This is a really difficult film to review, mainly because several weeks after watching it I still have absolutely no idea what to make of it all. Another of Roger Corman’s spare-change affairs, made this time in one week, it’s a knockabout comedy of errors which also has a few occasional pretensions at being a serious horror film. The plot goes something like this: crook Sparks Moran sees an opportunity to make a fortune when revolution breaks out on a Caribbean island by helping loyalists escape on his boat, killing them and then blaming their deaths on a legendary sea monster supposed to inhabit the area. Unfortunately for Moran, the monster exists, and sets about attacking his boat.
But this summary doesn’t even begin to cover the bizarre and disconnected oddess that fills this film’s 77 minutes. Somehow, there’s also a man who does animal impressions who falls in love with a much older islander who impersonates animals as well. There’s an opening chase and a secret rendezvous in a cafe that bears no relation to anything that follows. And the film screeches to a halt to let a woman sing on the boat for what seems like an eternity. Frankly, it’s utter madness, and right in the middle of it all is the monster itself, a hilariously ramshackle concoction that resembles a fat version of the Pepperami monster.
I suppose my problems with this film stem from how unclear Corman’s aims are. He simultaneously asks us to laugh with and at the film, both poking fun at its own shortcomings but also carrying some rather laboured gags. It’s not consistently funny enough to be good comedy, but it’s got a knowing, self-conscious edge which makes it difficult to love in an Ed Wood fashion. Moran’s proto-Frank Drebin voiceover raises the odd laugh, but most of the time it mocks the film instead of being funny, making the whole thing rather hard to swallow. Asking for greatness from a Corman movie is never a good idea, but a bad movie can’t be redeemed simply by admitting it and trying to laugh its failings off.
The monster is of course fab and pretty much saves the entire picture. Whether it’s deliberately hopeless or not, this low-rent Creature from the Black Lagoon really livens things up, partly because of the sheer audacity of putting something SO rubbish on screen and partly because it’s a genuinely funny design. It’s just a shame that the rest of the movie drags so much; if he’d used the monster a lot more and kept the comic momentum going it’d be a great film to watch over a bottle of wine. As it is, it’s a hard movie to love, but quite good fun if you’re really drunk.