Sting of Death

Montreal's Fantasia Festival has a tradition of bringing back to the screen old and forgotten films. In this year's virtual fest, that film is 1966's "Sting of Death," via a recently restored print. Karen, a college student, and several of her female friends visit her father, a biologist, on his remote island laboratory complex in the Florida Everglades. He is working with Jon, a brilliant assistant, and Egon, a strange and mutant-looking character who complains that nobody listens to him or likes him. He's especially upset that no one believes his theory that jellyfish can be grown to enormous sizes and then, you know, sting people to death. Karen and Jon, meanwhile, host a party of her father's students, who like to dance to Neil Sedaka's "Do the Jellyfish." When they make fun of Egon, however, they find that they have drifted into very dangerous territory indeed....

This is a fun, but really bad, movie - it's very hard not to crack up at the sight of a transformed Egon, for example, and little film-techniques like, oh, continuity or any ability to act, are thrown to the wayside, or rather, overboard into the depths of the very shallow Everglades. Would have been perfect to see with a Fantasia crowd, but it was pretty fun even just at home. I wouldn't go out of my way to search it out, though!

I rented The "Sting of Death" on a DVD that also included "Death Curse of Tartu" and two very short features that I wasn't expecting, "Love Goddesses of Blood Island" and "Miami or Bust". As an added attraction, you can watch the "The Sting of Death" or the "Death Curse of Tartu" with director audio commentary if you wish. What really made watching this DVD a fun experience though was the "Sting of Death". This movie is what makes the DVD. The rest is inconsequential. The "Sting of Death" alone is worth the price of the rental or if purchased would make a fine addition to any video library. What makes this movie so attractive? It's a cheap low budget movie with lots of mistakes but that's why it's fun. You can't take this one too seriously even though it was intended to be a horror movie. The monster consists of a man in a black wet suit with tentacles attached and a black semi transparent plastic bag as a head. Watch the monster's ankles. The skin is exposed a few times. One scene shows a lot of jellyfish, which look like they were made with see through sandwich bags with pieces of blue and red in them. The scene is supposed to be scary but it looks like a bunch of garbage floating around in the water. What did impress me was the quality of the color. The movie really did look good. How the movie was made is another thing. For those that enjoy watching poorly made monster movies, this one is a must see. It's the only horror movie I know of that features a Jellyfish/man monster. They even have a song in this movie by Neil Sedaka called "The Jellyfish". You get to see them dance to it and hear it in it's entirety. It's great stuff. The song and dance is enough to give it a couple of points when rating it. This is a fun and humorous film. If you want something serious, this is not for you. If you like the kind of movie that's so bad it's good, this is just the thing. For 1950s and 60s monster movie fans, you really have to see this lesser known film. You have to see and hear it to believe it.

"Sting of Death" is an unbelievably tacky but irresistibly charming 60's monster movie that still attempts to cash in on the success of Universal's "Creature from the Black Lagoon" even though it was more than a decade already since that film hit big at the box office. But instead of the tropical Amazon jungle setting of "Creature…", we have a Florida Everglades setting (which is still a great location, by the way) and instead of a the convincing and genuinely scary missing-link type of amphibious creature here we have a … jellyfish man! Not just any type of jellyfish man, but a Portuguese Man o'War monster with a diving outfit and a big cry cleaning bag over his head! But the unusual – to say the least – origin of the monster is not the only reason why "Sting of Death" is such a legendary bad horror film! It's also one of those contemporary 60's flicks that insisted on portraying all teenagers like disrespectful and misbehaving juvenile delinquents doing nothing but dancing all day long. There's a downright hilarious sequence early in the film when a boat full of university students arrive on the Everglades Island. They jump ashore and promptly start dancing ludicrously. The music is quite atrocious (what do you expect from a song called "Do the Jellyfish" written & performed by Neil Sedaka?) and director William Grefe just repeatedly shows close-up images of girls shaking their bottoms. Then, suddenly, the teenagers spot the deformed and slightly retarded island handyman and unanimously interrupt their dancing to do some cruel bullying. They're so proud of themselves for being the crap out of a defenseless retard that they spontaneously start a Conga dance. Two minutes later, it's time for another shameless and integral 7 minute lasting dance montage; this time next to a pool. They're so busy dancing that nobody even notices the Jellyfish monster hiding in the pool and patiently waiting for the first stupid person to take a refreshing dive. The Everglades setting is terrific and the special effects (the dry cleaning bags) are tremendously inventive and charming, but the plot of "Sting of Death" is hilariously inept and imbecilic. The main characters are quite amusing, since they all feature at least one noticeably peculiar physical characteristic. There's the island professor (who owns the island estate) with a gigantic black spot on his forehead – kind of like former Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev) – and he apparently enjoys walking around amongst the teenagers dressed in a tight and brightly colored short like he's some sort of old pervert. The lead hero acts like a life-size mannequin doll and he really seems terrified to move a muscle when he speaks. The finale of "Sting of Death" contains some unforgettable material like an underwater lair, a jellyfish breeding tank and the craziest showdown in history. If you like bad horror, this is a must see!

Now this movie is a hoot! A jellyfish mutant man stalks a rocking pool party of kooky biology students in the everglades! This beautifully preserved 1965 film on DVD from 'Something Weird Video' is something to behold. Yes, the acting is very bad. Yes, the color tinted Baggies' sandwich bags with rubber tentacles look nothing like Portuguese Man-of Wars. But who cares! Sting of Death is a great way to waste a rainy Sunday afternoon! Look for Deanna Lund (Land of the Giants)and Doug Hobart (Death Curse of Tartu)in smaller supporting roles!

Yes, it's a low budget schlocker but you've gotta give credit to this cast for playing it completely straight throughout the proceedings. And look for a pre "Land of the Giants" Deanna Lund as one of the groovy chicks coming to the doomed island. Looks like it was fun to film!