Director: Riccardo Freda and Mario Bava
Year: 1959
Country: Italy/US
Alternate Title: Caltiki il mostro immortale
Genre: Creature Feature
Plot:
Heading to a Mayan village, a team of scientists looking to understand the mystery surrounding the disappearance of a long-dead city only to come across a living blob of radioactive material that kills whatever it touches and continues to grow in size, forcing the team to stop it's deadly rampage.
Review:
For the most part, this one wasn't all that bad of an effort. One of the most impressive efforts featured here is the absolutely stellar and imposing atmosphere created by the ruins within the temple. The large, elaborate caverns that make up the majority of the spaces within the temple that we witness here as well as the excessive and extreme look of the different statues and decorations placed through offers a really enjoyable and creepy opening. This is greatly enhanced by the rest of the atmosphere around the village outside, where the local tribe being shown hanging around the temple gives this some extra benefits. The scenes of them warning the team away through their somewhat suggestive dancing and their customs about dealing with the figure within the area gives this one a rather enjoyable setup.
As well, the film's most impressive and important feature here is the action scenes with the giant blob in action, getting off some really impressive scenes. The creatures' first appearance in the underwater cavern and attacks the member of the expedition starts this off with a great sequence, leading into the wild attempts to stop it that drives the film going forward as the second half gives this some more wild creature action in the village as now only does the rapidly-growing creature running loose but also the deformed victim trying to seek help for his condition in the wrong manner yet still leaving this one with a strong and frenetic finale that has so much to like. Coupled with the fine gore effects for the devoured bodies, these manage to hold it up rather well over it's flaws.
The main issue to be had here is where the middle section of the film bogs down to the point of being utterly bland and boring. Once the monster is released and thought dead, it drops the creature feature format into being more about the research into the creatures' origins to the complete detriment of scenes featuring it still being active and around. Normally that would be changed around into keeping the monster around during that time-period as this one is just dull to get through with the technical jargon describing the creature and it's history so this becomes rather boring. The other big letdown is the surprisingly obvious cheap-jack nature of the film, from the low-rent sets to the lack of extras and overall look of the film that's somewhat hard to get over. Otherwise, there's not a whole lot really wrong here.
Overview: ***/5
Even though there are some minor flaws to be had here, the film's positives as well as it's legacy and importance help to raise this one up into the ranks of one of the more important genre films in the country's history. Despite that, this is still a curiosity piece more than anything due to the shortcomings featured within, however it's still enjoyable enough to be liked on that basis anyway.
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