Creature from the Haunted Sea

1961 film by Roger Corman

Creature from the Haunted Sea is a 1961 horror comedy movie directed by Roger Corman. Written by Charles B. Griffith, the movie is a parody of spy, gangster, and monster movies (mostly Creature from the Black Lagoon), concerning a secret agent, XK150 (played by Robert Towne credited as Edward Wain), who uses the name "Sparks Moran" in order to infiltrate a criminal gang commanded by Renzo Capetto (Antony Carbone), who is trying to transport an exiled Cuban general with an entourage and a large portion of the Cuban treasury out of Cuba. Filmgroup released the movie as a double feature with Devil's Partner.

During the Cuban Revolution, deported American gambler and racketeer Renzo Capetto devises a get rich quick scheme and uses his yacht to help a group of loyalists commanded by General Tostada to escape with part of Cuba's national treasury, which they plan to use to stage a counter revolution. American secret agent XK150, using the alias Sparks Moran, has infiltrated the gang. The gang consists of Capeto's brazenly felonious blonde girlfriend Mary Belle Monahan; her deceptively clean cut younger brother Happy Jack; and a gullible, good natured, and homicidal oaf named Pete Peterson Jr., who does frequent animal impressions. Unfortunately, despite his other role as the story's omniscient narrator, Sparks fails to realize what is happening because of his own incompetence and infatuation with the completely uninterested Mary Belle, who regards his attempts to rescue her from a life of crime with amused contempt. Capetto plans to steal the gold fortune 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 one of the Cuban soldiers with sharpened, claw like gardening tools and leave behind fake "footprints" made with a toilet plunger and a mixture of olive oil and green ink. 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 deed. When the monster's insatiable hunger interferes with his scheme, Capetto decides to sink his boat into 30 feet of water off the shore of a small island and then to retrieve the gold later. Complications ensue when two of the men of his gang get involved romantically with native women, with Pete debeloping a relationship with Porcina and Jack with her pretty daughter Mango, and local prostitute Carmelita becoming fond of Sparks. Capetto and his gang go scuba diving to attempt to salvage the loot and kill some of the Cubans while doing so, but the creature kills everyone, including Mary Belle, Porcina and Mango except for Sparks and Carmelita. The movie ends with the creature sitting on the undersea treasure and picking its teeth. The creature burps and the bubbles roll up with the credits.

It was the last of an unofficial trilogy of black comedies by Griffith and Corman which also included A Bucket of Blood (1959) and The Little Shop of Horrors (1960). Corman later said "the surprise to me was there were three of these low budget comedy horror films that were all so audacious; I mean, it’s so wild to do films that cheaply and on that short a schedule and with such insane subject matter. It seemed to me I would have either a great success or a colossal failure. It was disappointing that they were all modest successes. And it didn’t figure that I could do something so wild and get a little conservative return on the money and the end would be so routine." In 1982 Corman said "Hardly anyone has ever seen this movie or even knows that it exists" but the movie has developed a minor cult reputation.

Creature from the Haunted Sea was filmed in five days.

The movie's musical score, written by Fred Katz, was originally written for A Bucket of Blood. According to Mark Thomas McGee, author of Roger Corman: The Best of the Cheap Acts, each time Katz was asked to write music for Corman, Katz sold the same score as if it were new music. The movie's poster asks "What was the unspeakable secret of the sea of lost ships?" and requests that audiences "do not give away the answer to the secret".

In March 1963, Corman reassembled the cast in Santa Monica to appear in new scenes directed by Monte Hellman for television showings of the movie, expanding the length to 74 minutes. A title song, sung by Betsy Jones Moreland, was added by Hellman on the assumption that a movie named Creature from the Haunted Sea should have a title song. This version is also available from Amazon Video on Demand

Movie critic Cavett Binion wrote, "This early bit of 'B ' movie fluff from Roger Corman and company is a hastily slapped together melange of crime thriller and monster flick, laced with enough ham fisted satire to make the entire mess enjoyable." Dave Sindelar on his website Fantastic Movie Musings and Ramblings criticized the movie's script as being "an unfocused mess" due to its poor structure and pacing. Sindelar also criticized the poor design of the monster. TV Guide awarded the movie two out of four stars, terming the movie "entertaining". Dennis Schwartz from Ozus' World Movie Reviews gave the movie a grade D, terming it "rotten", panning the movie's "juvenile" comedy, and monster design. It was also spoofed by RiffTrax by British comedians Matthew J. Elliot and Ian Potter June 10, 2022.