Movie Review: Creature From the Haunted Sea (1961)

Synopsis: When an American criminal offers to help a group of political refugees escape Cuba with some of the country's gold, he intends to kill them while at sea and pin the blame on a fictional sea monster. Little does he know, there is an actual sea monster stalking the boat.

Who's in it? The movie stars Antony Carbone, Betsy Jones-Moreland, Robert Towne, Beach Dickerson and Robert Bean.

Review: I ended up watching this movie a couple nights ago while sitting in my car and waiting for my daughter to get done with her skating lesson. Since it looked like it was low-budget, I wasn't really expecting much from it but, as it turns out, it was much worse than I thought it would be.

There are a couple things, other than a ridiculously fake monster, that really hurt this movie in my opinion. One of them is the movie is just too "busy." In other words, the filmmakers tried to cram an awful lot of stuff into a relatively short runtime - a spy, a shipwreck, and even an obsession with making animal noises. This would have been time better spent making the main plot much more watchable.

I also feel like this would have been much better as a straight-up monster movie rather than a comedy (at least I think it was supposed to be a comedy), especially if there was more of an effort to give the monster a believable backstory. The plot elements were there, especially the part about having to retrieve the gold from under the monster-controlled water.

At minimum, the movie could have used some sort of surprise twist at the end. Even something simple, like having the monster be someone in disguise (which would, in turn, explain the crappy monster costume), would have helped. Though, to be fair, I'm not really sure if that would have been enough to make the film watchable.

Final Opinion: Other than maybe for some background noise, this movie just isn't worth your time. Skip it if you come across it.

My Grade: F