Monster

Here's a monster movie that truly belongs in the POS file. Sometimes even top-bill actors and actresses sometimes get rooked into doing POS movies (prime example: Halle Barry and 'Cat Woman') and for 'Monstroid', it was James Mitchum and John Carradine. The director, Kenneth Hartford, starred his own kids in the movie and gave them top billing with Mitchum and Carradine to add insult to injury.

This steaming pile of doo-doo is about a big, bad American company operating a chemical plant in Colombia. The plant has been dumping untreated chemical waste into the local lake for years and of course the company execs don't care. The chemical waste has somehow spawned a rubber monster to appear from its depths, whereupon it begins chomping down on bikini-clad harlots and drunken fishermen. The company execs devise a hare-brained plan to kill the creature with a lamb carcass stuffed full of dynamite pulled along by a helicopter. No, really... I kid you not...

This is a really awful film. It is tedious and ridiculous. The file I saw was pulled off of the public domain films section of http://www.archive.org so the quality was quite poor. Even if I could have seen the master copy, however, I'm sure the film would have sucked just as bad. Most likely, John Carradine and James Mitchum cashed their checks and got falling-down drunk after this POS finally wrapped.

This is a wonderfully goofy example of a self produced, written and directed vanity project ...while I was working as a crew member John Carradine commented to me (before the burning at the stake sequence): "This is the worst piece of sh*t I've ever worked on ...and I've worked on a lot of pieces of sh*t." Also An interesting moment earlier when Jim Mitchum was having trouble with his lines and started cursing in the courtyard location of the Santuario (a religious shrine in Chimayó) - at which point one of the local "vato loco" low-rider onlookers growled "...show some respect man", which apparently caused Jim to remember where he was, as he then made a very profound and heartfelt apology for his inappropriate behavior. In any case the crew did the job on deferment and were never fully paid - but came away with plenty of particularly bizarre stories - like the night we caught the producer/director's 10 year old son entertaining himself by constructing miniature Burmese tiger traps for us to break our legs in. Like they say: "Ya gotta' love the Biz..."

Played in the theatres back in 1980, and disappeared for awhile, only to surface in numerous public domain video companies. MONSTER toplines action star Jim Mitchum who is hired by Anthony Eisley (a skirt chasing executive) to go to a small village to battle a paper mache' monster that we only see the face and one leg. John Carradine has little to do as a town priest. The film boasts to be true story, but anything this crazy can't happen, can it? Cesar Romero (billed in imdb) is nowhere in this film. Keenan Wynn is billed in all video boxes, but not in the film. This monster sucks.

This movie is one of the WORST films I have EVER seen!!! While I was watching it... I wanted so bad to turn it off and throw it away but I wanted to watch the rest of it so that I could tell off of you folks just how bad it is. It all starts out with it being described as being a TRUE story!!! Give me a break!!! I rubber monster swimming in a lake grabbing people like in "Jaws" and where did he get the feet or the fin's to come up on shore in the jungle and do the same thing!!! Other than that.... it had fake acting, fake props and a large amount of no-name actors that we have never heard of or that we never will in the future. This film is so bad, it deserves a 0!!!

Monster (1979)

* (out of 4)

One of the great joys of VHS was walking into an old video store and uncovering a film that probably had no right to be on VHS. You can find many of these gems now on DVD but this film, also known as MONSTROID: IT CAME FROM THE LAKE, has a special place in my heart because I discovered it at a very young age and I must admit that it really blew my mind as at the time I had no idea movies could be so bad. The film is pretty simple as a cement company in Columbia are dumping waste into the lake and soon people start to go missing. Some believe it's activists but the truth is that a large sea monster is eating people. Apparently this movie began filming in 1971 but ran out of money so they picked up a few shots here and there for the next several years before finally hitting drive-ins in 1979. This might explain some of the badness because the movie will be going along and then something will happen that makes no sense to the previous scene you just watched. There's no doubt that this is one of the dumbest, more insane and outright laughable movies ever made so if you're a fan of trash then this here is a must see. Within the first five minutes we're told twice that this is based on a true story. From this point on we get countless bad actors getting eaten by this creature. Speaking of the creature, you'd have to rank him right up there with the one in THE GIANT CLAW for one of the worst in history. This thing really does look like a big turd and it's constantly changing sizes and shapes. I'm going to guess they were trying to give it a Godzilla look but they failed pretty bad. The scenes where he's suppose to be eating people are priceless as are the moments when people see him in the water swimming around. For some reason this thing needed four credited screenwriters including Herbert L. Strock who many will remember for directing such films as HOW TO MAKE A MONSTER and I WAS A TEENAGE FRANKENSTEIN. The cast includes Robert Mitchum's son James and we get John Carradine playing a priest. God bless Carradine because no matter how bad the movie is you just know he's going to bring in some charm. As horrid as this movie is it's pretty much bad enough to where everyone should check it out just so they can say they've seen one of the worst monsters in film history.