Les marais de l'enfer

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.

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.

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 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.