However, he does not know that there really is a shaggy, pop-eyed sea monster lurking in the very waters where he plans to do the dirty deed and that the creature may make his plan all too easy to pull off. Unfortunately, despite his other role as the story's omniscient narrator, Sparks is too much the Maxwell Smart-style bumbler to figure out what is going on because of his own incompetence and his hopeless infatuation with the completely uninterested Mary-Belle, who regards his attempts to rescue her from a life of crime with an amused contempt.Ĭapetto plans to steal the fortune in gold and then to claim that the mythical "Creature from the Haunted Sea" rose and devoured the loyalists, but it is he and his crew who murder the Cuban soldiers with sharpened, claw-like gardening tools and leave behind "footprints" made with a toilet plunger and a mixture of olive oil and green ink. (Beach Dickerson), who constantly does animal impressions. The other casualties were the viewers devoured by the cheeseball factor.During the Cuban Revolution, deported American gambler and racketeer Renzo Capetto (Anthony Carbone) comes up with a get-rich-quick scheme and uses his yacht to help a group of loyalists headed by General Tostada (Edmundo Rivera Alvarez) escape with Cuba's national treasury, which they plan to use to stage a counterrevolution.Īmerican secret agent XK150, using the alias Sparks Moran (Robert Towne, credited as Edward Wain), has infiltrated the gang which consists of Capeto's brazenly felonious blond girlfriend Mary-Belle Monahan (Betsy Jones-Moreland) her deceptively clean-cut younger brother Happy Jack (Robert Bean) and a gullible, good-natured, and homicidal oaf named Pete Peterson Jr. It ends with Agent Sparks Moran and his girlfriend Mango the only ones saved from the monster, who not only devoured all the passengers but also the treasure. He has an innate ability to imitate animal sounds. (Beach Dickerson), who is Renzo’s top henchman and was discovered at Jones Beach, where he worked as a pickpocket. Mary-Belle Monahan (Betsy Jones-Moreland) is Renzo’s gun moll, who previously pushed hard drugs to school children her brother Happy Jack Monahan (Robert Bean) developed a muscle spasm in his cheek from watching too many Bogie films and the tennis bum has since become a dice roller and a hired killer and Pete Peterson Jr. For Towne, this is a warmup before his success as the screenwriter for Chinatown. One of the gangsters is actually undercover agent XK150 or Agent Sparks Moran (Robert Towne), who is determined to sabotage the operation (he makes a radio out of hot dogs and pickles). The monster, only briefly seen, is a wooden bug-eyed beast, that looks more like a prop than a prop does. He now sinks his boat in shallow water and places the treasure on a nearby island he uses for a base. To Renzo’s surprise, there’s a real monster they have to deal with and this changes his plans. He does this by leading the unsuspecting Cubans on by pretending there’s a mythological monster rising out of the sea that is devouring them one at a time (when his henchmen will actually be knocking them off) and then steal the treasure. Renzo’s real intention is to kill all the Cubans. It has two exiled loyalist military officers and some of their Cuban countrymen hiring a group of American gangsters, led by Renzo (Anthony Carbone), to help them escape with a chest full of gold, across the sea to a safe haven. There’s a Philip Marlowe-style voiceover to follow the action. The story begins after the Cuban revolution. The silly comedy is of the juvenile kind, the horror shtick is too lame to even comment on. He shouldn’t have bothered, this is one rotten movie. Corman filmed it in one week in Puerto Rico, remaining over when he finished early filming there. Griffith, who had also written Corman’s cult comedies The Little Shop of Horrors and A Bucket of Blood. The gangster leader supposedly resembles Bogie. It’s a comedy/horror film intended as a satirical imitation of a Bogie adventure film. Roger Corman (“The Wild Angels”/”The Masque of the Red Death”/”Tower of London”) directs this weak remake of Naked Paradise. Griffith cinematographer: Jack Marquette editor: Angela Scellars music: Fred Katz cast: Anthony Carbone (Renzo Capetto), Robert Towne (Sparks Moran/Agent XK150/Narrator), Betsy Jones-Moreland (Mary-Belle Monahan), Beach Dickerson (Pete Peterson Jr., Capeto’s chief henchman), Robert Bean (Happy Jack Monahan, Mary-Belle’s brother), Sonya Noemi (Mango), Edmundo Rivera Álvarez (General Tostada) Runtime: 63 MPAA Rating: NR producer: Roger Corman Alpha Video 1961) CREATURE FROM THE HAUNTED SEA (director: Roger Corman screenwriter: Charles B.
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