I love this movie so much

Better Late Then Never

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

This Roger Corman directed spoof of spy, gangster and monster movies is much better than one can expect, especially if you can pay attention. Intentionally silly and it has some genius moments (that phone booth on the reef), the film has never meant to be taken seriously as other monster movies before that. In that sense Roger Corman parodied everything he had done before.The script was put together in three days by fast writing expert Charles B. Griffith and was shot on location of Puerto Rico together with two other Corman's productions 'Last Woman on Earth' (which he directed himself) and 'Battle of Blood Island'. That is the reason why three main stars are same as in 'Last Woman'. It seems that Corman went deliberately cheesy monster costume with tennis balls for eyes, as the intention was to make a comedy. As actor Anthony Carbone later said, they had to concentrate hard not to laugh at it.Opening theme music is exactly same as it was in 'The Little Shop of Horrors' and was originally written for 'A Bucket of Blood' by Fred Katz. That score was used in total of seven Roger Corman's productions. That's how cheap the great legend of cheapies was.'Creature from the Haunted Sea' is mostly misunderstood because the film is too silly even for Corman, but I guess lot of that misunderstanding comes from people that doesn't realize it was meant to be comedy. Not the greatest of them all, but still quite an enjoyable mess.

All you have to do is look at stills of this extremely cheaply made science fiction/horror comedy, and you can see the cheap ideas that went into making it. Yet, as bad as it is, it seems to have been the first of many silly looking sea monsters, this one so obvious that it looks like a giant Muppet. In fact something tells me, that when Jim Henson saw this movie he got the idea of creating Cookie Monster. The plot surrounding the film truly is lame. It has to do with a fake scheme to scare people away by pretending that a sea monster exist in the area, but unbeknownst to the stupid perpetrators of this idiotic plot, there really is a monster, and how he can come out of the water with his coat looking so dry, is one of the most outlandish ideas in these type of films. It's funny that the monster looks more cuddly than scary, even if he is bigger than his victims. The acting, if you can even call it that, is so bad, everybody speaking in mono syllabic terms and acting so childish. When the people on this boat actually land on an island with primitive huts that do look like something out of Gilligan's Island, complete with coconut trees, you know you are in the Land of the Lost. I know that Roger Corman wasn't going for art with these films, only to make a quick buck. There is not a bright idea in the entire film, with the entire cast of adults acting like buffoons throughout, imitating elephants, chickens and big monkeys. The island sequence even has a subplot ripped off from South Pacific that has to be seen to be believed. There is no way even if this was made to be serious that I could take it serious, that everything about it is so silly and juvenile, that I can't believe that any adults that went to see this film at a drive in without a make-out partner could make it throughout the entire film without going to the refreshment stand. One of the characters seems to be trying to emulate Jerry Lewis, and comes off extremely badly. Unfortunately the silly looking monster doesn't even appear all that much. But there are some good laughs at the expense of the film, and I am certainly glad that I wasn't stuck on this island with the bunch of idiots seemingly castaway here. I prefer to take my chances with Gilligan and the skipper.

*Spoiler/plot- The Creature of the Haunted Sea, 1961. An American rich gangster become involved in discovering and dealing with an unknown sea monster that threatens the locals.*Special Stars- Anthony Carbone, Betsy Jones-Moreland, Robert Towne. DIR Roger Corman.*Theme- American ingenuity wins out. *Trivia/location/goofs- B&W. Cuba. THe monster in this film is unfortunately and clearly a guy in a rubber suit. It is too jokey to be appreciated.*Emotion- Clearly a low B-movie film with hardly anything to get enthusiastic about. A LOW B-movie example.*Based On- Cuban missile crisis worries.

After the Cuban Revolution, the mobster Renzo Capetto (Antony Carbone) and his lover Mary-Belle Monahan (Betsy Jones-Moreland) transport a group of exiled Cubans led by General Tostada (Edmundo Rivera Alvarez) to the United States with a Cuban treasure to finance a counterrevolution against Castro. However, Renzo and his gang formed by Pete Peterson Jr. (Beech Dickerson), Happy Jack Monahan (Robert Bean) and Sparks Moran (Edward Wain), who is indeed the American Agent XK150, plan to steal the treasure from the Cuban people.They fabricate a sea monster to change the course to San Juan and kill Cuban soldiers. However they discover that the creature does exist and is attacking them all."Creature from the Haunted Sea" is an awfully lame and silly Z-movie by Roger Corman. The comedy and the horror never works and the acting, direction, narration, effects and make-up are really dreadful. My vote is two.Title (Brazil): "Criaturas do Fundo do Mar" {"Creatures from the Bottom of the Sea")