The Creeping Terror

There was only one possible reason for this movie to be made and that was to see women's rears stuck up into the air as they went down the monster's gullet. Just to keep from being called a pervert, the director tosses the monster some male actors and extras he didn't want to pay. Monster ? It's a living shag rug with several other dirty shag rugs sewn together. At one point, it even snags on a car and the "puppeteers and victims" inside have to hump a car to get freed. In fact, you know its going to be a bad movie because it requires a narrator to explain what's going on as you watch it. Actually, the narration is supposed to cover up a lost soundtrack; any sane director would have called it off at that point. The "attacks" are pretty ridiculous; the thing moves so slow that everyone has well enough time to run, and it makes so much noise there's no way it can sneak up on you. These people want to be eaten so the monster dutifully obliges. This movie may have been made just to show off the rolling hills and scenery of Lake Tahoe where it was filmed. After this movie, you'd think no one would ever go there again.

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"

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!!

Where else but in the good ole U.S.A. could a group of people make a movie like THE CREEPING TERROR, get it shown in theatres and on TV (repeatedly), and people admit to liking it publicly? I've loved this flick since the first time I saw it back in the 70's on late night TV and still hold it in high regard as one of the worst movies I will ever love. The carpet and vacuum hose monster that moves at a mall walkers pace seems to have no problem getting victims to into it's mouth, not just to be eaten but to be analyzed and biological info sent back to it's home planet?!? A.J. Nelson must have been dropped one too many times as a baby to make something this bad... and hilarious!