The Creeping Terror

I figured that this movie got a lot of its "10" ratings from the MST3K version, but this is without question, the WORST movie I have ever seen. The voice-over play-by-play while a conversation is going on is hilarious!! The advice on married life (Officer "Third Wheel"), the cowardly boyfriend, and the lack of footspeed or common sense that the victims implore are memorable moments. And of course, the monster itself....an overgrown carpet sample!! Wow. My favorite scene: the bad edit of the couple's momentum after they slam on the brakes. Absolutely atrocious.

Everything rotten you have read about this movie is true. The monster is a couple of cheap shag rugs with felt triangles stapled to it, and a performer underneath to make it move. There is no dialogue, just a narration that tries to make sense of the pictures, but merely makes everyone seem stupid. The print is grainy, although that might be a deliberate choice of the MST3000 crew. There is an attempt to raise some tension by showing some teenagers dancing at a party, intercut with the shag-rug monster moving. This implies, I suppose, that it's coming for them. The technique has not improved since before D.W. Griffith adopted it.

There's a strong tendency for people to rate movies like this 1 on the IMDB, because negative numbers are not available. I prefer to reserve that rating for misfires that are so bizarre that you can't help but watch, like a train wreck. Others will give it a 10 because it makes them feel superior, This is inept and dull.

...and that certainly isn't saying much. Interplanetary monster devours people who are too stupid to run away. Like BEACH GIRLS AND THE MONSTER, and unlike PLAN NINE FROM OUTER SPACE, it's too annoying to be entertaining. To add to the sheer stupidity, half of it is narrated, just because some lunkhead lost the sound equipment. Not a total loss, however. The most entertaining aspect of this movie are the negative reviews trashing this movie on IMDb.

Now that's entertainment!

Rating: A redundant 0 out of *****

You think "Plan Nine" was bad? At least Ed Wood had sync sound, and shot the film with the right exposure. This wacky little gem from 1964 is my vote for the worst film ever. A monster (made up of a moldy carpet flung over crawling kids, who are plainly visible) attacks locals in Nevada. Director Art J. Nelson (Who resembles a spaced out Tarantino, and plays the film's hero.) reportingly lost the dialog track to the film, but replaced missing talk with a narrator for driver safety films. Highlights include the carpet guy attacking a high school dance (Monster makes sure he doesn't wreck tables and chairs) the army is called out in one scene (This "army" consists of five guys in helmets being transported in a pick-up truck!) 80 minutes of mindless fun. It's like watching local third graders doing a production of "Bridge On River Kwai"

The Creeping Terror, where to begin? If you thought Hal Warren, Jerry Warren, Larry Buchanan, Ed Wood or Coleman Francis were inept, well everyone let me introduce to you Art J. Nelson, director of this fun flick.

Dialogue? Well it's hard to find, we got a narrator instead who tell us what the actors are doing or talking about. It's important because you may not know what the actors are discussing about. Monster? Well steal a Chinese dragon from your local Chinatown community and glue carpet and shop vac hoses to it (don't forget a mouth hole) Hero? Well get the mutant offspring of Chris Isaac and KD Lang to be our hero. Choreography? Well your local high school teachers group are having a mid-afternoon dance (big band music with lots of horns and saxophones all re-created by two women playing a piano and drums)And don't forget the military who stole their younger siblings cap guns. Put em all together and you have all this complicated story of a monster who flies millions of light years across space.....to eat people. Look there been times when I've really been hungry for something that I don't have in the food pantry but I don't drive half way across the country just for a quick snack (which humans are for the monster since it can't seem to get full) But again I'm not a Chinese dragon.

The film seems to be easily found on DVD thanks to MST3K, no idea where to get the original version. Enjoy at your own risk!!