Creature from the Haunted Sea (1961)

(On Cable TV, October 2020) If I’ve understood Creature from the Haunted Sea’s production history correctly, it was born from the mercenary mind of legendary producer/director Roger Corman when he found himself fin Puerto Rico with leftover film stock, tax credits, actors, a crew and time to spare after shooting two other movies on location. A screenwriter was given three days to adapt an existing script in Corman’s files into a comedy making use of available scenery and props, and the film itself was shot in five days. Considering this, it’s a minor miracle that Creature from the Haunted Sea, at a bare 75 minutes, has survived all the way to 2020, let alone that it still gets a few laughs. The story has something to do with a less-than-competent American spy tagging along a criminal and his hoodlums as they exfiltrate a Cuban general and plot to steal his gold, notwithstanding the local sea monster. But let’s not be too complimentary: From the very first few moments, it’s obvious that this “comedy” is going to be more incompetent than actually funny. All of the characteristics of an ultra-low-budget production are obvious from the first minutes, from the awkward dialogue, staging, acting, scenery or editing. It just gets worse afterward, with narrative and tonal zig-zags all over the place as the comedy runs out of steam and the film tries to be serious for a moment. It all falls apart quickly, and the only thing fit to help viewers make it all the way to the end is a bizarre mixture of bad-movie howlers and some genuinely funny lines and moments. You can see how, given a few more weeks, this could have become a decently entertaining comedy—but in the state it’s in, this spy/monster spoof barely makes sense: The funniest lines (and some of them do get a laugh) come from the narration, which I suspect was put together in post-production with a bit more time to polish. It’s far more entertaining than you’d suppose (the film earned a rare lowest-of-the-low “7” raking from French-Canadian reviewing authority MediaFilm), but half of it is for the wrong reason: threadbare production values, bad acting and barely coherent plotting distract rather than add to the zany concepts and a dozen funny lines.