B-Movies with Marg: Creature from the Haunted Sea

Needless to say, none of this happened.

"You don't shine a tennis shoe!" I exclaimed in the first moments of this film. I was pleasantly surprised to find that Roger Corman's Creature from the Haunted Sea was an actual comedy. I didn't know what to expect, but the all-wrong shoe-shining was the first thing to tip me off that this was not going to be like the other Corman movies I've reviewed. Where his other pictures try to thrill with their top of the line monster effects and daring social commentary, Haunted Sea looks at the lighter side of life, and the result is a pretty amusing and weird little movie. 

Much of the plot line is murky at best - the gist of it is, a secret agent (Code Name: Sparks Moran) infiltrates an eccentric group of gangsters who are aboard a small yacht, trying to transport a colonel, a group of Cubans, and part of the Cuban national Treasury out of Cuba. For some reason. 

Eventually, the leader of the gangsters, I guess wanting the treasury all for himself and his gang, decides that killing off the Cubans is the only way to go - but not wanting to get blamed for their murders, invents a sea monster as a cover up.

Obviously, there turns out to be a real sea monster. 

He looks like a turd with googly eyes.

Or, a little like Cookie Monster.

 The production of Haunted Sea is particularly interesting, as it was filmed in 1959 on location in Puerto Rico alongside two other Corman movies "The Last Woman on Earth" and "Battle of Blood Island". Essentially, they found that they had extra footage and could quickly adapt an existing script from horror to comedy. In fact, the source material for Haunted Sea actually had already been made into two other movies, "Naked Paradise" and "Beast from Haunted Cave" - some humorous tweaks and there's a brand new movie (sort of!). Those rewrites took screenwriter/script doctor Charles B. Griffith three days to do, and the total filming time only took 5 days!

The low budget and rushed schedule shows, of course, as the editing is as delightfully jumpy as you'd wish to find in any B-movie. There is an entire scene where for absolutely no good reason, characters play touch football with a coconut. And the creature itself! It really did resemble a poo, and was made of a wetsuit, Brillo pads, moss, and oil cloth.

I am pleased to report that no quick investigation on my part into the lives of the stars of Creature from the Haunted Sea resulted in me learning of any particularly horrific demises. Robert Towne who played Sparks Moran even went on to have an extremely successful screenwriting career, winning an Oscar for 1974's Chinatown. 

Creature from the Haunted Sea isn't a particularly popular B-movie, particularly because audiences didn't quite know how to react to the film which was marketed (when finally released in 1961) as a straight up monster movie. In reality, it proved to be a mish-mashed send up of the monster genre, as well as spy and gangster movies. To be shown on television, further scenes were filmed in 1963, adding more of a spy framing device (this is the version I saw) - as well as an inexplicable title song sung by lead actress Betsy Jones-Moreland. These additions helped with the secret agents aspects (without them, those viewing the original version must have been so lost!) but added to the disjointed and bizarre mood of the movie. 

-Marg
@acuteinsomnia