‘ …his victims fought for their lives in a silent, eerie underwater battleground!’
Curse of the Swamp Creature is a 1968 sci-fi horror film about members of a geological expedition who meet an insane doctor who is working on an experiment to create a creature that is part man and part alligator.
The movie was produced and directed by Larry Buchanan (The Loch Ness Horror; It’s Alive; Zontar: The Thing from Venus) from a screenplay by actor Tony Houston.
It stars John Agar (Hand of Death; The Mole People; et al), Francine York (The Centerfold Girls), Jeff Alexander and Shirley McLine.
Although Buchanan was producing low-budget 16mm colour remakes of American International Pictures sci-fi movies for television distribution around this time, he claimed this movie had an original plot even though it bears striking similarities to Voodoo Woman (1957) and White Zombie (1932).
The film re-uses Ronald Stein’s music from both It Conquered the World and Invasion of the Saucer Men.
In his autobiography, It Came from Hunger! Tales of a Cinema Schlockmeister, Buchanan said: “We were plagued by the humidity, cottonmouth snakes, and mechanical troubles throughout the shoot, and John made me promise that next time we worked together, it would be a cakewalk.”
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Plot:
Deep in the rural Texan swamps, reclusive and ruthless wife-abusing mad scientist Doctor Simond Trent is conducting experiments in his laboratory on the local impoverished voodoo-worshipping black “natives” in an attempt to discover the secret to reversing evolution, feeding the failures to the alligators he keeps in his covered outdoor swimming pool.
When a party of oil surveyors comes upon his isolated yet strangely suburban-style home he decides to take the final step and turn the duplicitous female leader of the expedition into a grotesque and virtually indestructible amphibious “fish man” so that he can take his revenge upon the world…
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“The pacing is so slow that the camp is muted. But Swamp Creature probably ranks third in Buchanan’s oeuvre, behind Zontar and Mars Needs Women. The high-pitched voodoo drums are amusing and the bayou boat footage decent.” David Elroy Goldweber, Claws & Saucers book
” …Swamp Creature is a surprisingly mature melodrama, touching on several significant themes, including the overthrow of totalitarian leadership, the use of cold science as a replacement for failed human relationships, and the emergence of female emancipation and black empowerment as leading social movements of the day.” Rob Craig, The Films of Larry Buchanan book!
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” …unbearably undynamic suspense and incoherent subplots build up to the most spectacularly anti-climactic “shock” monster revelation ever filmed – the Swamp Creature is nothing more than a guy in a putty-smeared cheap fright mask with ping pong ball eyes. Buchanan films all this with grim seriousness, which combined with his murky camera work and Agar’s alcoholic resentment, makes this one of the more interesting of Buchanan’s epics.” Brian Curran, Fear of Darkness magazine
“Bare-bones sets, amateurish acting (star John Agar looks tired and really has nothing to do except sit around and smoke cigarettes), pacing that’s more sluggish than the bayou current, deadening dialogue, dim lighting, tinny sound dubbed in later […] and muddy photography make this picture the very nadir of voodoo cinema.” Bryan Senn, Drums of Terror: Voodoo in the Cinema book
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“Perhaps more horrifying in the end than the Swamp Creature itself is the dismal and endless tape loop of bongo-drums that pounds throughout the film. Strangely, we never see the source of all this drumming. What do these drums mean? Are they symbolic of the terminal boredom of the film itself… or a formal device to drive the audience mad, like the abominable Doctor Trent?” Freddie Mertz, Zontar, the Magazine from Venus
Filming locations:
Caddo Lake and Uncertain, Texas
Technical details:
1 hour 20 minutes
Audio: Mono
Aspect ratio: 1.33: 1
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Fun facts:
A Curse of the Swamp Creature mask was one of the last items produced by the famed Don Post Studios before it went out of business in 2012.
Full film free to watch online [1080p]:
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