Creature of Destruction

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.

1967's "Creature of Destruction" came 5th out of Larry Buchanan's 8 Azalea pictures (shot in April 1967, four months after "Mars Needs Women," mere weeks before "In the Year 2889" began May 14), mostly color remakes of AIP features of the black and white 50s, this item recycled from 1956's "The She-Creature," a topical story of that year thanks to the Bridey Murphy case, incorporating mesmerism with reincarnation and regression, which even Roger Corman tried his hand at with "The Undead." The Alex Gordon production was no classic but featured a fine cast of familiar faces, and a memorable Paul Blaisdell monster that was supposed to look female but didn't, despite the breasts. The original took place at an oceanside park, while this remake is set at a small lakeside resort, filmed at Lake Texoma 75 miles north of Dallas, with each shot looking as though it were done at dusk (one unchanged line of dialogue from the 1956 script reports the Creature leaving saltwater tracks despite now rising from a freshwater lake!). In the top billed hypnotist role essayed by Chester Morris (who had a real affinity for magic), we here have former carnival barker Les Tremayne, whose solid professionalism lent stature to many lower budgeted horrors since his co-starring part as General Mann in 1953's "The War of the Worlds," including 1957's "The Monolith Monsters," 1958's "The Monster of Piedras Blancas," 1959's "The Angry Red Planet," 1962's "The Slime People," and 1974's "Fangs" aka "Snakes" (also shot in Texas). Rather than a recognizable face like John Ashley, Paul Petersen, or Tommy Kirk, we get the eminently forgettable Aron Kincaid, who has been remembered as a veteran of AIP's Beach Party series but only did two, "Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine" and "The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini," understandably mesmerized by Quinn O'Hara's red haired beauty (he did do a pair of rip offs, "Ski Party" and "Beach Ball," guess they got confused). His unspectacular acting career ended with many voiceovers for animated shows and cartoons (as did radio veteran Tremayne). This final AIP credit finds Kincaid unbearably stiff, looking mighty uncomfortable in an air force uniform two sizes too small for him, in a somnambulistic performance entirely post dubbed in inept fashion. And please don't ask about the inexplicable presence of Scotty McKay, possibly a local talent who worked cheap, who belts out two songs (one about Batman!) before the whole mess starts to gel nearly 20 minutes in (incidentally, the five minute pre credits sequence is taken from the climax, which is conspicuously shorter as a result). Non music lovers will be pleased to note that Scotty's performance receives the scorn it deserves when he's bumped off by the Creature. A Texas filmmaker of notorious repute, Buchanan certainly qualifies as a real huckster like Al Adamson, able to churn out numerous titles despite the dearth of talent, perhaps not as laughably incompetent as Ed Wood, but worth their share of laughs in their own right. Of all his genre films for Azalea, "Creature of Destruction" probably ranks as his least interesting, receiving less airplay in its day than any of the other, better remembered titles, particularly the two with John Agar. The wet suit that doubles as the Creature (played by Byron Lord) returned for another go-round in 1969's "It's Alive!" still adorned with fins on the mask, which were missing in its first appearance (played by Bill Thurman) in 1966's "Curse of the Swamp Creature" (at least the monsters in "The Eye Creatures," "Zontar the Thing from Venus," and "In the Year 2889" were unique to them). Come to think of it, one of The Eye Creatures actually showed up in "The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini," but failed to steal the thunder from Boris Karloff. The kind of movie that one used to find at 3AM, a relic of a bygone era, which probably wouldn't pass muster with someone who never discovered it under those conditions.

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.

CREATURE OF DESTRUCTION is another of Director Larry Buchanan's cinematic anvils to the cranium. This time, there's a hideous monster on a murderous rampage!

Enter Dr. John Basso (Les Tremayne), a clairvoyant practitioner of mesmerism and speaker of mumbo jumbo. Along with his assistant, Doreena (Pat Delaney), he prognosticates doom for certain humans in the area. More unexplained deaths occur. Could it have something to do with Basso and his "regression hypnosis"? The police are baffled.

A languid remake of the listless SHE CREATURE, this movie lumbers along, featuring a monster even more absurd than the original! Picture Kermit T. Frog's pop-eyed head on someone in a green wet suit, growling like a motorcycle that won't start.

Tremayne, playing his role with histrionic glee, towers above the other "actors" in the film, who recite their lines as if they'd been handed the script for the first time, seconds before filming started! Not one of Buchanan's "better" movies, it mostly consists of chatter and static. Dull as a butter knife, it saves all of its "excitement" for the less-than-stellar denouement.

Co-stars Annabelle Weenick (DON'T LOOK IN THE BASEMENT) as the woman who sits in a chair a lot.

EXTRA POINTS FOR: The rockin' beach parties that spontaneously erupt throughout the movie!...

A hypnotised woman's soul regresses through time and manifests as a murderous, monstrous primeval sea-creature. This cheap-looking, cheaply-made 16mm TV fodder is one of several colour remakes of fifties sci-fi shockers that AIP hired Larry Buchanan to make in the late 1960s. While not great cinema (even by genre standards) the original film, 1956's 'The She-Creature', was moderately imaginative (in a nonsensical way), timely (reincarnation stories were all the rage after the release of the best-selling book 'The Search for Bridey Murphy') and featured one of monster-maker Paul Blaisell's most memorable creations. Buchanan's penny ante celluloid reincarnation has none of these virtues - it is tedious bargain-basement retelling with a crudely made monster that is barely watchable, even by hard-core fans of crap.