Project Terrible: Creature!

 

Well, I chickened out again - and let Buddha Man take this one - go BM!

Creature  (The Bubble Factory, 2011)  When I first saw the poster for this movie in a theater - I was interested - an old fashioned monster movie playing theatrically? With Sid Haig in it? Then I saw a trailer for the movie the same day - and I admit my interest waned a bit - as the trailer did nothing to build on those two cool factoids.

Still, I wanted to feel positively towards the movie and thought I might still try to catch it in the theater - as you don't get all that many chances to see Sid Haig on the Big Screen these days. But in the end I skipped it - and now my Austrian blog buddy Maynard from the incredible Horror Movie Diary has put it on my Project Terrible plate.



Okay, the movie kicked off with an attractive young woman and some full frontal and backal nudity - so off to a fine start, I'd say! But then we cut to our main characters, and ostensible leading man Oscar (Dillon Casey) is driving like a jerk and does nothing to lessen his d-baggery when we move inside the vehicle and he starts talking. In fact, none of the six characters came off as particularly likable in this opening scene, which started the movie sliding downhill for me. The six are headed for a few days of drinking and partying in New Orleans, and Oscar is taking them through a shortcut. Next up, they stop at a gas station/souvenir store run by Sid Haig and his cronies.

Please don't leave, Mr. Haig! The movie will start tanking again when you're gone!

After the usual warnings about the dangers of the swamps around them - the guys find a lot of the stuff in the store that revolves around a legendary half man/half gator monster named Lockjaw who has been menacing the locals for decades. Haig peps the movie right up across this scene, which ends with the kids heading for Grimley's house - the home built by Lockjaw back when he was a human, and around which he still legendarily still hunts in his monster persona. Once they get out to the swamp, it turns out the legends are *surprise!* true - and Lockjaw comes a'callin'. And the kids start dyin'.

Am I supposed to be able to see that much of his face through the eye hole?

But that's not the end of the story - as the night of horrors continue - there's more going on out in the backwoods bayou - promises made, secrets kept, and dangers maybe even worse than a humanoid crocklegator that wants to eat your face off. Who will survive, and what will be left of them?


In the end, the answer was kind of "Who cares?" This wasn't the worst movie I've ever seen by any means - and it was watchable throughout - but the swampy locations reminded me too much of the superior Hatchet series, and the monster  - a good old fashioned man in a rubber suit - is kept too much in the shadows as it turns out he's really a man in a kind of cheap rubber suit with an unfortunate facial resemblance to the Spider-Man villain Venom. I'm still not sure why the characters started off in their opening scene as jackwagons - because the movie then had to work overtime trying to get the viewer on their side later.

Oscar had already "spied her" but he arachnid all
surprised about it.

One character has an arc that I will admit surprised me and explained some head scratchers from the early going - but the rest are pretty generic - from the kids in the SUV to Haig and his crew. Pruitt Taylor Vince stops in long enough to make sure you know his character is really weird before promptly getting killed in his second scene. Co-writer and director Fred Andrews gets in a few effective moments - but the movie seems ragged - and I suspect the editor's tool of choice was a chainsaw. There are kills that seem to be about to get really gory - then they cut away abruptly. The characters move all around the swamp and locations - and sometimes pop up far from where we last saw them with no explanation of how they got there. However, the patchwork storytelling started before post-production - the script wasn't any great shakes to begin with. Plots and subplots jump in and out of the movie with wild abandon - and two of the six main characters are brother and sister - but I'll be damned if I could tell you which two - as the dialogue had me thinking it was nearly every possible combination of boy and girl from the six at one point or another. On the positive side - there are some fine moments of nudity - and there are a couple of good scenes here and there. Mainly there is Sid Haig, who is worth his weight in gold adding value to this flick.



I will also say that these two ladies in the movie also added value - as they made my little golden eyes happy..


Serinda Swan



Amanda Fuller

An interview I read with Fred Andrews indicates the movie was edited against his wishes to achieve an R rating - and that he hopes to bring out a director's cut someday - with all of the gore and subplots and cool stuff restored. There's enough here that I would watch that director's cut to see if it made the movie any better. But I'll tell you this - if it turned out only to be a longer, bloodier, and equally mediocre movie - I'll give Fred such a pinch!

I can recommend this one only to Sid Haig and man-in-a-monster-suit completists. All others need not apply.



Maynard - I can't say I liked it - but it wasn't torturous either. Chalk this Project Terrible entry up as meh.





I thank you for taking the hit on this one again, Buddha Man! Well, that will wrap up this episode of Project Terrible - I'm really planning to take on the next assignment myself...we'll see - and until we do, you Can Poke Me With A Fork, Cause I Am Outta Here!