Terror en el pantano

My review was written in July 1985 after watching the movie on New World video cassette.

"Terror in the Swamp" is a tame horror picture available as a video cassette, bypassing domestic theatrical release. Filmed in Houma, Louisiana, in 1983, pic is typical of low-budget, regional horror filmmaking but is rather skimpy in the shocks and violence area.

The late Billy Holliday, who resembles Dabney Coleman on screen, worte and toplines as game warden Frank. He finds a mangled body on the Copasaw (local swamp area), but can't figure out whether a gator or perhaps a bear killed the man. It turns out that local scientists, funded by South American backers, have been experimenting on breeding a larger nutria (a brown-furred, webbed-foot water rodent) to be used in making fur coats. Inadvertently, a mutated nutriaman has been created and is killing local folks.

While the police, Frank and military authorities hunt the critter, good ol' boys such as the very fat T-Bob (Michael Tedesco) and his brother also head toward Poacher's Cove to kill it. An unsatisfying ending has the monster burned up on a boat.

Director Joseph Catalanotto (who reteamed with Holliday on latter's final film, "French Quarter Undercover") wisely shows the nutriaman only in long shots or obscured through bushes, avoiding a revelation of a phony guy in a hairy outfit. Main interest here is the local color and interesting regional accents of the folksy cast.

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.

Folks in the Louisiana bayou have their hands full after some scientists inject a nutria (basically a swamp rat) with some human hormones which results in Nutriaman, a human sized nutria that likes to kill people. Insert your own "nutria-itious" joke. Somehow I can imagine exactly how this regional oddity came about. Two guys are fishing, one sees a nutria and says, "Dang! Can you imagine if that thing grew to be as big as us?" Tada! This could have been better than it is, but the filmmakers decide to hide the monster and skimp on the exploitation elements, putting it firmly in the company of stuff like DEATH CURSE OF TARTU. The film does a lot of shooting in the swamps but is cheap when we get to land (the sheriff always meets people in the local Ramada Inn dining room!?!). Amazingly, this took two director to make it - Martin Folse, who did nothing else, and Joe Catalanotto, who made something a year later deliciously titled FRENCH QUARTER UNDERCOVER. To the film's credit, it does contain my favorite billing of the year ("And introducing Michael Tedesco as T-Bob"). One also has to appreciate their pimping of the leading man, Billy Holiday, on the VHS cover in an attempt to fool jazz- loving horror fans.

This movie was purchased for 69 cents at a thrift store and we got about 20 minutes into the movie before we agreed that it was a bad watch. That being said, the idea for the movie might be a neat story for a Hollywood remake at some point with someone like Rob Zombie at the helm who might appreciate this sort of camp. Here's the gist, a mutant rodent is out in the swamp killing people. However, a humorous audience will find plenty of 80' s fashion and facial hair to keep you interested for as long as that's your bag. the music is wacky and fun, the cinematography is at times a little "Evil Dead" and the characters keep you missing the Burt Reynolds look. Overall, pretty bad-and not even in a cool way.

I am loath to give such low marks to a movie but I had to vote "1" on this one. It was just so very lame. The acting was stilted and choppy, the soundtrack was just awful with very sloppy dubbing and randomly-placed music, and above all, there was very little to be seen of Nutriaman, who appeared to be more of a tallish baboon than anything else. I got quite a few laughs out of this one, but not for the reasons the filmmakers might have intended.