As the back cover of a DVD of it points out, this movie parodies a dozen different movie things - social comment (the Cuban Revolution), monsters, gangsters, spies, beatniks (to some degree), impromptu singing, cameos by the film-makers, Bogart movies, even South Pacific (I think). And Betsy Jones-Moreland makes one of the great movie molls (in comedies OR dramas). This story is the first and last place I've heard the phrase "crazy-looking" - "crazy" in the "beat" sense of the word, making it a compliment - but I've always wanted to use it. And of course, there's Antony Carbone as a villain you start to feel sorry for, because he's surrounded by incompetents, and Robert Towne as the incompetent hero, who tries to make himself sound better in the narration, but fails even THEN. There are many little moments that really work - the impromptu song with the really clumsy lyrics (even though it's a romantic song, it has the title of the movie worked into it), the cameo by Roger Corman himself where he seems to be trying to make Robert Towne laugh, and of course the aliases. There's one little thing it took me a long while to notice. In one scene, "Sparks" is trying to rescue "Marybelle" (who hates him) from drowning (which she isn't). She gets fed up and hits him, and (though I'm not at all sure), instead of sounding "dubbed in", it sounds like Moreland got carried away and hit him for real. Deliberately clumsy-looking films (not just horror ones, of course) have gotten much TOO common lately (taking a lot of the novelty away from it), but Creature From The Haunted Sea really works.
Review of Creature from the Haunted Sea
