The Birds (1963)

...And remember, the next scream you hear could be your own!

A wealthy San Francisco socialite pursues a potential boyfriend to a small Northern California town that slowly takes a turn for the bizarre when birds of all kinds suddenly begin to attack people there in increasing numbers and with increasing viciousness. 

The Birds is a 1963 suspense/horror film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, loosely based on the 1952 story "The Birds" by Daphne du Maurier.  It starred Rod Taylor, Tippi Hedren, Jessica Tandy, Suzanne Pleshette and a young Veronica Cartwright.  The screenplay was written by Evan Hunter.

The film is considered on the best thrillers of all time.  It was honored by the American Film Institute as the seventh greatest thriller and Bravo awarded it the 96th spot on their "The 100 Scariest Movie Moments" for the scene when the birds attack the city.  Ub Iwerks was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Special Effects.  Tippi Hedren received the Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year – Actress in 1964, sharing it with Ursula Andress and Elke Sommer. She also received the Photoplay Award as Most Promising Newcomer. The film ranked #1 of the top 10 foreign films selected by the Bengal Film Journalists' Association Awards. Hitchcock also received the Association's Director Award for the film.

The birds attack.

The film begins in San Francisco where Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hedren) meets handsome criminal lawyer Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor).  After a less than pleasant first meeting, Melanie decides to follow Mitch out to his hometown fishing community. She is apparently rather smitten with young Mitch.  But the day Melanie arrives for some inexplicable reason the birds start attacking people.  The local school teacher is Annie Hayworth (Suzanne Pleshette) who followed Mitch here to be close to him but when their relationship ended she just stayed to be near him as a friend.  If you believe that then I have the Brooklyn Bridge for sale if you're interested.  This creates a rather strange love triangle as an underlying plot.  There is also the strange relationship with Mitch's mother who is not very fond of any of the girls he brings home.

This is one of Hitchcock's most well-known movies. Along with Psycho, it's the movie that most people identify with him.  The plot of "The Birds" could be considered quite ridiculous.  The first 40 minutes of the film have zero horror elements and sets up what could be a horrible love story.  Hitchcock spends this part of the movie developing the characters and installing their situation in the viewers' minds.  And the suspense he build with these birds...shit.  You watch the birds just sitting there, and they do not move, they are just waiting. Even when you think they are dumb as shit something tells you they are thinking. They are analyzing your every move.

They sit and they wait.....

The scene when the four people are trapped inside the house with the birds waiting outside is classic.  This has to be one of the main influences on George Romero and his film "Night Of The Living Dead."  They were trapped in the old abandoned farm house much as our characters are here.  The absence of backgound music added a sense of calm before the storm which made the bird attack scenes all the more intense. In my opinion the most chilling scene was definitely when Melanie was waiting outside the school while the singing was going on inside the school. At each loop of the song, a few more crows would perch outside.  Just my writing about it doesn't do it justice.  It's just plain fucking creepy.

The special effects were amazing for a film from 1963.  When Hitchcock was asked how he got the birds to attack he jokes, "They were well paid."  The detailed camera angles that Hitchcock put into the film were impressive. Many directors shoot scenes in a boring manner, but not Hitchcock.

The birds obviously didn't like that singing.

I love the mysterious way the film ends with no explanation or dialogue. The sea of birds seem to permit their departure, even though the fowls could easily stop them if they wanted.  We never get an explanation as to why the birds are attacking and this leads some to point that out as a reason that they don't like the film.  Don't listen to them....they probably flip burgers at McDonalds.  If you need grilling advice then give them a listen, otherwise see this film.  It's a classic, a masterpiece and one of the best of all time. It's a perfect example of why Alfred Hitchcock is considered, "The Master of Suspense".

Trivia:  
Tippi Hedren was actually cut in the face by a bird in one of the shots.  

Rod Taylor claims that the seagulls were fed a mixture of wheat and whiskey. It was the only way to get them to stand around so much.

When audiences left the film's UK premiere at the Odeon, Leicester Square, London, they were greeted by the sound of screeching and flapping birds from loudspeakers hidden in the trees to scare them further. 

Alfred Hitchcock approached Joseph Stefano (screenwriter of Psycho) to write the script, but he wasn't interested in the story. The final screenplay (from a Daphne Du Maurier short story) was written by Evan Hunter, best known to detective-story fans under the pen name Ed McBain.

Alfred Hitchcock saw Tippi Hedren in a 1962 commercial aired during the Today show and put her under contract. In the commercial for a diet drink, she is seen walking down a street and a man whistles at her slim, attractive figure, and she turns her head with an acknowledging smile. In the opening scene of the film, the same thing happens as she walks toward the bird shop. This was an inside joke by Hitchcock. 

Tippi Hedren's daughter Melanie Griffith was given a present by Alfred Hitchcock during the filming: a doll that looked exactly like Hedren, eerily so. The creepiness was compounded by the ornate wooden box it came in, which the young girl took to be a coffin.

The automobile driven by Tippi Hedren is an Aston Martin DB2/4 drop-head coupe.

The movie features 370 effects shots. The final shot is a composite of 32 separately filmed elements. 

In the film, it appears as if the schoolhouse is within the bay town limits. The frightened children are clearly shown running downhill toward the town and the water. In real life, the schoolhouse used for those shots is located five miles southeast and inland of Bodega Bay in the separate township of Bodega, California.

The crow that sits on Alfred Hitchcock's shoulder in all of the promo photos was not in the movie. It was purchased after the movie had wrapped. A studio staff member bought it when he spotted the tamed bird on the shoulder of a 12-year-old boy walking down the street. The boy was offered about $10 but was hesitant until he discovered why it was needed. 

This was the first film to carry the Universal Pictures name after dropping the Universal-International name.

Mitch Zanich, owner of the Tides Restaurant at the time of shooting, told Hitchcock he could shoot there if the lead male in the film was named after him, and Hitch gave him a speaking part in the movie. Hitchcock agreed: Rod Taylor's character was named Mitch Brenner, and Mitch Zanich was given a speaking part. After Melanie is attacked by a seagull, Mitch Zanich can be heard saying to Mitch Brenner, "What happened, Mitch?" 

When the film was aired on NBC-TV in the USA on 6 January 1968, it became the highest rated film shown on television up to that time. The record held until Love Story overtook it on 1 October 1972.

The classic scene in which Tippi Hedren watches birds attacking the townsfolk was filmed in the studio from a phone booth. When Melanie opens the phone-booth door, a bird trainer had trained gulls that were taught to fly at it. Surviving photos of the shooting of the scene were published in the book "Hitchcock at Work" by Bill Krohn. 

In one of the first scenes, Tippi Hedren can be seen crossing the street to the pet shop. As she does, she disappears behind a sign for a moment and reappears on the other side. Alfred Hitchcock so hated working on location that he used this moment to seamlessly cut to a studio shot.

The sound of reel-to-reel tape being run backward and forward was used to help create the frightening bird squawking sounds in the film 

Melanie wears the same green suit throughout the movie, so Tippi Hedren was provided with six identical green suits for the shoot.

 A scene in the film shows a service station where a bird knocks over an attendant filling a car with gas. The gas flows across the street where a man lights his cigarette igniting the gas. The fire follows the gas stream to the pump and explodes. The service station was located across from "The Tides" restaurant and pier. In reality this service station did not exist at the time of the filming. However, several years later a service station was built and is still located at the spot shown in the film.

Voted seventh-scariest movie of all time by a poll carried out on the British public by Channel 5 and "The Times" in 2006. 

Cast member Doodles Weaver was the uncle of actress Sigourney Weaver, who worked with Veronica Cartwright in Alien, and with Tippi Hedren's daughter, Melanie Griffith, in Working Girl. 

The schoolhouse, in Bodega Bay, California, has also been known to be haunted, even back during the filming. According to Tippi Hedren, the entire cast was spooked to be there. She also mentioned how she had the feeling, while there, that "the building was immensely populated... but there was nobody there." When Hitchcock was told about the schoolhouse being haunted, according to Hedren, he was even more encouraged to film there.

Tippi Hedren was required to really slap Doreen Lang, who played the hysterical mother that called Melanie "evil." Hedren was hesitant, having never slapped anyone before, but Lang convinced her to do it. 

One of the little girls at Cathy's birthday party (at the very end of the 'attack' scene , she was standing alongside another girl....holding her cheek) was played by Suzanne Cupito. She later changed to her stage name, Morgan Brittany. Dallas fans may remember her as Pamela Ewing's evil half-sister, Katherine Wentworth.

The scene where Tippi Hedren is ravaged by birds near the end of the movie took a week to shoot. The birds were attached to her clothes by long nylon threads so they could not get away. 

The film does not finish with the usual "THE END" title because Alfred Hitchcock wanted to give the impression of unending terror.

Near the end of the film, when Mitch carries Melanie down the stairs, it is actually Tippi Hedren's stand-in being carried by Rod Taylor. Hedren was in the hospital recovering from exhaustion after a week of shooting the scene where Melanie is trapped in the upstairs room with the birds.

A number of endings were being considered for this film. One that was considered would have showed the Golden Gate Bridge completely covered by birds. 

In the end, when Melanie is carried outside, Mitch opens a door. There was no door used in filming, and it was all done with light effects to make it look as if Mitch opened the front door.

For the scene in which Annie is killed, Suzanne Pleshette who played her told Alfred Hitchcock it would look good if her ear was all bloody and hanging off, so he sent her to the prop department. When it came to shooting the scene, Hitchcock had Annie facing the other way, so the viewer never sees the ear, which Pleshette recalled "was part of his delicious sense of humor."

Before filming the final attack scene when Melanie goes upstairs, Tippi Hedren asked Alfred Hitchcock , "Hitch, why would I do this?" Hitchcock's response was, "Because I tell you to." 

When the children are running down the street from the schoolhouse, extra footage was shot back on the Universal sound stages to make the scene more terrifying. A few of the children were brought back and put in front of a process screen on a treadmill. They would run in front of the screen on the treadmill with the Bodega Bay footage behind them while a combination of real and fake crows were attacking them. There were three rows of children and when the treadmill was brought up to speed it ran very fast. On a couple of occasions during the shoot, a number of the children in the front fell and caused the children in back to fall as well. It was a very difficult scene to shoot and took a number of days to get it right. The birds used were hand puppets, mechanical and a couple were trained live birds.

Hitchcock's film and the original story by Daphne Du Maurier share no characters and in fact have only in common the bay-side town setting, the bird's bizarre behavior and their inexplicable tendency to launch frenzied attacks, fall dormant only to attack again later. In Du Maurier's story the main character discovers that this pattern is directly related to the rise and fall of the tides and uses this to their advantage, as opposed to the film which seems to follow the same pattern but never makes a direct connection. Also the original story takes place in Britain and centers around a man protecting his wife and two children at their isolated cottage home, as opposed to the film which centers on the spirited but troubled city dweller Melanie Daniels who travels to the California coast on a whim. 

Phenomena (1985)

 

A young girl, with an amazing ability to communicate with insects, is transferred to an exclusive Swiss boarding school, where her unusual capability might help solve a string of murders. 

Phenomena is a 1985 Italian horror film directed by Dario Argento. An edited version of the film was released in the United States under the title Creepers.  When I was younger I remember seeing the video sitting on the shelves in the local video shop.  It was under the "Creepers" title and it looked sort of silly so I never rented it.  I'm glad I didn't.  That version for the US was butchered up with a lot of footage cut.  I've now gotten around to viewing the entire film with all the sliced footage intact.  

It has a 14-year-old Jennifer Connelly, playing a sleepwalker who has a bizarre telepathic bond with insects and uses them to help her solve a string of gory murders at a girls boarding school in the Swiss Alps. A lot of people love this film and a lot of people hate this film.  I fall right in the middle.  It's not bad but I don't find it very good either. Donald Pleasance is in the film as a wheelchair bound bug dude. But the entire time I'm watching him on screen I keep thinking he's going to burst out in a rant about Micheal Myers being the devil.  Instead he's hanging out with a pet monkey.

Bubbles, did MJ touch you in the bad place?

Phenomena is a surreal, magical and surprisingly beautiful film.  It also has gruesome gore with a swimming pool full of maggots and rotting corpses, a mad dwarf, a razor wielding monkey and grisly decapitations. And we get a kick ass soundtrack with Iron Maiden and Motorhead.  Partially a Giallo, and partially a horror film with psychic and transcendental elements, "Phenomena" is a creepy film that gets kind of silly of times in my opinion with the bug communication deal. 

 

The special effects were decent, given the year. The firefly special effects were cool, and there was at least one swarm scene that I thought looked pretty neat.  A lot of people love this movie but I don't fall into that group.  It's well below Suspiria in my opinion.  But if you ever wanted to see a monkey go ape shit with a razor blade then this is a movie you want to see.

KB

Weird

Trivia

Shot in English and dubbed into Italian. 

Most of the Italian and other non-English speaking actors/actresses actually dubbed their own voices into English for the USA and UK distribution.

A sequel to Phenomena was going to go into production in 2001 but it was canceled due to Dario Argento's contract with Medusa. 

Director Dario Argento said that his idea for the look of the killer child came from the real genetic disorder Patau Syndrome, which causes severe deformation of the face. For this reason, Argento calls the child Patau, even though he is never named during the film. 

Director Dario Argento often cites this film as his personal favorite among his works.

The trained chimpanzee that plays Inga escaped into the woods at one point during shooting. After a few hours of searching she was found and returned to the set. 

Jennifer Connelly said in an interview that she was bitten by the chimp in this film. Apperently during one scene the chimp kept turning around and Dario Argento, not wanting to film her behind, asked Connelly to place her hand on the animal to stop her from turning. But when she attempted to do so, the chimp became enraged and bit her; and then became very hostile toward Connelly for the rest of the film.

The film was inspired to Dario Argento after he learned that insects are sometimes used during murder investigations. 

The story Jennifer tells about her mother abandoning her was an actual story from Dario Argento's own childhood. 

Jennifer Connelly had part of her finger bitten off by the chimpanzee in the final scene at the end of the film. She was rushed to the hospital and the finger was re-attached. 

A young Jennifer Connelly

Halloween Resurrection (2002)

 

When a group of teens win a contest to spend a night in Michael Myers' childhood home to be broadcast live on the internet, they believe they are in for a little fun and some free publicity. But, things go frightfully wrong and the game turns into a struggle to make it out of the house alive. 

Halloween Resurrection is the 8th film in the "Halloween" franchise and it blows.  I hate this film. It makes all the previous films in the series look like Citizen Kane.  I don't know which reviewer on the poster says, "One hell of a fun movie", but he needs to fired from whichever company he reviews for.

Here's the amazing plot of the film.  An organisation called Dangertainment, headed by the entrepreneurial Freddie Harris (Busta Rhymes) sends 6 contest winners into the old Myers house with cameras strapped to their head and broadcasts it over the internet.  Mike shows up and starts butchering everybody while the world watches online.  

Yes I will play Laurie one more time and die so I never have to do it again.

Jamie Lee Curtis is stuck in a mental institution to open up the film and Mike shows up to finally put her out of her misery.  The chase to kill Laurie is actually the lone bright spot of the movie.  It's all down hill from there.  We have Busta Rhymes running around and here's a spoiler...I don't even get to see his annoying ass get killed.  He lives and is the hero. Rock Rosenthal directed this nonsense.  He's the same guy that directed Halloween 2.  No wonder they handed the next movies to Rob Zombie to direct.  

Myers is stunned by the horrible acting he's watching. 

I don't know what else to say.  I could write 10 more paragraphs about how awful this movie actually is but I'll just also mention that Tyra Banks is in it.  That should sum it up perfectly. I think I'll just pretend this movie was never made.

KB 

Trivia:
Was first named "Halloween: The Homecoming", but producers wanted a title that said Michael Myers is alive so in February 2002, the film was officially named "Halloween: Resurrection."  

Was originally set for a release date of September 21st 2001, but producers at Dimension Films wanted the film to be stronger so re-shoots took place from September to October 2001.  

Director Rick Rosenthal previously directed Halloween II - 21 years earlier.

The name Jen Danzig is a reference to Glenn Danzig, the former singer and leader of The Misfits, whom wrote and sung the songs Halloween and Halloween II after the original movie was released. The two songs have little to do with the movies since their lyrics do not even touch the main plot. 

Tyra Banks' characters death was cut. You can still see the aftermath in the movie.

A picture of Josh Hartnett, who played Laurie Strode's son John in Halloween H20: 20 Years Later, can be seen on the wall above Laurie's bed in the sanitarium. 

Michael Myers is not given credit for any of the murders that occur in Halloweens' 4, 5, or 6. A sanitarium resident even notes that Myers was not heard from for the twenty years between the events that occur in Halloween II and Halloween H20: 20 Years Later.

Jamie Lee Curtis agreed to do her part, only to make sure her character, Laurie Strode (or herself) wouldn't appear in another sequel. 

The name of the psychology professor at Haddenfield University is Dr. Mixter. This was also the name of the doctor in Halloween II that treated Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) and was killed by Michael Myers with a needle in the eye.

Several new endings were written during production and the cast was never sure how the film was actually going to end. Four different endings were filmed, and the director wanted the studio to ship a different ending to each theater, a technique used before during the theatrical release of Clue. However, the studio disagreed and the endings now appear on the DVD and the Internet. 

Originally, the executives of Miramax wanted to continue the franchise by creating a whole new story of which didn't have anything to do with Michael Myers after the last film, in a similar manner to Halloween III: Season of the Witch. However, poll results conducted throughout fan websites proved to the producers that fans wanted Michael Myers to return again.

This is the second Halloween film to make any sort of reference as to what exactly Michael Myers eats. In the original Halloween, when Sheriff Brackett and Dr. Loomis enter the Myers house, they see something on the floor, which turns out to be the corpse of a dog. Dr. Loomis simply says "He got hungry." 

Body count: 10 (Plus one character presumed dead, but it's unconfirmed. If you count the bodies from the flashbacks then the body count is 14.)

Laurie Strode is only in the film for the first 15 minutes and only says 11 lines of dialog. 

Yeah baby...we're going to get Oscar nominations for this film.

 

Death Occurred Last Night (1970)

 

 

A chief police inspector investigates the disappearance of a 25-year-old, mentally retarded woman, the daughter of a lonely widower. After she turns up dead, the cops race to find the killers before the grieving father does. 

This a pretty good unknown Italian Giallo directed by Duccio Tessari.  In Italy a crime story is nicknamed "giallo", that is to say "yellow", because a very successful series of detective stories published before WWII by Mondadori had yellow covers.  The film stars Raf Vallone's and his performance as the troubled father is incredibly painful to watch.  Painful as in actually being able to feel his sorrow with his daughter missing.  Frank Wolff also does a great job as the police detective also searching for the missing girl.  This was one of his last roles.

A grieving father gets his revenge.

The story involves a mentally retarded woman being kidnapped and sold into prostitution. Both the father and the police search in every brothel in town looking for her.  The film has a slow burn approach, focusing on the dramatic and psychological impact on those involved.  Highly recommended if you can actually find a copy.

Let me sing you a song before going back out to investigate murder.

Cannibal Apocalypse (1980)

Giovanni Lambardo Radice and John Saxon are Vietman vets that bring back a contagious virus that turn people into cannibals when bitten. 

 Cannibal Apocalypse is a 1980  horror film directed by Antonio Margheriti, written by Margheriti and Dardano Sacchetti, and starring John Saxon. 

It starts off in Vietnam where John Saxon gets bitten by P.O.W. John Morghen who has been infected with some sort of cannibal virus. A few decades later in Atlanta, Georgia, Saxon wakes up from a nightmare flashback of what actually happened back in 'Nam. Saxon then receives a call from Morghen asking him if he wants to go out for a drink but Saxon refuses remembering the incident in 'Nam. Morghen has turned into a cannibal and is soon on the run after biting into a woman's neck. He barricades himself in a department store and shoots some dudes with a shotgun. The cannibal virus spreads and soon Saxon joins veterans Morghen and Tony King along with some others to wreak some havoc.

 We all know who John Saxon is.  He was in Enter The Dragon with Bruce Lee.  He was Nancy's dad in Nightmare On Elm Street.  And he even showed up in an episode of Wonder Woman.  And apparently he was not too pleased about being in this film. He has spoken out about the film many times. Not sure why with some the shitty films he's been in, but for some reason this one burns his ass. It's actually not a horrible film. At times it is kind of corny and it has the stupidest biker gang in the history of films but it's not horrendous.  To Saxon's credit he does deliver some silly lines with a straight face.

Oops

The film has some cannibals but it falls short of any apocalypse.  It also includes a rather strange scene of a young teenager trying to bang John Saxon.  He goes down on her alright by biting and taking a chunk out of her. I'll give credit to director Antonio Margheriti for trying something different but this film didn't overwhelm me. Apparently Quinton Tarantino loves the film and my taste usually falls in line with his.  In this case it really didn't.

The music is rather cheesy and there are more action scenes than straight horror.  But there are several stand out gore scenes, the most memorable being when Morghen's stomach is blown away by shotgun blasts. Other gore highlights, courtesy of FX wizard, Giannetto De Rossi (Zombie, The Beyond, Living Dead at Manchester Morgue) include - a girl having her breast torn away and eaten, a doctor having his tongue bitten out then spat next to his dying body, a garage mechanic having his thigh sliced like a slab of beef.   If you're a fan of John Saxon or cannibal film maybe this is your cup of tea but it feel flat to me.  I keep going...but..but..but.  Though this is supposed to be an 'extreme gore classic,' it's pretty tame by today's standards.

Damn I'm hungry....

 KB

Quotes:

Captain McCoy: Charlie can you hear me?
Charlie Bukowski: I can hear you. Shitface.

[seeing a cannibal policeman bite a woman's breast]
Captain McCoy: Oh, my God! Put that down, son!

Nothing like an awkward scene of a 16 year trying to seduce a 40 year old man.

Body 19 (2007)

 

Chon is suffering from nightmares. He tries not to sleep because he's scared of a girl that he sees each night in his dreams. In the dreams, the girl screams for help before she is cruelly killed. Ae, Chon's sister is worried about the illusion that Chon sees in his dreams, so she introduces him to a psychiatrist. Chon tries to prove that what he sees is not just the illusion. Finally, Chon is right when some clues in his nightmares lead him to a morgue number 19. And now, the story of the dead body inside the morgue is gradually 

Body is a Thai horror-thriller film. It is produced by GTH, the same production company that made the hit Thai horror film, Shutter. Body is directed by Paween Purijitpanya and co-written by Chukiat Sakweerakul.

I was very impressed with the Thai film Shutter and consider it one of the better Asian horror movies that I've seen.  The same company has now brought us Body 19 and it's damn good.  Like the best movies in Asian horror, this film is at times difficult to understand. But that's also why I love them.  You need to watch the movie several times to catch things that you missed or that didn't stand out on the first viewing.   When you see it again, it becomes "Oh shit...this makes sense now."

Body has parallels to an actual murder case in Thailand, in which a physician was convicted and given the death penalty in the dismemberment of his estranged wife. It's a stunning film visually for the most part.  The one scene that truly stands out is from the museum where the butterflies come alive. But then in other places there is an obvious use of CGI which stands out a bit too much.  The camera tends to take different directions often showing us views that induce paranoia and voyeurism.  But this film doesn't rely on the effects.  It's the story and suspense that make it really stand out.  But isn't that the case with all good movies.  I really don't want to go into too many details of the film because it has a twist and the enjoyable part of these great Asian horror films is not knowing what's coming next. The mystery all leads back to a corpse that is behind door No 19 in the hospital morgue,

The film stars Pae Arak Amornsupasiri as Chonlasit (Chon),  Pang Ornjira Lamwilai as Ae, Kritteera Inpornwijit as Usa, Patharawarin Timkul as Dararai.  The acting is fair for the most part.  However, I felt Pae did a great job as Chon. His slow realization that he may be crazy was excellent.

I'm still here....FIND ME

 It’s a long film….running to 1hour and 58 minutes which could drag for some viewers.  The film does have a slow pace at times.  Small trims could have been made here or there, but not without making the story seemed rushed.  The long running time allows us to journey into the slow descent of madness that Dae sinks into. Asian horror fans will dig this movie....others with small attention spans will probably not. I loved it and my opinion is usually correct.

KB
Trivia
The original title was 'Body number 19', for the international English title, 'number 19' was dropped. This takes much of the meaning out of the title, since the meaning of the body in drawer #19 was the whole climax of the film.

Was in its release year the biggest hit in theaters in Thailand.

About halfway through, we see a woman in a zoologic museum, where many of the animals suddenly show little sings of life (an eye blinking, a tongue slipping from a beak, etc), and gradually the size of the animals increase, from a little snake to a full grown elephant. After that, suddenly a huge dinosaur skeleton is shown. In an Q&A during the International Film Festival Rotterdam, the director of the movie said this was a homage to Steven Spielberg (whom the director is a big fan of), who can, according to the director, make dead animals live again using his imagination.

Body 19

Curse Of The Swamp Creature (1966)

 Deep in the rural swamps of Texas the insane Dr. Simond Trent is conducting experiments on the local swamp people in an attempt to discover the secret of evolution. When a party of oil surveyors comes upon his isolated laboratory he decides to take the final step and turn one of them into a grotesque amphibious creature.

Curse of the Swamp Creature is a 1966 American film directed by Larry Buchanan.  It is a movie where Buchanan proved that he was a master of suspense and horror much like Hitchcock.  Naw...I'm just kidding.  This is one of the worst movies ever created.  The only reason to watch this movie is for the huge amount of laughs you will get.  Much like "Plan 9 From Outer Space" this film is so bad it's good. The performances are bad...alligators hanging out in swimming pools...people doing voodoo dances to curse the mad doctor....a deaf mute girl pushes a guy into the water and somehow it becomes quicksand.  I could go on and on.  Oh and the film also has John Agar...who obviously was intoxicated when he agreed to sign on for this film.

The only view you get of the creature until the final 3 minutes of the film.

The story is as follows.....a group heads into the swamp looking for oil.  They trek through deep marsh after the boat can no longer go on.  They eventually stumble on a mad doctor's house and he's experimenting with creating a man-phibian.  Somehow the doctor has a manicured lawn, swimming pools and a mansion deep in the swamp.  And he finally succeeds in creating his creature, who appears for a couple minutes to wrap up the film and jumps in the pool to get eaten by alligators.  True terror.  And somehow this goofy doctor has a smoking hot wife.  He must have a pecker the size of a large cucumber.

The face of horror.

This movie won't be for everybody.  In fact, it won't be for 95% of Earth's population.  But for those that love shitty movies that are so horrifically bad this is a gold mine.

KB

Son, you're close to being alligator food.

 Quotes:
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.

Dr. Simond Trent: You’re ready. Awake! The sound of my voice is your master!  Get up! Get up! The world awaits you as my first citizen!

Dr. Simond Trent:  Well, Tom – at last you’re going to make a contribution to science! Everyone has his place in the field of research. Tom? Tom, are you listening? Nod your head if you are! You'’e doing fine -–fine! You’re strong. You can stay under water indefinitely. You’re almost bulletproof! I’m envious of you, Tom! Hmm? Are you hungry? How clumsy of me! Let me get you a snack! [He hands ‘Tom’ a turtle] Here, boy! Here!

Dr. Simond Trent:  You’re ready to come off the preserver, and make your debut – my beautiful, indestructible fishman!

Scientist:  How can you look for oil without equipment – seismographs, drilling equipment?
Geologist:  Well – it’s not easy.

I can see everything clearly through these glasses.