Sumpf des Grauens

This movie is really really borrrrring. I like crappy monster movies, but this one has nothing to offer. No gimmicks, no nudity, no gore, nada. Basically it's a lot of waiting for something to happen and when it does happen (for 2 seconds), you may blink and miss it. There's so little going on in this movie, I stopped listening to it 15 minutes it. The cover shows the only scene of gore in the movie (some ten minutes into it), and you might as well stop it right then, because the only time you ever see the monster (for like 1 second) it turns out to just be a gorilla suit. So if you want to see something campy, don't watch this. It just sucks and is really borring, and a good waste of explosions.

Feeling a lot like one of those cruddy bigfoot/sasquatch movies from the '70s (The Legend of Boggy Creek, The Legend of Bigfoot, The Creature from Black Lake), Terror in the Swamp (AKA Nutriaman: The Copasaw Creature) is utterly inept garbage from start to finish.

The majority of the film focusses on either the authorities trying to track down the creature responsible for the spate of grisly deaths in the Copasaw region of Louisiana, or on the hillbilly sadsacks who inhabit the bayou - actual monster action is at an absolute minimum. The result of a scientific experiment gone wrong - a coypu (a large swamp rodent) injected with human hormones - the Nutriaman looks suspiciously like a man in a fancy dress store gorilla costume with added claws. This dreadful regional horror wisely opts to keep the creature out of view, using POV shots, or by carefully concealing it behind foliage.

With ham-fisted direction, a dreadful script, terrible performances, virtually no gore, no gratuitous nudity and no scares, this one would have disappointed anyone unfortunate to see it at the drive-in or grindhouse theatre back in the day. These days, it can disappoint a whole new audience: idiots like me who seek it out on YouTube.

1.5 out of 10, rounded down to 1 for morbidly obese Cajun redneck T-Bob (Michael Tedesco) and irritating swamp hag Crazy Sally (Claudia Wood), both of whom deserve to be ripped to pieces by the nutriaman, but who stay alive.

This gem was shot in the swamps of houma, Louisiana, not even an hour from new Orleans. if you can find this rare horror flick i do suggest giving it a chance. If you are a fan of B horror films then this should do the job. it's about a half man / half nutria that kills people.. thats all i will say about the story.. the acting is awesome.. there is a scientist/doctor? character in the movie that has all of his lines poorly over dubed.. no one else but him received the overdubs. it's pretty funny. and if you pay attention there is a mistake in the editing towards the end of the movie that films are doin now a days to be hip.. but Terror in the Swamp started this trend!! don't be fooled!

TERROR IN THE SWAMP was most likely greenlighted after the success of LEGEND OF BOGGY CREEK, which spawn a new genre and a slew of films that have to do, more or less, with Bigfoot or Sasquatch, or other such mysterious creatures from the cryptozoology field. Unlike BOGGY CREEK, which, in its amateurish way, really scared the bejesus out of me when I was a kid, TERROR IN THE SWAMP has absolutely no scary scene in it whatsoever. In fact, the Rednecks populating the landscape are more frightening than the poor bipedal hairy thing that lurks in the swamp.

Now, I don't know if this was meant as some sort of post-modern statement by the makers of this film (I doubt it) but if you call a movie TERROR IN THE SWAMP and sell it as a horror film of sorts but the human characters in it are more frightening than the actual monster advertised on the poster, well there's really something wrong here and I call it false advertising. As a fan of Bigfoot, I needed to see this film. But if you're not a Bigfoot completist, skip it. Your time is worth much more than seeing fat Rednecks arguing, drinking moonshine or blowing up mysterious creatures.

This film gets a bad rep because the acting sucks, and, well... it just generally sucks, but people seem to disregard the presence of a miscast Sasquatch. Now the filmmakers would have you believe that this is in fact a giant Nutra (some type of swamp rat), and not a Quatch, but I say OH PLEASE! This is obviously a Bigfoot creature and is reminiscent (the creature, not the film) of the Creature from Black Lake. And besides, who the hell wants to see a film about a giant Nutra? This film needs to be brought to DVD. Come on you rich bastards, some cheap re-shoots, and a bit of creative editing and you have a classic Quath in the swamp stalk N slash. I keep this film amongst my Bigfoot, Sasquatch, Yeti collection. If you have an affinity for the like then you too should peruse this gem.