After a slight emotional dip last week (Spaghettiman was a good film though!) I am feeling a bit more motivated this week to really tackle some absolute garbage cinema again! If you weren't already aware one of the purposes of this blog is to work through an exhaustive list of the worst movies ever made, in a loosely applied Chronological order, I will sometimes deviate massively from the timeline, but broadbrushly speaking; working my way from the 1930's onwards by decade. We are currently in the 1960's and having already subjected myself to some of the worst tripe I've ever had the misfortune of witnessing, just from this decade alone, with Eegah, Beast of Yucca Flats, and Incredibly Strange Creatures who blah blah blah, this week I'm moving a notch down on the list to 1964's The Creeping Terror. A movie I'm generally excited about because we are once again in vintage sci-fi territory and I bloody love me some old Sci-Fi movies. I'm particularly excited to find out just how bad the eponymous Creep actually is, after reading its description as "a length of shag carpet draped over several actors", which I'll be honest with you has me more excited than the opportunity of spending several hours at a free bar, but I'm getting old now and there's only so much alcohol you can drink before it makes you sick, so uh, anyway, Creeping Terror!
Less than 5 minutes into the film, after some exposition about one of this movies main characters; Sherrif Deputy, Martin (Vic Savage) and his wife Brett (Shannon O'Neil), the eponymous Creeping Terror emerges from it's spaceship, and it is somehow even more... impressively unimpressive than I originally imagined. Mother of Pearl, what a fucking abomination. It is genuinely is a rug draped over several people!! Hooking up with Sheriff Ben (Byrd Holland), the trio arrive at the scene of the downed spaceship. Deciding to investigate further, Ben crawls either underneath or inside the spacecraft, it's sort of difficult to tell, before he is presumably horrifically, brutally mutilated if his screams or cries are anything to go by. Not phased at all by hearing his partner getting eviscerated however, Martin and Brett simply walk very calmly back to the car before summoning for assistance using the radio... Arriving on the scene, Colonel James Caldwell (John Caresio) and his band of soldiers begin to investigate discovering a "incredibly large creature," held onboard the spaceship, in "some kind of metal harness," and set up camp at the nearby Sheriffs office. After some more exposition from our omnipotent narrator we learn that Martin is asked to keep the news of the spacecraft landing covered up and that a Dr. Bradford (William Thourlby) is to be placed in control of the site. Then follows a scene with some of the worst sound effects I think I've ever heard as the Creep slowly hoovers up a poor, unsuspecting woman who only moments ago was smooching her boyfriend in the park. It's painfully, un-necessarily extended with the same female scream sound effect played over and over and over... Back at the crash site we get some narration over the top of Dr. Bradford arriving before we cut to a seemingly completely un-necessary scene where Vic Savage spends most of it just snogging Shannon O'Neil?! Bet he hated filming this movie... swiftly moving on we cut to a quick scene of somebody, I think Dr. Bradford going inside the ship again before we have a protracted scene of some poor lady getting swallowed as she's hanging out washing, before cutting back to Dr. Bradford messing around with stuff inside the spacecraft and then it's swiftly on to another scene where the carpet monster presumably digests some poor, unlucky bloke and his grandson, both fishing at a river bank. After some more long winded narrative exposition in place of actual plot development, we have another scene where a couple getting handsy in the park get enveloped by the Creep. What amuses me is how everyone makes sure to stand exactly still in disbelief as this lumbering monstrosity approaches them... and as the rug beast continues through the park, some guy starts having a go at it with his guitar only for him to seemingly be swallowed up by the intergalactic carpet dragon. As the missing person count goes up, our team of Sherrifs, Colonels and Doctors conclude that there must be another monster loose, like the one on the ship and they appoint Martin to lead the search and track it down. And I know all of this because in place of it actually happening we instead get told about it by the narrator, over a scene of Dr. Bradford on the phone. Another fine example of narrative exposition over we move on to the next un-necessarily prolonged scene of some people dancing at a community centre - I genuinely at this point checked to see how long of the film was actually still left: half hour - with everybody having a nice jig until the shag rug slug is just suddenly inside the building, this community centre presumably in the middle of a fucking forest because the previous 4, or 5, cut away's of the creature approaching show it quite obviously in densely wooded area. Everybody goes mental, 2 blokes have a fist fight for... some reason... before everyone, calmly and orderly, begins to evacuate through the fire exit, as the Creep slowly lumbers around behind them, hoovering up the odd victim every now and again. Several shots of people slowly being consumed by the walking pair of curtains here. Lovely. Meanwhile, Vic Savage presumably hasn't snogged Shannon O'Neil enough in this movie yet, because he's at it again in the patrol car when over the radio he is summoned to join Colonel Caldwell to help destroy the monster, the Colonel having learned of the massacre at the dance hall. Another frisky couple get vacuumed up by the space slug as it wreaks havoc at "lovers lane" and y'know what, it's getting boring at this point now. Arriving on the scene Colonel Caldwell and his men begin to confront the creature with Dr. Bradford imploring they capture it alive. Closely following them Martin and Brett arrive, having found a moment to stop snogging each other, only to be told to hang back to avoid becoming further victims. But when the beast manages to overcome the entire unit... why not just, y'know, go round it and flank it from the sides?... the Colonel makes the decision to blow the Creep to smithereens with a well timed grenade. Despite being a presumably, highly trained and battle hardened veteran, the Colonel still manages to somehow loose his footing and almost become a victim himself until he detonates the grenade, blowing the creature up. But, examining the carcass the Doctor pulls something from it's body, comes to a realisation and jets off in a flash, commandeering a US Army truck. Racing back to the crash site pursued by Martin and Brett, the Doc is just able to get inside of the craft before the device he pulled from the creature explodes, maiming him terribly and loosening the harness of the creature inside the craft, who proceeds to escape and start gobbling up people itself, including almost the Doctor who is just able to fend it off long enough for Martin and Brett to come careering into it with a patrol car presumably killing it. In the closing moments of the film, thanks to some more narration we learn the creatures were sent to consume humans in order to analyse them for weaknesses, with data fed back to the spacecraft to be passed on to whoever sent them. As he lays dying, the Doctor convinces Martin of what he has to do and Martin just goes HAM inside the ship bashing it and smashing it with anything he can put his hands on but with no success and the transmission is sent. Returning to the Doctor, in his dying moments he opines that maybe the civilization receiving the transmission will have long died out, before he himself finally succumbs to his injuries and dies. The end.
Holy high heavens. This was unspeakably poor. What can I say? The Creeping Terror is a very bold experiment where the entire motion picture parts of the movie are all filler, and the actual plot development and exposition is kindly provided by an omnipotent narrator. An experiment that ultimately fails. Compounding this failure the filler material itself is composed of some of the worst cinematic storytelling I've witnessed since Reefer Madness. I.. am not even sure where to start.
Let's start with the Creep. How on earth any of the "unsuspecting victims" of this creature didn't hear it coming when it sounds like a handful of ice cubes rattling around in a plastic bucket and constantly shrieks like a vulture being fed through a stump grinder is beyond me. But yet every scene of it's attacks made sure to feature some useless, pathetic victim who waits very patiently for the upholstery slug to envelop them and hoover them up through it's gaping orifice. By about the 4th attack near the end, it was fucking old. And e v e r y scene went the same way: person doesn't realise this lumbering 8-10 foot leviathan is about to swallow them until it's right on top of them. It was intelligence insulting. It looked like garbage as well. Genuinely looked like a rug draped over some actors, like I said before, with a head like a infant child's art project. All just tubes and nobbly bits sticking out. And as a result, despite being some kind of depiction of like slugs, or grubs, or some kind of gastropod like creature, it had the most un-natural movement cycle I've ever seen. Like a dragon from those Chinese New Year celebrations. Only they are cool. This wasn't. Absolute bum gravy of the finest vintage.
Secondly, about 25 minutes in and the narration over the top of the movie had already become grating. And that is how the e n t i r e movie plays out. Any actual plot development is substituted in with narrative exposition. Even the easy bits! Even the bits you could flesh out with dialogue! The Colonel asks Martin to lead the search party for the other monster. A moment you could absolutely easily portray by use of fucking dialogue between the 2 characters. Instead that plot point development is explained to you by the narrator over the top of a scene of Martin and Brett inside the car on the radio! It was like watching a documentary, or a 'making of' of the movie. But it wasn't either of those things. It was the actual movie!?
Every scene, EVERY scene involving the spaceship had the kind of really annoying, whiney sound effect playing in the background. Like, they splice it in whenever it involves computers or technology. If you've ever watched old Star Trek, the classic series, or any old Sci-Fi movies, you'll know what I mean, and they're usually tolerable in other productions, but here it got really drilling, really egregious, really quickly. I hated it. And on the subject of sound effects, as I mentioned earlier, the creature sounds like a shallow filled plastic bucket of ice cubes and shrieked like a vulture being fed to a food processor. Slowly. Feet first.
And the motives and actions of the people in this movie made no fucking sense. This was the slowest moving threat I think I've ever watched in anything, ever. It had no arms. No... visible legs at least anyway, it was as aforementioned; gastropod like, or mollusc like. It had a gaping mouth at the front end of it's body and yet, every victim, every victim, never once tried to run away from it by going, sideways?! Not even the army at the end! Most of them just stood still to make sure to had plenty of time to swallow them! Credit, at least partially, there was one scene where a bloke had a go at it with his guitar. FROM THE FRONT. Where it's mouth was. Fucking run round it, attack it from behind?!
This was painfully difficult to sit through. I'd have turned this off, 20-25 minutes in had not been for work purposes. And in the last half an hour, I just wanted this movie to end. I mean, if I scratch around for positives here, the original music production was decent. They did alright there in their vain attempts to build any kind of suspense or drama, and the cinematography tried it's best to make the creature attack scenes at least semi-interesting although thanks to a heavy recycling of footage it almost made it pointless anyway.
One thing I am learning as I work my way through these movies is that there are varying degrees of poor. And I have touched on this before in other posts. Some movies are technically poor; they are shot unprofessionally, lack attention to detail, lack cinematic application. Some movies are stylistically poor; the plot development or storyline makes little to no sense or fluctuates wildly. Some movies are morally poor; casting an entire movie of actors with dwarfism, for example. And then there are some movies which are just constructively poor. This is where I find Creeping Terror best pigeonholes itself. Sure, moments of the plot development were intelligence insulting, it wasn't even borderline, it was fucking over the border by a hectares-worth, but storyline wise it wasn't... awful... it was a run-of-the-mill alien invasion story but structured competently enough, but where it really shined in it's shitshowness was it's premise. Having the entire movie told via the narration was toe curlingly tedious and bonecrushingly b o r i n g. There are very few movies I've covered on this blog that I've really wanted to turn off before the end and Creeping Terror just became a new member of that exclusive club. Zero out of Five.
