Creature of Destruction (1967)

Sadly Over-hyped

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

Although the writing credits are totally dissimilar, this movie is an unashamed re-make of The Sea Creature (1956). Although the names of all the characters have been changed, they – as well as the plot and most of the dialogue – are identical. But what is not identical are the fine performances in the original movie. Les Tremayne makes a game stab at the role of the hypnotist but comes nowhere near the power and panache of the Chester Morris portrayal. The rest of the cast – with but one exception – come nowhere near matching the original players. The one exception is Pat Delany. She is not only the equal of Marla English in looks, but is actually superior in acting ability. However, so far as the screenplay is concerned, all that Tony Huston (posing as Enrique Touceda) has done is to change the effectiveness of the original climax and to add a couple of rock numbers for Scotty McKay. As for the "creature" herself, she is largely and laughably inept, both in make-up and acting ability. Also of little appeal is Larry Buchanan's wearisomely, TV oriented direction with its plethora of isolated and arbitrarily inserted close-ups. Admittedly, a few of the scenes (e.g. the teaser Prologue) are inventively handled. Some of the photography is also imaginative (e.g. the silhouette of the black-caped, top-hated hypnotist on the cliff top). Production values are also not too bad, considering the film was obviously produced on a very, very tight budget.

I wonder how many old school creature features there are that spend close to their entire runtime building up to a five minute appearance for the monster. Probably hundreds, it was popular practice to splay a lurid and menacing beast across the publicity material for films whose creatures were nothing more than embarrassed stuntmen in ill fitting suits, gesturing and roaring for comical effect. Creature of Destruction is no different from these masses in the silliness of its creature, but it does switch things up a couple of gears by having it on display more than one might expect. Like other Larry Buchanan joints of the 60's, the story here is a graft from an earlier film, in this case She Creature. I've never seen it myself but it tends to be fairly well liked, with a cult cachet. The same does not seem to have attached to Creature of Destruction, but it has its charms nonetheless. Regrettably its highlight comes early, the wordless opening seven minutes as our creature stalks its prey to booming stock music, the inherent craziness of the startling boggle eyed beast made all the weirder by the defunct print quality, with colours shifting mid take and patches of gloom that look to have been lensed through marble ditch-water. Its captivating, wildly edited stuff and amongst Buchanan's finest work, but the film can't keep up the momentum. Focus is largely on oddball scientist and lecturer Dr. John Basso, a weird and unscrupulous guy whose hypnotic experiments are causing all the badness of the film to go down. As Basso, actor Les Tremayne contributes a weird and wryly malefic performance, interesting but often too low key. In acting terms Neil Fletcher comes off best, a broad, bold and money loving business type entering into partnership with the nefarious Basso. Aron Kincaid is somewhat wooden as heroic psychiatrist Dr. Theodore Dell, whilst unearthly charms are conferred by Pat Delaney as Basso's abused assistant and agent of destruction. For all that the cast do their best the film is generally a bit too talky, probably its biggest problem. The story and themes are interesting but the script (by Buchanan regular Tony Huston) isn't well developed enough to make good use of either and the general character banter isn't quite lively enough to make up for the slack action. Still, the creatures attacks are hilarious (its a lively beast despite its clunky and slightly ill fitting costume, it also seem to like wetly slapping at victims), there are some vintage beach partying scenes with accompanying groovy tunes, plus goofy footage repetitions and screwball slip ups in the dialogue, altogether plenty of bonkers meat for daft cinema lovers to sink their teeth into. Not something I would recommend to most, but if you happen to be the sort of person that digs this sort of film, it's worth at least a one time watch.

A hypnotist and his assistant come to town, presenting an act -- real or contrived -- that features the assistant traveling back in her mind to past lives and revealing details of them to the audience. At the same time, a prehistoric monster is ravaging the community, killing beach bums right and left.Many have written this film off as worthless and a poor remake. I can't comment on the remake aspect, because I didn't see the original. I would hardly call the film worthless, though. I found it to be highly entertaining and a very captivating story in its own right.Yes, the film quality is poor, and if you remove the scenes of the beach parties the film doesn't even last a complete hour. But the actors are quite good, especially the man who plays the hypnotist -- giving Montag the Magnificent (from Lewis' "Wizard of Gore") a run for his money. Ultimately, of course, Montag is the better character, but only marginally.I am still not entirely clear on the connection between the hypnotist and the sea monster (a man in a diving suit and cheesy mask). The link is explained at the end of the film, but doesn't seem to make rational sense. I'd explain that more, but I don't want to give away any twists. I would just like to say if you don't mind low quality 1960s films, this one is worth a viewing.

At the upscale Tanglewood Beach Resort, a honeymooning couple is found viciously murdered in their room. Or more eloquently put by a copper on the case, "...their neck bones were mutilated to a pulp!" Couldn't have anything to do with the arrival of shady stage hypnotist John Basso (Les Tremayne) and his miserable blonde hottie assistant Doreena (Pat Delaney), could it? Nah! One thing's for sure, pot-bellied resort owner and all around greed-monger Sam Crane (Neil Fletcher) could care less as long as he's getting his piece of the pie. Seeing how popular Basso's act has become, he has decided to promote them and potentially make millions on the side. I mean, who really cares if every once in awhile a couple of necking teens get slaughtered as long as the dough's rolling in? Sam's bland daughter Lynn (Suzanne Roy) is conveniently dating studly "air force parapsychologist" (?) Ted (Aron Kincaid) and he seems to know all about things of the other-worldly nature. He also believes the sudden rash of murders and rubber-lizard-monster-with-ping-pong -ball-eyes-and-over-sized-plastic-fangs sightings may somehow involve the newly hired resort entertainment. And he is correct. It all has something to do with Doreena being the reincarnation of some 17th Century British woman and having a "physical link" to a sea monster. Or something. Lt. Blake (Roger Ready) and company are on the case.This 16mm effort from Texas-based schlockmeister Larry Buchanan (a color remake of 1956's THE SHE CREATURE that was sold directly to TV by AIP) opens with a five minute pre-credit sequence that makes no sense whatsoever and doesn't really improve much from there. The film is not only bogged down by ultra-low production values (flat and too-dark cinematography, continuity errors galore, ragged edited, etc.), but is also far too slow-moving and talky to maintain much interest. Not only that, but there's precious little sea monster action in this one, the monster costume is completely laughable and the lame ass monster attack scenes all take place completely off screen. There's nothing really to recommend about this once, except...For two cheesy Beach Party-style musical/dance numbers that came out of nowhere and keep this from scoring an otherwise well-deserved 1. The lead singer is some surfer-looking guy named Scotty McKay, who sings several songs at a beach dance party. The second one is about Batman and pretty cool. The most hilarious moment however is when Scotty sits down on the beach to sing a depressing song about "lonely people" and then suddenly a bunch of smiling teens jump up and start vigorously dancing! Afterward poor Scotty drives off on his motorcycle and gets mauled to death by the creature and we never hear from him again. Sigh. Horror fans should recognize Tremayne from one of his many horror/sci-fi outings (THE MONOLITH MONSTERS, THE SLIME PEOPLE, etc.) and may also know "Ann McAdams"/Annabelle Weenick (the sanitarium doctor from DON'T LOOK IN THE BASEMENT), who has a supporting role as Sam's wife. And of course "Beach Party" viewers will know Mr. Kincaid. Apparently he tried to sue AIP before finishing out his contract so they forced him in to star in this film.