A world of unimaginable horror awaits seven survivors of a global nuclear war; an hour and nineteen minutes of tedium awaits anyone who decides to watch this lame Roger Corman post-apocalyptic quickie.
Corman's first crack at sci-fi/horror is heavy on the yak-yak-yakking and light on mutated monster action, making it strictly dullsville for most of the running time. The film's clichéd characters include alpha male Rick (Richard Denning), innocent eye-candy Louise Maddison (Lori nelson) and her concerned father Jim (Paul Birch), reprehensible low-life Tony Lamont (Mike Connors), past-her-prime stripper Ruby (Adele Jergens), irradiated Radek (Paul Dubov), and an old-timer prospector so clichéd that he's called Pete (just like in Toy Story). The intended tension between these characters is actually quite boring, leaving one longing for the unseen threat lurking in the bushes to make itself seen.
Unfortunately, when the film's scaly creature finally shows its face, it's one of the most ridiculous and consequently unscary monsters to ever grace a low-budget B-movie. Three eyes, pointy ears, horns, fangs, scaly skin, hook nose, claws, and strange appendages attached to its shoulders, it's like Corman threw half a dozen creature designs into a blender, and then spent less than ten bucks on realising the resultant mess.
3.5/10, generously rounded up to 4 for Jim's hilarious child-like sketches of mutated animals, and for Ruby's impressive death scene, the poor woman thrown off the top of a cliff, her 'body' actually looking like it has some weight and realistic movement to it (unlike the rigid-limbed store mannequin usually used for such scenes).
Corman's first crack at sci-fi/horror is heavy on the yak-yak-yakking and light on mutated monster action, making it strictly dullsville for most of the running time. The film's clichéd characters include alpha male Rick (Richard Denning), innocent eye-candy Louise Maddison (Lori nelson) and her concerned father Jim (Paul Birch), reprehensible low-life Tony Lamont (Mike Connors), past-her-prime stripper Ruby (Adele Jergens), irradiated Radek (Paul Dubov), and an old-timer prospector so clichéd that he's called Pete (just like in Toy Story). The intended tension between these characters is actually quite boring, leaving one longing for the unseen threat lurking in the bushes to make itself seen.
Unfortunately, when the film's scaly creature finally shows its face, it's one of the most ridiculous and consequently unscary monsters to ever grace a low-budget B-movie. Three eyes, pointy ears, horns, fangs, scaly skin, hook nose, claws, and strange appendages attached to its shoulders, it's like Corman threw half a dozen creature designs into a blender, and then spent less than ten bucks on realising the resultant mess.
3.5/10, generously rounded up to 4 for Jim's hilarious child-like sketches of mutated animals, and for Ruby's impressive death scene, the poor woman thrown off the top of a cliff, her 'body' actually looking like it has some weight and realistic movement to it (unlike the rigid-limbed store mannequin usually used for such scenes).