“B-movie” typically refers to the fact that a movie is second tier. This means that the production isn’t given top financing and, as a consequence, the best screenwriters, directors, actors, and crew will not be allocated. However, the upside in not having a large budget is that whoever is responsible for such a production isn’t as likely to have a number of suits looking over the production’s shoulder. In the most optimistic light, a B-movie isn’t forced to compromise as much as an A-movie because the financiers aren’t as concerned with a loss as with the latter. In the guise of idealism, a B-movie has the possibility to offering ideas which wouldn’t be permitted to see the light of day in a big-budget affair. At the very least, we can almost always arrive at a B-movie knowing that, on general principle, though it may or may not offer us something of substance, that as long as the crew had fun making it, it will at least be fun to watch. In this sense, it’s hard to screw up a B-movie but those involved somehow managed to do just that.
Ironically, many of the more notorious minds behind keeping the B-production in its uncorrupted essence came together for this movie. The King of the B’s, Roger Corman, produced the film. Bernard Kowalski was issued the task of direction. In case the name doesn’t ring a bell, he would be the man responsible for many of the Columbo episodes. Leo Gordon penned the work, one of a number of people who had their hand in the screenplay for Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much. With such a title, you might assume that what we now have on our hands is a witty satire upon the atomic age made by the subversive underdogs of cinema, right? Well, you might as well give up that hope because, even though Corman was behind the scenes in a typical Cormanian plot, the film dies a more miserable death than its title characters, which is a shame for I truly respect Corman for his other films and what he set out to do with them but, for whatever reason, this one is dead in the water.
One of the reasons the film flops is due to the cinematographer, John Nickolaus Jr., who would have been sentenced lightly if he would have been forced to succumb to an early death by the title characters after committing the sins he did on this. It takes a concerted effort to establish what is occurring onscreen throughout most of the film due to the fact that virtually every scene is so poorly lit. I don’t believe this was a budgetary constraint because I’ve seen many a movie of the caliber rise above this seemingly arbitrary roadblock without any undue complications. I’ll merely leave this with the additional note that the underwater scenes were filmed through a dirty lens.
The movie is set in Florida with a cast of characters that would intimidate most everyone, including Burt Reynolds, from Deliverance. I thought after one character uttered the term “if’n,” I would be in for a good time but no, it didn’t happen. The screenplay suffers from a lack of region color and typecast dialogue which, if Gordon didn’t want to put forth the effort to research thoroughly, he should have had the good sense to at least set a parody in motion.
A local drunkard (on moonshine of course, as is the beverage of choice of most everyone in the film except the leads), Lem Sawyer (George Cisar) is out collecting traps in the swamp when he spots an unfamiliar creature. Following the redneck code of ethics, he shoots the animal (even though it wasn’t threatening him) five times and then reports back to town. Shortly thereafter, people begin disappearing and everyone remains at a loss while they continue to ignore Sawyer’s ranting and raving, dismissing it as intoxicated hallucinations. A subplot is introduced by way of a Southern femme fatale by the name of Liz (Yvette Vickers) who is married to Dave Walker (Bruno Ve Sota), the local grocer who so naïve and goodhearted there is no way the forces of evil could touch him. He finds his wife and a local (Carl Moulton played by Michael Emmett) in a post coital moment in the swamp and threatens them with a rifle. The leeches surface and take the couple and Dave is accused of murder. In order to rid himself of the burden of the character, Gordon has Dave hang himself shortly thereafter in order to return to the main storyline. Now that a beautiful woman has disappeared, the characters earnestly pursue the case. Two more drunkards disappear while attempting to locate the missing couples’ corpses and Steve Benton (Ken Clark), the lead whose hair is chiseled to perfection, arrives as the game warden in order to save the day who, by the climax of the film, is faced with a moral dilemma.
The cinematography is aberrant, the dialogue and characterization a crime, and the plot and its rationale are poorly executed and oftentimes laughable, not because it is–in all actuality it is painful throughout–but we are forced to chuckle regardless in order to issue the film some much needed good-ol’-boy sympathy.
Poor Roger, he must have been having a bad day. I will leave this review with the note that by no stretch of the imagination should one be lead to believe that this is the Corman we have come to know and love. Rather, go find The Wasp Woman, A Bucket of Blood, or one of his Poe adaptations because this picture was drained dry even before it crawled out of the quagmire of Hollywood.
– Egregious Gurnow
- Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
