Quand la jungle s'éveille

Hoping to quell the fears of superstitious natives, a rancher and a doctor head into the Amazon jungle to find a supposedly awakened demon but learn of a dangerous native tribe lurking in the area and must stop it from spreading.

Overall this was a pretty disappointing and thoroughly disappointing effort. What really tends to hold this one down is the fact that there's not a whole lot of time here spent among the confines of the genre, tending to focus far more frequently on the Adventure drama aspects of the story. The majority of the film is simply watching the two and their guide trek through the jungle and commenting on the different animals present in the area which is then shown in stock-footage inserts of the specific species told they're observing only to then be treated to widely different levels of film-stock quality to showcase that. The piranha attack is the most egregious, showing badly-framed underwater footage in black-and-white no less despite the rest of the film being in color from an angle that has nothing to do with what they pointed to but is just clumsily thrown in since it's a piranha attack footage, while shots of the animals brawling and fighting each other tends to dominate the main parts of the film that it's entirely possible to forget there's a creature at the center of the film. That aspect doesn't help the film any further as there's only two attacks by the creature in the entire film and is then twisted around into another storyline thread which is dropped off the film quite easily and early which is quite troubling and again makes it hard to believe this was supposed to be a horror effort all along. These here make this one quite hard to get into as a horror film, despite having a fairly decent amount of stuff about it. Despite only being seen twice, each of the attacks aren't all that bad and manage to get some mild suspense from them as the creature stalking them in the jungle before jumping out to launch the surprise attack makes for a few decent times here. Likewise, the film also manages to get some decent mileage out of the fantastic brawl at the end as the two rival Indian tribes get into action and begin fighting each other in a fairly large-scale scene, from the fire-laced huts and the hand-to-hand brawling and the long-range battles with the spears and arrows coming into play to make a fine action scene that's quite exciting. Even still, that also plays more into it's Adventure setting that it tends to wash away the positives here and aligns this more as a flaw here.

Today's Rating/PG: Violence.

Curucu, Beast of the Amazon (1956)

** (out of 4)

John Bromfield and Beverly Garland travel up the Amazon to kill the title character, a large parrot like creature. Many older horror fans call this one of the most disappointing monster films of the decade due to a couple twists in the plot. I picked up on those twists pretty early and they were stupid but the real interesting thing is that this really seemed like an early version of the infamous Cannibal Holocaust. The best thing about the film is that it was shot in the Amazon, which means we get all sorts of shots with various animals ranging from pythons to huge spiders. With this comes several animal death scenes that won't make PETA members too happy.

I spend a lot of time trying to add lesser known 50's sci-fi titles to my ever growing collection. Unfortunately I came to this title. Cool title and stars Beverly Garland made by Universal - how could I miss? Although the poster looks great on this flick, find the strength to resist. The Brazilian locations are great and acting was acceptable but whoever wrote the script was a loser. This played out more like an episode of Scooby Doo(old man Smithers and all). The part that really killed me was that after they ruin the whole movie after 45 minutes, it goes on for another 35 minutes!! Seriously, for lesser known movies, check out Giant from the Unknown or Monster from Green Hell before you ever touch this garbage.

One of my sci-fi/horror/fantasy reviews written 50 years ago: Directed and Written by Curt Siodmak; Produced by Richard Kay and Harry Rybnick for Universal-International release. Photography by Rudolf Icsey; Edited by Terry Morse; Music by Raoul Kraushaar. Starring: John Bromfield, Beverly Garland, Tom Payne, Harvey Chalk, Larri Thomas, Wilson Viana, Frank Bevan, Sergio de Oliveira, Robert Aurel and Andrea Bayard.

The natives' mythical monster causes trouble until his true identity is ferreted out. Having John Bromfield and Beverly Garland head up the otherwise no-name cast spells B-movie heaven.

Any movie that has a scene of the hero smoking while the doctor is giving him his annual medical check up has to be a classic.

There is validity to every single negative review of this picture, but who cares? Look, I love Ingmar Bergman films, but am I going to kick back with beer and nacho cheese Doritos on a summer Saturday afternoon watching "Cries And Whispers?" I didn't spend all morning cutting the grass to then crash the couch and drown myself in Swedish angst. That's for cold bleak winter nights. For summer I want a jungle, a tight pants adventuress and a hero who can spend an entire week lost in the Amazon and still not have a single day's facial hair. Yes, as everyone agrees without a doubt the movie rips you off and leaves you a chump for ever believing such a thing as truth in advertising exists. But stop crybaby'ing about it already. Get over your disappointment like a big boy and just enjoy the mustard we got. To hell with your Grey Poupon!