called "suspension of disbelief" and do so with such enthusiasm that you sort of forgive the film to being so ineptly executed: Visible puppeteer limbs, guide wires and thrown Beast Creatures flying in random trajectories take second place to the movie's gleeful abandoning of itself to the hazards of competence. Peter Jackson's team of 3d modelers may have worked gee, days on end to create King Kong for PETER JACKSON'S KING KONG: A PETER JACKSON MOVIE BY PETER JACKSON, but the effort in creating an actual presence on screen pales to the sight of a teeming swarm of these hand puppet Beasties clawing at the cocktail dress of the film's shapely heroine. I believe in them even though it is all fake, corny, slipshod and nappy lookin', not just because they are puppets which take up physical space (ahem, Yoda?), but because the filmmakers and cast believe in them and communicate their belief with frantic, frenzied conviction.

But like a lot of other horror thrillers the question remains, is it a good movie? Well no, quite frankly. But the film was made in such a manner that it defies the usual standards by which one judges film as an art. It's not that it wallows about in the gutter dwelling on gore or whatever, it's that the film doesn't care about those standards, has a story to tell and gets about doing so without ever once making any apologies for being just a stupid, tacky, frenetic little ball of fun. And that's what the Beast Creatures are too: The movie defines it's own reality, sticks to it and doesn't bother worrying about what anyone else is going to think critically. In fact to consider such a film on actual critical terms is a waste of time -- Either you enjoy it or you don't, standing around haggling about the merits or weaknesses after wards would miss the point of the film which is just to be entertaining.

6/10 for getting the job done.

I LOVE a good low-budget horror movie. Thing is it needs to be good. Here, we have a movie that looks like it has a budget of $250 and yes that includes the FX.

We enter the story as a group of people have been shipwrecked and so they drift aimlessly through the water in their lifeboat named Obelisk. Soon they hit land after the credits end and due to brutal lighting what looks like angry, spoiled sausages attack them in the night. By first light we see they actually look like ravenous, haunted dolls. Time to try and stay alive.

The music by John P. Mozzi is actually quite effective and way better than this movie deserves. Super bad acting by almost everyone in this movie.

Might be good to sit down with a good friend with some of your favourite beers and/or whiskey and get some good laughs. Otherwise steer clear.

This was a real treat. The film starts off a little slow, so hang in there because once the action starts you will probably choke on your beer or mountain dew out of sheer hysterical laughter. In my journey through "grade Z" movies, it is movies like Attack of the Beast Creatures that make it all worth it. This is the type of movie that I put on that "special shelf" for the friends that don't want to have to think or invest much of themselves into a film. For those friends who you would like to impress with a movie so bad, that it is just beautiful. This was made at a time when bad films were at least still shot on film. Now days "grade z" movies are shot on daddy's new digital camcorder, so they don't have any real cinematic quality. This has some cinematic quality...OK, cinematic quality in a really "grade z" kind of way.

If you want Freddie Kreuger, Jason, or The Ring Meets the Grudge Part 4, then go to your local Blockbuster. Leave the trash to us trashmongers...I love it!

Remember that creepy little Zuni warrior doll that was after Karen Black in the TV-movie TRILOGY OF TERROR? This demented low-budget quickie offers a whole army of them! The one in TRILOGY was supposed to be a wooden carving that came to life, but the ones here are supposed to pass for flesh and blood monsters even though they're ridiculously immobile and nothing about them looks organic. The "beast creatures" look like crude homemade plastic imitations of the TRILOGY doll, painted flat red with no detailing and big plastic eyes that light up. Set in 1920 for no apparent reason, ATTACK has a lifeboat with nine shipwreck survivors (of course we don't see the shipwreck) drift to an uncharted island which has an unexplained pond filled with flesh-melting acid, another pond filled with safe drinking water (and fish), and a tribe of 10-inch-tall Beast Creatures. The carnivorous action figures are very aggresive and jump down out of trees to attack. The puppeteering is terrible and consists largely of off-camera assistants throwing the dolls at screaming actors. When the dolls need to move, you only see the upper halves of them like the Muppets. The only time you see their whole bodies is when stagehands have helpfully placed them in trees to make it look like they're peering down at their prey. None of the amateur actors are very good but they do seem to be giving it their best shot, running and screaming like crazy when the little guys attack. And, to be fair, there are some honest attempts at characterization. None of the protagonists are very bright. They seldom think to arm themselves with big sticks or branches, even after they know the little guys are dangerous flesh-eaters and that they go down pretty easily. One whack with a branch will send a beast creature sailing off into the bushes or smacking comically into a tree. Some of the dialogue is so bad it's hysterical, as when a character watches a guy fall onto a sharpened spike, stagger around screaming in pain, break the end of the spike off where it sticks out of his chest, scream some more, and then collapse, the other end still protruding from his back, and concludes that "He never knew what hit him." Another guy, a master of understatement, looks at a man who has been turned by the acid pit into a completely fleshless, clean white skeleton and calmly informs his companions, "There's nothing we can do for him now." Can't argue with that logic. Perhaps the strangest thing about the script is its total absence of any discussion of what the creatures might be, how they got there, or anything else about which normal people might wonder. Instead the actors say the same things to each other over and over, reciting the usual stranded-in-an-inhospitable-place cliches. At one point we see dozens of the critters gathered around a big carved idol that resembles a gigantic saltine cracker with a face. Nobody says anything about it and it's never mentioned again. So are the beast creatures supposed to be part human? Some species of mutant monkey or cat? Demons from hell? Aliens from space? Nobody in the film ever even speculates, preferring instead to keep yammering on about the need to get to higher ground, although I was never sure why. A couple of survivors are rescued at the end and their rescuers don't seem any more impressed by the discovery of an unknown and very strange new species than the other dullards were. With no real story to tell, the movie usually focuses on long, boring scenes of the characters walking around between the trees, punctuated by the frenzied, violent monster attacks. It isn't good cinema but it would make an excellent party tape to watch with friends. They should have stuck with the more mature shooting title of HELL ISLAND.