Curse of the Swamp Creature
Directed by Larry Buchanan
Written by Tony Huston
1966/US
Azalea Pictures
First viewing/YouTube

[box] Tom: Doctor, I was thinking… just the work that you’ve done with the crocodiles and taking them back along the evolutionary path and making them into fish would be enough to win you world acclaim.

Dr. Simond Trent: Yes, but acclaim… that’s nothing. To create life, to move it up and down the evolutionary path… that’s something. Something I don’t you quite appreciate, Tom.[/box]

Absolute trash from schlockmeister Larry Buchanan.  Such a hoot, though!

Mad scientist Dr. Simond Trent lives with his oppressed wife and coterie of peons in a suburban ranch house somehow built in the middle of an isolated swamp.  There he conducts sinister experiments on evolution and disposes of his mistakes and anyone that crosses him to the alligators.  In the meantime, the “swamp people” are none to happy that one of their own is missing and are conducting voodoo ceremonies aimed at killing the good doctor.  The doctor’s solitude is broken by the arrival of oil explorers lead by Barry Rodgers (John Agar).  And then in the last 6 minutes of the movie, the swamp creature puts in an appearance!

Larry Buchanan, who also directed the entertaining and terrible Zontar: The Thing from Venus in 1966, has now entered my pantheon of bad movie directors along with Ed Wood Jr. and Coleman Francis.  Buchanan outdid himself with this one.  The mixture of inane acting and bad dialogue is irresistible as is the “creature” whose face seems to have been constructed of silly putty and ping pong balls!  Recommended to fans of this kind of thing.