The Creeping Terror

What really sets this movie apart from other bad films is the makers' utter lack of embarrassment at the disastrous technical execution of the film. It isn't just that the monster is an old carpet, the exterior of the spaceship appears to be a garage door, and the editing is so incongruous it seems almost abstract. These shameless idiots actually lost or destroyed or never made a soundtrack, so they substituted bad narration (complete with weird pseudo-psychological non-sequitor explanations of characters' motivations), random dubbing of snatches of dialogue ("My god! What is it?"), even more random music (startlingly awful music) and under-mixed sound effects. You must see it. It's so bad it commands your attention, but the pacing is so slow it can only really be watched in fast forward.

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!!

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.

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"

With its awesome ineptitude, 1963's "The Creeping Terror" can lay claim to be among the most beloved bad movies of all time, though producer/director A. J. Nelson (actually star Vic Savage) deserves no credit due to his swift abandonment of the project once funds ran out. The opening credits feature a swirling background shot taken from Steve McQueen's "The Blob," followed by a downed spacecraft yielding two carpet monsters, one escaping to terrorize Simi Valley, the military keeping tabs on its still caged mate (only an exterior is shown, actors crawling under a mockup to view a dimly lit yet fairly ordinary facsimile of screens, dials and buttons). The human interest story with Savage and real life spouse Shannon O'Neil pales compared to the hilarity that ensues with each creature attack, the camera representing the monster's POV as the victims stand their ground and watch its approach. First up are two lovers, the louse of a boyfriend hightailing it to leave his bikini babe as breakfast, continuously screaming as she enters the bobbing and weaving maw of the beast; a housewife bids her husband farewell in the morning before hanging up the wash, gobbled up off screen while her baby cries; a grandson vanishes as chubby granddad babbles in a brook; a group of 12 on a sunny picnic are quick to get swallowed whole, their fearless leader fighting off the invader with his acoustic guitar, which would never sit well with John Lennon; the big dance hall sequence lasting 11 minutes, the creature entering the building after seven endless minutes of juking and jiving (one guy could be mistaken for Jerry Lewis on quaaludes); Lover's Lane sees its occupants worrying less about contraception than survival (this lasts six minutes, only a solitary car driving off); finally, army sharpshooters get too close to their target, going down like dominos with one soldier's feet up in the air waiting for the director to yell 'Cut!' The original monster costume was not stolen (confiscated for lack of payment by the man who built it), nor was the soundtrack lost as it was intended to be post dubbed after shooting wrapped, the damn thing unspooling like a silent movie with its constant organ motifs. The obscene looking carpet creature is kept mostly off camera for the first half, making an already difficult sit a real chore, but once unleashed it's impossible not to laugh, not so much at the beast but its comatose victims, who display little affinity for staying alive by hightailing it out of there. The first female victim is clad in a fetching bikini, the camera ogling her cute little caboose and long slim legs in almost slow motion (this was even before the Beach Party series kicked off), a pattern that would be repeated at the dance hall, from shimmy and shake to quiver and quake, with one unfortunate miss losing her top after being pushed aside by a rough customer. Lover's Lane finds the make out crowd too occupied doing imitations of Siamese twins joined at the mouth to notice a huge invader doing its bit by humping cars! Since director/producer A. J. Nelson alias Vic Savage vanished before filming was completed (May-June 1963), the final product was assembled by actor William Thourlby, playing a major role as Dr. Bradford, who put some of his own money into the production and was determined to earn back his investment (curiously, Nelson retains his editor credit). It's not likely that any theatrical distribution took place before its belated debut in late 1975 (mere months after the demise of its disgraced director at age 41), as part of Gold Key's 20 film Scream Theater television package, among the 16 Crown International cheapies to earn some notoriety for their relative obscurity.