Director: Jack Curtis
Year: 1964
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Creature Feature
Plot:
Traveling out to sea, a group of seafarers crash-land on a deserted island and seek refuge with a professor on the island studying a group of silvery objects nearby that are keeping them on the island and forcing them to fight off the deadly creatures before they can leave.
Review:
This one isn't that bad of a cheap creature feature. Among its best features are the little creatures in the film, as it does some really good things with them being the stars of the film. The fact that they're so small and quite imposing is a great feature, and since they're deadly, this really manages to get a few good ideas thrown in. The fact that they're so small and can eat flesh gives them a nice advantage, since they can come up on their victims before they realize it is a fine feature, which is what happens several times in the film for great results of the creatures in some nice attack scenes here due to a couple of nice suspense scenes. There's the opening crawl over the beach during the windstorm and the later fight over the tide pools with the creatures below, providing some decent and somewhat chilling scenes here.
There's also some nice work here in the fact that because they live in the sea, it puts a damper on most of the potential escape attempts due to the fact that there's no opportunity for them to jump on board. That leaves a lot of potential ones to go through and not be workable, which is a great concept. This one is also a little more graphically violent than expected, and that is quite nice, seeing the characters visibly covered with the creatures and the beginning stages of being eaten begin, and there's even a lot more shots of victims reduced to skeletons than normal, and there are a couple of others in here that are bloodier than expected. These are what help the film, but there are a few flaws.
Those, though, can all be traced back to one central idea, the film's cheap and cheesy appeal. Once the giant monsters appear at the end, this one is effectively pigeon-holed as such a film since they look really cheesy, perform even more so, and rarely look threatening. It is mostly noted for how they interact throughout here, which is where it gets the big mark for it's easily noticed that they're cheaply integrated together, and they make it that much more unlikable. The final fight with the huge one is the perfect example of this, and along with the hideous special effects work, it is so cheesy that it's hard not to find it ridiculous. The last part is also based around the main twist at the end, which can be seen coming from a mile away and shouldn't even be considered a twist, as it happens in nearly every single example with this set-up. These are the film's biggest faults.
Overview: ***.5/5
Better than it should be for a drive-in creature feature, there's a lot more to this one than there should be as a low-budget genre effort that holds off the few drawbacks present here. Those with an appreciation for the style or approach here will want to give it a shot, while most others out there should heed caution.
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