Curucu, Beast of the Amazon (1956)

That was an excellent one.

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

It is not deep, but it is fun to watch. It does have a bit more of an edge to it than other similar films.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

"Can't get a man, so she gets a career." So says male chauvinist John Bromfield about the female doctor behind a screen, and flabbergasted when Beverly Garland opens it up, giving the death stare of all death stares. But she's a tough chick, able to withstand huge snakes, spiders and other jungle creatures as she heads into the Amazon with Bromfield to determine what kind of monster or beast...or worse...is attacking the local tribes people. Once the secret is revealed, it should be all over, but unfortunately, there are several more reels to get through.I'll give this credit in the sense that they did their best to find the best color stock footage to match the new footage, blending it in almost convincingly. The jungle settings are pretty but there's really little mystery in this cartoonish adventure. Once again, Garland is a sight to behold, but the creature is nowhere the campy sight of the vegetable monster she came up against in "It Conquered the World". The scantily clad natives are a muscular erotic sight, but unfortunately, this is the type of schlock that turned movie audiences away and put them in front of their newly bought television screens where, when something was bad, at least you didn't have to pay for it.

Hoping to quell the fears of superstitious natives, a rancher and a doctor head into the Amazon jungle to find a supposedly awakened demon but learn of a dangerous native tribe lurking in the area and must stop it from spreading.Overall this was a pretty disappointing and thoroughly disappointing effort. What really tends to hold this one down is the fact that there's not a whole lot of time here spent among the confines of the genre, tending to focus far more frequently on the Adventure drama aspects of the story. The majority of the film is simply watching the two and their guide trek through the jungle and commenting on the different animals present in the area which is then shown in stock-footage inserts of the specific species told they're observing only to then be treated to widely different levels of film-stock quality to showcase that. The piranha attack is the most egregious, showing badly-framed underwater footage in black-and-white no less despite the rest of the film being in color from an angle that has nothing to do with what they pointed to but is just clumsily thrown in since it's a piranha attack footage, while shots of the animals brawling and fighting each other tends to dominate the main parts of the film that it's entirely possible to forget there's a creature at the center of the film. That aspect doesn't help the film any further as there's only two attacks by the creature in the entire film and is then twisted around into another storyline thread which is dropped off the film quite easily and early which is quite troubling and again makes it hard to believe this was supposed to be a horror effort all along. These here make this one quite hard to get into as a horror film, despite having a fairly decent amount of stuff about it. Despite only being seen twice, each of the attacks aren't all that bad and manage to get some mild suspense from them as the creature stalking them in the jungle before jumping out to launch the surprise attack makes for a few decent times here. Likewise, the film also manages to get some decent mileage out of the fantastic brawl at the end as the two rival Indian tribes get into action and begin fighting each other in a fairly large-scale scene, from the fire-laced huts and the hand-to-hand brawling and the long-range battles with the spears and arrows coming into play to make a fine action scene that's quite exciting. Even still, that also plays more into it's Adventure setting that it tends to wash away the positives here and aligns this more as a flaw here.Today's Rating/PG: Violence.

Note: *SPOILER* Back in the early seventies this film turned up on "The Late Late Show" and I set my alarm and got up to watch it. After this film was over I was almost sorry I did. The only reason I didn't totally regret getting up at 4 in the morning to watch this was that at least I could truthfully say to my fellow monster movie loving friends that I had seen it. Except for the attractive color photography and real Brazilian locations, this film is a dud in almost every way. The "monster" is silly looking, the acting never rises above adequate and most of the time its less than that, and the dialog is lame. But thats not what irked me when I was twelve, I had seen lots of cheap monster movies with silly looking monsters and I had come to expect that. What irked me was the films cheat ending. The monster is revealed to be at the end simply a man in a costume trying to scare people away. All the fantastic stuff turns out to be a hoax. When will film makers ever learn? Every now and then somebody makes this kind film where the fantastic element turns out to be a trick. Although I can't recall any recent theatrical movies that employed this lately, it still turns in made for T.V./cable/video movies now and then. I can't think of a film, with the exception of MARK OF THE VAMPIRE (1935), with this "Ha! Ha! We fooled ya!" kind of story that was any good. I never liked this kind of film and most people I know don't either, although movie makers think we do. The only kind of people who like this kind of film other than some film makers, are the kind of ignorant self important high brow types who have contempt for all forms of science fiction and horror films. Their attitude is that "there are no monsters, ghosts, aliens etc in real life" so having the fantastic elements revealed to be a trick is supposed to make the film more believable. But it doesn't. In these kind of films it stretches the viewers credibility more to accept that someone could employ successfully the kinds of tricks needed to pull off a hoax of the type shown in these films, than to accept that something supernatural or fantastic is really going on. As in many of these films, the phony fantastic goings on are almost always employed to scare people from what ever it is the hoaxers are trying to keep hidden. Of course, in real life, reports of monsters, aliens, haunted houses, etc., almost always do the opposite. A report of "big foot" or a lake with a monster usually attracts hordes of reporters, investigators, and the just plain curious. So these kinds of films are not more believable. The only thing they do is make the viewer feel cheated.

Having not seen this picture in almost twenty years, it's not on video, and rarely, if ever, re-shown on television, one can understand why. It's a wretched mess. Filmed in color on location in Brazil, Beverly Garland plays a doctor in the Amazon who learns that if the local headhunters can shrink heads that maybe the formula can be used to shrink cancer cells for the cure. Interrupting her potential medical breakthrough is a legendary monster that is killing the natives as she accompanies hunter John Bromfield in the search. Anyone expecting a real beast will be gravely disappointed. The insipid musical score detracts from the creepy goings-on; it's poorly directed with abysmal special effects. The jungle cliches are in abundance, with Bromfield making a play for the un-receptive (at first) Garland. Check out the tent scene wherein the beast creeps up on her - she screams before even getting a good look at her intruder. Some of the scenery is beautiful, but can not save this dreary disaster. Last scene is freaky.