CREATURE FROM THE HAUNTED SEA (1961)

 "NOW THE FIRST THING WE'VE GOT TO THINK ABOUT IS TO ESCAPE THIS FINKY MONSTER!": ROGER CORMAN'S "TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT".

  With a little Castro Cuba thrown in.  Filmgroup strikes again with this rewatch of Corman's horror-comedy.  Yes, it IS a horror-comedy.  Anyone who doesn't see this quite plainly (from the animated funny monster titles to the name-dropped counter-revolutionary characters such as 'General Tostada' and  'General Cabeza Grande' {Big Head in Spanish}), I question as to whether the lights are on but nobody's home.  I have seen this many, many times over the years as this is a public domain film.  I have always really enjoyed it because, well, it's genuinely funny and that ping pong ball-eyed monster is to die for!  Well I remember my doddy Cheeks and I playing the DOORWAYS TO HORROR VHS board game in the mid-1980s

and at least a scene or two from this movie were featured.  I say again.  It's a public domain film.  DOORWAYS TO HORROR used public domain film clips almost exclusively and that made it even more lovable! 

So, we've got the counter-revolutionary storyline to overthrow the new communist government in Cuba.  We have Antony Carbone doing his best Bogart-in-To-Have-And-Have-Not impression.  We have said crooked Captain Carbone telling his tale of some cock-and-bull sea monster legend so he can bump off his crewmates and keep the loot.  And then we have the sea monster actually existing in all his googly-eyed glory!  I have to say that there's not much here NOT to love!  That's why I've rewatched it over and over again since the 1980s crap videotape I first owned.  Besides all this, there's the very fun screenplay by Charles B. Griffith (who had already penned LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS, A BUCKET OF BLOOD and ATTACK OF THE CRAB MONSTERS before this).  I mean, listen to this dialogue spoken by U.S. secret agent Sparks Moran

(played by Robert Towne -- YES, THAT Robert Towne -- the one who wrote CHINATOWN is in this movie playing a secret agent who makes an undetectable radio set out of simulated hot dogs and tubes inside of dill pickles):  "The Cuban treasury was now in the gentle hands of Renzo Capetto:  the most trustworthy man ever to be deported from Sicily.  They thought they were smart but little did they know that I, Sparks Moran, was an American agent.  Luckily, I had been able to work my way into the crew by posing as a notorious gum machine burglar from Chicago.  My real name is XK150."  Immediately after this speech, Robert Towne jumps down from the boat to help Antony Carbone with some cargo.  Only he doesn't just 'jump down from the boat'; he apparently loses his balance and grabs for a support pole which is right next to actress Betsy Jones-Moreland.  In doing this, he accidentally snags a hunk of her hair against the pole and the grimace made by the actress is real and deliberately left in the film.  No take twos, folks!  Right after this awesome blooper, Betsy says the line:  "You'll think of a way to remove them (the crew) and grab that loot because you're my big, strong, swinging brain!"  I mean, priceless.  What does that even mean???  Betsy as Carbone's moll Marybelle is wonderfully trashy; constantly calling him 'Boopsy'.  Marybelle's little brother Happy Jack Monahan (Robert Bean) has a mouth twitch from watching too many Bogart movies (Humphrey reference #2) and there's also a crew member names Pete Peterson Jr. (Beach Dickerson) who only speaks in animal noises.  Antony Carbone's performance here is spot on and much more relaxed than his rather stiff performance in Corman's Poe film THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM.  Carbone's Captain Renzo Capetto decides to tell the Cuban crew escorting the loot about the legendary sea monster in the area; the monster was hooked by a 'Cuban fisherman named Hemingway' and dragged for miles.  Ernest Hemingway wrote TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT.  Far from being some slapdash, quickie B-movie, CREATURE FROM THE HAUNTED SEA knows exactly what it's doing and is a great watch because of it. 

Bless his googly-eyed heart!

Naturally, the only way now to watch the film is the newly-restored ( as of early this year) blu ray double feature Film Masters put out; pairing this film with DEVIL'S PARTNER.  The newly-discovered 35mm print looks unbelievably good and I never in a million years thought I'd ever see this traditionally muddy, faded film look almost pristine!!!  Best movie ever made?  I dunno, maybe.  I mean, something this durn entertaining is nothing to sneeze at!