Creature of Destruction

The 1956 film THE SHE-CREATURE might have been a little on the cheesy and incoherent side, but compared to this hysterically poor remake it looks like CITIZEN KANE. Sporting bottom-of-the-ocean production values and acting, this is another one of the wretched remakes of sincere '50s monster movies carelessly belched out by Larry Buchanan in 1966-'67. The sinister Dr. Basso is an evil hypnotist who prowls the California beaches in a moth-eaten tux and top hat that make him look like Snidely Whiplash. The grumpy, short-fused old creep makes for a very uninteresting villain. He has a woman under a spell that causes her to materialize in the very first form in which she ever walked the earth, namely, a guy in a skindiving wetsuit and a ridiculous Halloween mask with lopsided ping-pong balls stuck onto it for eyes. Inarguably one of the least convincing monsters ever used in a movie, the dimestore demon was nevertheless used in another Buchanan disaster called IT'S ALIVE! It clomps laughably along making a noise like an electric motor in need of maintenance and occasionally kills people who are silly enough to wander around the beach at night even though there have been numerous unsolved murders there. The sort-of hero is a dorky Air Force psychologist (sometimes he's called a parapsychologist) who is described as "a national hero". The science-versus-supernatural doubletalk is preposterous and never makes enough sense to invite serious consideration. At a beach party, a rock group does a song about Batman. When the goofy creature advances toward the camera, the fin sticking out of the left side of its head frequently refuses to stand out like it's supposed to. Since the beast is an early version of a reincarnated girl, it's repeatedly referred to as a female, but, just like in FRANKENSTEIN'S DAUGHTER (1958), the suit is obviously being worn by a man. Cops always find trails of seaweed leading to and from the locations of the creature's attacks but there's never an inch of seaweed hanging on the beast when we see it. In at least one scene you can hear the director whispering instructions to his actors, and at one point a strange echo effect kicks in, so bits of dialogue can be heard twice. The whole movie is grainy and sometimes suffers from severe color shifts or goes momentarily out of focus. Many shots go on too long and the actors deliver their lines in slow, stiff, aggressively unrealistic monotones. (It's probably unfair to entirely blame the actors for their weak performances, since they had only Larry Buchanan to direct them.) When a man fires a gun, we see a closeup of his hand holding the weapon but clearly NOT firing it, while a noise like someone slamming a door is dubbed in to suggest the gunshot. The script says the victims are horribly mutilated, but one dead body is found propped up on a sofa without so much as a drop of blood visible on it. Buchanan used to complain about how little time and money he was given to make these things, but even taking his limited resources into account he should have come up with something a little less awful than this. There aren't any interesting camera setups, effects, or anything else that might have added a little professionalism. As with his other features, Buchanan directs with his typical stunning personal balance of incompetence and indifference. Another fine mess brought to you by Azalea Pictures, a company with a name that sounds significantly like "assail ya".

A hypnotist and his assistant come to town, presenting an act -- real or contrived -- that features the assistant traveling back in her mind to past lives and revealing details of them to the audience. At the same time, a prehistoric monster is ravaging the community, killing beach bums right and left.

Many have written this film off as worthless and a poor remake. I can't comment on the remake aspect, because I didn't see the original. I would hardly call the film worthless, though. I found it to be highly entertaining and a very captivating story in its own right.

Yes, the film quality is poor, and if you remove the scenes of the beach parties the film doesn't even last a complete hour. But the actors are quite good, especially the man who plays the hypnotist -- giving Montag the Magnificent (from Lewis' "Wizard of Gore") a run for his money. Ultimately, of course, Montag is the better character, but only marginally.

I am still not entirely clear on the connection between the hypnotist and the sea monster (a man in a diving suit and cheesy mask). The link is explained at the end of the film, but doesn't seem to make rational sense. I'd explain that more, but I don't want to give away any twists. I would just like to say if you don't mind low quality 1960s films, this one is worth a viewing.

What a terrible made for TV remake film - but loads of fun. This film is the definition of cheesy z-movies. It's a remake of The She-Creature (1956) which is a pretty good B-film and this film is the groovy 1967 Z-film remade for television.

The creature costume in this one is hysterically funny but part of what makes this film fun. The other fun part is the out of sight band that is there for the entertainment of the guest singing there groovy great Batman song! --- A shameless plug for the Batman TV Series (1966–1968) I am guessing.

Okay this is a horrible film but in a way more fun to watch than the original because this one is laughable whereas the original is just a pretty good film.

3/10

Considering that this film was made by Larry Buchanan, you can't help but assume it will be a horrible film. After all, Buchanan made a ton of low-budget AND terrible films in his illustrious career. For most, this might be a bad thing, but fans of bad films (like myself) actually seek out his films because they are usually laughably bad.

At first, I was concerned however, as the film didn't seem all that bad. Sure, the monster was recycled from several previous cheesy films, but the plot involving the evil hypnotist seemed interesting. However, considering that the film never really connected this mind control with the appearance of the murderous creature, the film sure was confusing...and dopey.

Les Tremayne plays the hypnotist/mentalist and he actually seemed like a pretty good actor--but he was unfortunately stuck in a bad film. He had an assistant--a pretty lady who was under his total power. She would travel back in town a describe previous lives she'd lived to amazed audiences of rubes. Later, a doubtful psychic investigator (an air force captain whose hair was too long to be a real military man) tries to break Tremayne's hold on the lady. At the same time, there are a series of silly murders on the nearby beach--though as I said before, there really is no explanation of how the evil Tremayne and the somnabalistic lady are involved.

In many ways, the film is like THE HORROR OF PARTY BEACH (a truly dreadful film) and the classic silent, THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI. The evil mentalist and his patsy are there--as is the dumb bug-eyed monster (a guy in a diving suit, rubber gloves and a silly mask).

What's to like? Well, other than Tremayne and a mildly interesting mentalist concept, nothing. The film is poorly directed and written and just screams "cheese" from start to finish. Only for the lovers of bad cinema.

I wonder how many old school creature features there are that spend close to their entire runtime building up to a five minute appearance for the monster. Probably hundreds, it was popular practice to splay a lurid and menacing beast across the publicity material for films whose creatures were nothing more than embarrassed stuntmen in ill fitting suits, gesturing and roaring for comical effect. Creature of Destruction is no different from these masses in the silliness of its creature, but it does switch things up a couple of gears by having it on display more than one might expect. Like other Larry Buchanan joints of the 60's, the story here is a graft from an earlier film, in this case She Creature. I've never seen it myself but it tends to be fairly well liked, with a cult cachet. The same does not seem to have attached to Creature of Destruction, but it has its charms nonetheless. Regrettably its highlight comes early, the wordless opening seven minutes as our creature stalks its prey to booming stock music, the inherent craziness of the startling boggle eyed beast made all the weirder by the defunct print quality, with colours shifting mid take and patches of gloom that look to have been lensed through marble ditch-water. Its captivating, wildly edited stuff and amongst Buchanan's finest work, but the film can't keep up the momentum. Focus is largely on oddball scientist and lecturer Dr. John Basso, a weird and unscrupulous guy whose hypnotic experiments are causing all the badness of the film to go down. As Basso, actor Les Tremayne contributes a weird and wryly malefic performance, interesting but often too low key. In acting terms Neil Fletcher comes off best, a broad, bold and money loving business type entering into partnership with the nefarious Basso. Aron Kincaid is somewhat wooden as heroic psychiatrist Dr. Theodore Dell, whilst unearthly charms are conferred by Pat Delaney as Basso's abused assistant and agent of destruction. For all that the cast do their best the film is generally a bit too talky, probably its biggest problem. The story and themes are interesting but the script (by Buchanan regular Tony Huston) isn't well developed enough to make good use of either and the general character banter isn't quite lively enough to make up for the slack action. Still, the creatures attacks are hilarious (its a lively beast despite its clunky and slightly ill fitting costume, it also seem to like wetly slapping at victims), there are some vintage beach partying scenes with accompanying groovy tunes, plus goofy footage repetitions and screwball slip ups in the dialogue, altogether plenty of bonkers meat for daft cinema lovers to sink their teeth into. Not something I would recommend to most, but if you happen to be the sort of person that digs this sort of film, it's worth at least a one time watch.