Movie Review: Curse of the Swamp Creature (1968)
Synopsis: After her boyfriend murders an oil surveyor during an attempted hotel room robbery, Brenda Simmons poses as the surveyor's wife to cover up the crime and heads into the swamp with the team the dead man was supposed to meet. They come across Dr. Simon Trent, a scientist who has isolated himself in the swamp so he can conduct experiments in human de-evolution and feed his failures to the alligators. Brenda soon finds herself being used as his new test subject.
Who's in it? The movie stars Jeff Alexander, Shirley McLine, John Agar, Francine York and Bill McGhee.
Review: It had been some time since I watched a monster movie so when I came across Curse of the Swamp Creature, I decided to add it to my library and give it a try this morning. After seeing it, I was reminded there is a difference between being a classic monster film and just being an old monster film.
There are a lot of ways I can start this so, after consideration, I think I'll begin with the overall low quality. It might have been the fact this was a colorized film (a lot of movies from this era just look better in black-and-white) but everything about the movie, the setting, the outfits and the use of stock footage just screamed "low budget."
The biggest problem with this movie though is the swamp creature. Not the fact it was very fake looking, even though it was. It was fact the title creature has the equivalent of a 5-minute cameo toward the end of an 80-minute movie. The rest of the film was mostly just people talking and the occasional person being fed to gators. Frankly, it was kind of dull.
Ironically, the movie might have actually been better without the swamp creature story. Brenda (McLine) pretending to be someone else to cover up a murder could have been an interesting tale in itself if it had been the focal point and it had some sort of thriller element, such as the men she was journeying with were criminals out for revenge against her pretend husband. With so many ways to die in the swamp even if she escaped, it could have been a movie that kept me on the edge of my seat.
Instead, it was just a film that had me wondering "when is the monster going to monster?"
Final Opinion: There is very little, if anything, about this movie that is redeemable. It's low quality, far from unique and doesn't deliver on what it promises. In other words, if you come across the film, just skip it.
My Grade: F
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Here are some reviews of other movies starring John Agar:
Movie Review: Revenge of the Creature (1955)
Movie Review: Attack of the Puppet People (1958)
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