Les marais de l'enfer

Folks in the Louisiana bayou have their hands full after some scientists inject a nutria (basically a swamp rat) with some human hormones which results in Nutriaman, a human sized nutria that likes to kill people. Insert your own "nutria-itious" joke. Somehow I can imagine exactly how this regional oddity came about. Two guys are fishing, one sees a nutria and says, "Dang! Can you imagine if that thing grew to be as big as us?" Tada! This could have been better than it is, but the filmmakers decide to hide the monster and skimp on the exploitation elements, putting it firmly in the company of stuff like DEATH CURSE OF TARTU. The film does a lot of shooting in the swamps but is cheap when we get to land (the sheriff always meets people in the local Ramada Inn dining room!?!). Amazingly, this took two director to make it - Martin Folse, who did nothing else, and Joe Catalanotto, who made something a year later deliciously titled FRENCH QUARTER UNDERCOVER. To the film's credit, it does contain my favorite billing of the year ("And introducing Michael Tedesco as T-Bob"). One also has to appreciate their pimping of the leading man, Billy Holiday, on the VHS cover in an attempt to fool jazz- loving horror fans.

This movie was purchased for 69 cents at a thrift store and we got about 20 minutes into the movie before we agreed that it was a bad watch. That being said, the idea for the movie might be a neat story for a Hollywood remake at some point with someone like Rob Zombie at the helm who might appreciate this sort of camp. Here's the gist, a mutant rodent is out in the swamp killing people. However, a humorous audience will find plenty of 80' s fashion and facial hair to keep you interested for as long as that's your bag. the music is wacky and fun, the cinematography is at times a little "Evil Dead" and the characters keep you missing the Burt Reynolds look. Overall, pretty bad-and not even in a cool way.

This movie is really really borrrrring. I like crappy monster movies, but this one has nothing to offer. No gimmicks, no nudity, no gore, nada. Basically it's a lot of waiting for something to happen and when it does happen (for 2 seconds), you may blink and miss it. There's so little going on in this movie, I stopped listening to it 15 minutes it. The cover shows the only scene of gore in the movie (some ten minutes into it), and you might as well stop it right then, because the only time you ever see the monster (for like 1 second) it turns out to just be a gorilla suit. So if you want to see something campy, don't watch this. It just sucks and is really borring, and a good waste of explosions.

"Nutriaman:The Copasaw Creature":who could resist watching the film with such glorious title?A giant mutated nutria is terrorizing Louisiana swamps killing various moonshine drinking yokels,trappers and poachers.The Copasaw bayou is seen through the eyes of the monster.Only the pair of scientists know the truth because they want to create some sort of supernutria for the fur industry.Of course their latest experiment goes wrong.The victims are killed by nutria.Nutriaman or the creature from Copasaw bayou is rarely shown.The acting is pretty good and two fat redneck brothers are fun to watch.An enjoyable monster flick.6 nutrias out of 10.

Feeling a lot like one of those cruddy bigfoot/sasquatch movies from the '70s (The Legend of Boggy Creek, The Legend of Bigfoot, The Creature from Black Lake), Terror in the Swamp (AKA Nutriaman: The Copasaw Creature) is utterly inept garbage from start to finish.

The majority of the film focusses on either the authorities trying to track down the creature responsible for the spate of grisly deaths in the Copasaw region of Louisiana, or on the hillbilly sadsacks who inhabit the bayou - actual monster action is at an absolute minimum. The result of a scientific experiment gone wrong - a coypu (a large swamp rodent) injected with human hormones - the Nutriaman looks suspiciously like a man in a fancy dress store gorilla costume with added claws. This dreadful regional horror wisely opts to keep the creature out of view, using POV shots, or by carefully concealing it behind foliage.

With ham-fisted direction, a dreadful script, terrible performances, virtually no gore, no gratuitous nudity and no scares, this one would have disappointed anyone unfortunate to see it at the drive-in or grindhouse theatre back in the day. These days, it can disappoint a whole new audience: idiots like me who seek it out on YouTube.

1.5 out of 10, rounded down to 1 for morbidly obese Cajun redneck T-Bob (Michael Tedesco) and irritating swamp hag Crazy Sally (Claudia Wood), both of whom deserve to be ripped to pieces by the nutriaman, but who stay alive.