#41 The Creeping Terror (Wes)

The Creeping Terror

If you’ve read any of our reviews, then you’ll know that generally the films that we have enjoyed the most are the old classic B movies. Some were familiar favourites (eg Plan 9 From Outer Space – see here), whilst some were new to us (eg Robot Monster – see here). Our next movie, The Creeping Terror, was a movie I know I’d seen years ago, but for some reason I confused it with From Hell It Came. So if this wasn’t the movie with the killer tree stump monster thing I fondly remembered, what was so bad that had my memory suppress it from me?

As Deputy Martin Gordon (Vic Savage – who also directed under the name AJ Nelson) returns from his honeymoon, he joins the Sheriff (Byrd Holland) to look at an alien ship that has crashed in Angel County, CA. The sheriff enters the ship and is heard being killed. Gordon calls for help and the military arrive who soon discover a slug-like monster inside which fortunately for them is chained to the wall. However another monster has left the ship shortly before and is now stalking the countryside. This goes on a murderous rampage eating several people (I say eating, they seem more to slowly climb into the monsters mouth), including attacking dozens of people at a dance and culminating with it attacking the cars and people parked in Lovers Lane (where it looks like it’s just humping the cars). After eventually realising that these monsters need to be destroyed the military finally decide to act. Will they be able to stop these creatures? Or at the very least slow them down (even more)?

When it’s written down like that, it sounds like quite a fun, quirky movie. Unfortunately the story itself could have been told in an episode of The Twilight Zone (25 mins) just as well. The movie has a short running time (75 mins), but it’s so badly paced that it drags along more than a dog with worms. The majority of this is due to the extremely slow pace of the monster, but even without that, there are a lot of drawn out pointless scenes and shots. I think the best way to really illustrate that, is to do the same I did for Gigli (see here), and share some of the tweets from when I originally watched this (Follow us for our tweet-a-longs here and here):

“Let’s show 20 seconds of empty scrubland, that’ll thrill the viewer”

“It’s ok, you have time to finish hanging the laundry, do the dishes, watch Roots, and make dinner before the monster gets you”

“I know how we can make this movie faster paced. Fishing! Maybe we’ll add some test match cricket later too!”

“Hootenannys were less hoot and more nanny back in 1964…”

“Quick the monster is coming! We’ve only time for this dance, the one next week and our spring formal until it gets here!”

“We’re in cars and this monster moves more slowly than the second season of The Walking Dead, how will we escape?”

“Someone actually RUNS in this movie and the first thing they do is remark on it and then follow him. No wonder nobody else ran.”

Of course the clue to all of this may lie in the title The Creeping Terror, which I’ll grant you does hint at what you’re about to watch. However there’s a major difference between creeping, and moving so slowly you make the line in the Post Office seem like the 100m sprint. You only have to watch the horror movie It Follows to understand the tension and fear that can be created by a slow, but unstopping monster. However the monster in this movie just moves too slowly to even create the slightest air of menace and relies solely on its victims standing there screaming instead of casually sauntering away stopping only briefly to smell the flowers.

It isn’t just its slow pace that makes this one of the worst monsters ever to appear onscreen. I used the term “slug-like” in my synopsis mainly as that seems to be the most widely used term to describe it. In fact it’s quite a good term, it’s slow, and unpleasant, it even has a shape much like a giant slug (if somebody had balanced a venus flytrap made from old plumbing supplies on the slug, and then glued the slug onto a Chinese Dragon that had undergone an unfortunate steam roller accident), but there’s no getting around the fact that it’s a huge old rug. If you was to describe this monster as “rug-like” you’d be wrong, as I’m not joking in the slightest, IT’S A HUGE OLD RUG. It’s the monster from When Living Room Furniture Goes Bad. If only somebody thought to put the monster over a washing line and beat it with a large paddle all of this horror could have been averted…

Due to problems with the sound (either the soundtrack was lost, or according to William Thourlby the film was shot without sound to cut costs, with the intention of over-dubbing later) much of the film is narrated by Larry Burrell, including what the characters are saying to each other, whilst at the same time you can see the actors actually talking to each other. This really added to the sheer ridiculousness of the movie, making it feel like you’re watching a movie with an elderly relative who’s telling you what’s happening onscreen as you’re both watching it (this has happened to me in real life). It’s honestly one of the strangest things I’ve ever seen in a movie, and can once again be best summed up with my tweets from the viewing:

“The actors couldn’t show amazement, so the narrator tells us they’re amazed instead… Brilliant.”

“Why won’t they let the actors speak? This is like watching an audio book with added moving pictures.”

“I wish the narrator would just tell us people danced really badly instead of making us have to watch it.”

If I’m being honest, I both loved and hated this movie. The sheer bizarreness of a narrator describing everything, coupled with one of the most pathetic monsters ever committed to celluloid should make for a great movie. Unfortunately the pacing is the thing that ultimately lets it down, and that’s a real shame. Then again it may be that I’m just bitter that this wasn’t made in the Soviet Union, and then I could have ended my review with one last tweet… “In Soviet Russia, the rug munches you”