First, I want to clear something up. Anyone who clicked this link looking for pictures of Christina Ricci and Charlize Theron making out can look elsewhere; you’ve got the wrong monster.
Now that we’ve got that out of the way, tonight’s big-box VHS feature comes to us courtesy of a fish named Cliffie, and the production manager of the classic “MST3K” turkey, The Beatniks.
Supposedly based on a true incident (which I couldn’t find hide nor hair of anywhere on the internet, if anyone knows anything, let me know), Monster takes place in the small Colombian town of Chimayo (it’s pronounced sixty different ways in the movie, that’s the best I can do for spelling). An evil American cement plant has polluted the local lake beyond redemption, killing off all the fish and leaving the locals no choice but to be cement monkeys.
Between a local terrorist named Sanchez, who is constantly trying to destroy the plant, and stories of a huge beast in the lake that eats villagers, the plant is in danger of shutting down. Plant manager Pete can’t keep up with all the trouble, so HQ sends in Bill The 70’s Hero, with his Manly 70’s Mustache™, and his Tiny 70’s Shorts™.
Meanwhile, Pete dumps his slutty white girlfriend for the mayor’s daughter, who is also accused of being a witch and consorting with Satan to bring the monster down on the village. Ol’ Pete sure knows how to pick ‘em. In the process of dumping his old girlfriend, Pete somehow manages to accidentally sleep with her first, and then leave her on the beach for the monster to eat. What a dickweed.
Bill hunts and hunts for the monster, but all he comes up with is Sanchez. It’s up to two village kids with their dad’s camera to prove the thing is real. Wait, what? Did we stumble into a Gamera movie?
Bill and Patty, the requisite Feisty Woman Reporter, come up with a plan to drag dynamite around inside a goat until the thing grabs the bait and kerflooie. And so it does, but there’s always the eggs, aren’t there? Damn eggs, all hidin’ in the bushes and shit.
I think it’s fair to tell you, this movie isn’t very good. In fact, it’s crap. It’s badly paced, with about one monster attack for every half hour of Bill standing around in his short shorts or Bill’s boss being demeaning to his secretary. The acting is all wooden at best (with one exception, which is part of the reason for this movie’s inexplicably high rating, and we’ll get there in a minute). And finally, the monster is one of the worst I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen a few. It looks like what would happen if a plesiosaur, a catfish, and a crocodile had a really uncomfortable (and highly unlikely) three-way, and the resulting offspring was then left in the back window of a car all afternoon on a really hot day. And where the hell did the monster come from? It sure as hell didn’t evolve from anything in the lake, or any other lake in the world, for that matter. No real animal looks remotely like this thing. The only other explanation is that it’s a member of an unknown species, and I think that a species of 40-foot-long carnivorous catfish lizards who live in lakes next to populated areas would be pretty hard to miss.
All that, and the company that made the movie is called Major Financial Investments. Sounds like a bunch of bankers thought it’d be fun to make a monster movie.
Despite all that, I love the hell out of this movie. For starters, I’ve made clear many times my love for cheap exploitation from the 70’s. Something about the film quality, the otherworldly, almost transcendent badness of the acting (which is, although technically identical to the bad acting in contemporary movies, somehow acceptable to my palate), the overall time capsule-ish vibe and comparative innocence of 70’s low-budget Z-grade features compared to those today. Let’s face it, as much as it’s a b-movie, it’s still a real movie. Someone had to hike a full camera and production crew down to Colombia, make the monster out of stuff they found in their garages, and shoot on film, pay for prints, work out theatrical distribution deals, the works. Anyone can make a movie on digital video for $10 in one weekend and release it straight to DVD via their own made-up film company anymore. You really had to be dedicated to your craft to make a crap movie back then.
There’s a good chance that this was my very first exposure to this type of movie (it’s either this, or Bloodwaters of Dr. Z, I can’t remember which I saw first, I was pretty young). I rented it when I was but a lad because of the cool-lookin’ beastie on the box. It was so different from anything else I’d seen up to then, that it even inspired me to write a pseudo-sequel for a writing assignment in school, which I’m sure made the original look like…well…something really good by comparison.
And then, there’s the fact that John Carradine is in it. He plays a batty old priest who spouts off about how Satan created the monster to eat the faithless and steer believers to salvation. Seeing John Carradine in a movie makes me happy in the same way that playing with a puppy does. I love the guy. Any movie that has John Carradine in it is okay in my book. The man is a cinematic legend, and deservedly so, since his mere presence jacks up a movie’s entertainment capabilities at least 300%. That’s not to say that, in the case of some of the crap he’s been in, that brings the entertainment capabilities up to approximately zero, but at least John Carradine is in there somewhere doin’ his thing.
There you have it. This movie in most people’s eyes would be an atrocity, and probably rightfully so. But in my eyes, it’s a landmark. A milestone in this cinemasochist’s journey down the path of…whatever the hell it is we journey down the path to. And, it has John Carradine. In short, Monster is a long-forgotten gem, but the time has come for it to rise from the depths once again. Make your girlfriend watch it with you, and bring on the hate mail.
The Moral of the Story: This one’s for the ladies. Don’t date cement plant managers. They’re all evil, sexist bastards. They’ll use you and throw you away like the Kleenex I wipe up with after jerking off. All you’ll get from them is herpes, “accidental” break-up sex, and left on a beach to be eaten by a giant, chicken-footed catfish monster. You have been warned.
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