Spawn of the Slithis

High School journalism teacher Bert Convy Oops I mean Wayne Connors (Alan Blanchard) finally convinces his wife Jeff Connors played by the super foxy (Judy Motulsky) that some sort of sea monster is eating the stuffing out of the citizenry of laid back Venice Beach. Unfortunately, there is not a fish left in the sea, and a Slithis Monster has got to eat, so he continues to find food on shore including a quite tasty morsel Jennifer (Wendy Rastatter). Wayne enlists the service of nervous Dr. John (Dennis Falt) and fishing boat captain Chris Alexander (Mello Alexandria) "who's voice at times sounds like it was dubbed in from a Godzilla movie" they along with foxy Jeff set out to capture the very scary Slithis sea monster.

For a low budget movie the cinematography of Slithis is excellent, and really has a hippie dippy cool feel to it. Unfortunately, the script could have used one more scrub with lines like "the boat wasn't built for comfort or speed, reliability is the watchword" dispersed throughout. There are a couple of great Cameo's including a gear changing seen in the Police Chiefs ( played mirthfully by Alejandro Vass) office with droll police scientist Dr. Risling ( played by a real actor (Bill J. Stevens).

Slithis is definitely worth a watch with a solid acting job, at least movie of the week or sitcom guest star level, by Alan Blanchard who, by no fault of his own, may have been inhibited in his acting career by being a dead ringer for the aforementioned Bert Convy.

Very very average campy horror movie. I did not have great expectations when I queued this movie up and watched the movie. But it definitely exceeded my expectations. Special effects/costumes were OK, but this movie actually had a very decent dialogue and somewhat entertaining characters. If you are looking for a state of the art, horror, movie with awesome special effects, this is not the movie for you. However, if you're looking for something decent and fairly entertaining, this might be a good way to kill a Friday or Saturday night. You will see a lot of plagiarism ripped off from Steven Spielberg's classic movie jaws.

Spawn of the Slithis (1978)

* (out of 4)

A small town comes under attack by some sort of sea monster, which appears to have been caused by a nuclear leak. Pretty soon pets and humans are going missing with only bloody limbs turning up. A group of friends set out to find the creature and destroy it.

If you've read Stephen Thrower's NIGHTMARE USA book then you know how wonderful it is. You'll also know that there are countless exploitation movies that are given the special treatment and this here is one of them. You'll have to check out the book to get all the details but this film was basically meant to be a throwback to the drive-in era of the 1950s when guys-in-costume monster movies were all the rage. By 1978 these types of films were certainly out of fashion but director Stephen Traxler tried to bring them back but sadly the result is rather bad.

There are all sorts of problems with this film but the biggest is the God-awful screenplay, which makes one major, major mistake. Yes, the biggest mistake is that the film is deadly boring. It really doesn't matter how bad you're horror movie is as long as you keep it entertaining but I'd say the majority of the people would check out of this one rather quickly. There are way too many scenes that feature people simply talking about stuff that isn't interesting and a lot of times it doesn't even have anything to do with the story. The film only runs 86-minutes but by the time it's over you'll feel as if you had just sat through all three GODFATHER movies.

Another problem is the typical stuff that you'd expect from a low-budget movie like this. This includes some rather bad performances, no real style and a rather sloppy looking picture. There are a few things that I liked with the monster being one of them. Again, you can read the book to get more history on the film but it's worth noting that elements of the suit were borrowed from other popular movies. The creature outfit isn't mind-blowing but for a low-budget film I thought it was good. It's really too bad he wasn't used in the film more and that they went for a kid-friendly PG-rated movie.

Cheesy but watchable. Bad acting by some but not all bad. Has a nice microphone hiss in a few scenes which I enjoy. Nice opening shots of Venice, California. The lead girlfriend continues to get worse as a character the more the film goes, with awkward lines and shots. Has the typical Vietnam vets as street bums. Highly stereotypical and normal for films during this age. An odd play on various scenes with comedic music set to more awkward camera shots. The monster itself is pretty cool, also offering a hint of comedic action with its noises and walk. This film is really an interesting study of a America at the time frame filmed, more specifically California.

What a flick! I bought this one just for the front cover - it was in the 25 cent special bucket at a local pawn shop. This video was worth every one of the 25 cents I paid for it, and I'm guessing the producers lavished at LEAST 26 cents on the filming of this masterpiece. Looking for cheesy, overblown, low budget, backyard trash on film? Look no further!