Creature from Black Lake – 1976, US, 94m. Director: Joy N. Houck Jr. Streaming: Tubi
Curse II: The Bite – 1989, Italy/US, 98m. Director: Frederico Prosperi. Streaming: N/A
Vacation of Terror – 1989, Mexico, 81m. Director: René Cardona III. Streaming: Tubi
CREATURE FROM BLACK LAKE (1976) Two University of Chicago students—one of whom is named Pahoo!—travel to some Southern boondocks to investigate claims of a Sasquatch-type monster. After arriving in Oil City, Louisiana, they’re greeted by scared and hostile locals, including the sheriff (Bill Thurman, who also played the sheriff in the drive-in classic, ‘Gator Bait), who tells the two men to forget about looking for any swamp creature. The students soon come across a friendly redneck (Dub Taylor) who informs them of his encounter with the hairy beast, leading Pahoo (Dennis Fimple) and friend right into the claws of the Bigfoot. At first glance this Legend of Boggy Creek exploit seems like just another rip-off, but Creature from Black Lake is too effective to ignore, with a surprisingly witty screenplay that sustains both humor and scares throughout. The cast is good, with Fimple giving a charming and often quite funny performance, but it’s veteran character actor Jack Elam who steals the show as a paranoid drunken swamp rat. Definitely worth a look for the seventies Sasquatch fan. Released on VHS as Terror in the Swamp, which is not to be confused with a 1985 film also called Terror in the Swamp. B+
CURSE II: THE BITE (1989) Beware the sequel that has nothing to do with the original. Actually, Curse II is superior to 1987’s The Curse in almost every way. That is not to say Part 2 is good, because it’s not, exactly—but it is completely watchable hokum and sports some wild Screaming Mad George (Nightmare on Elm Street 4) make-up FX. While traveling through a defunct bomb testing site in the middle of the desert, a man (J. Eddie Peck) is bitten by a radioactive snake and slowly begins to mutate into a bizarre snake creature—the poor guy’s right arm basically transforms into a python. This proves bad news for the assortment of rednecks and backwoods cops the man’s deformed serpent-arm makes snake chow out of. Luckily, snake expert Jamie Farr (M*A*S*H) comes to the rescue, but not before love interest Jill Schoelen watches as her boyfriend’s body deteriorates into a puddle of gore, pus, and snakes in a scene that feels like a homage to Cronenberg’s The Fly. Filmed as just The Bite, this is a fairly well-executed movie with a simple plot, good acting, and an assortment of disgusting snake effects. B–
VACATION OF TERROR (1989) This Mexican haunted house vehicle was probably made by people who’d rented The Amityville Horror and Poltergeist one too many times. A family man (Julio Alemán) takes his wife and children on a weekend excursion to a spider-infested, dilapidated house in some backwoods, unaware the place was cursed by a witch before she sizzled at the stake. Soon after arriving, the youngest daughter begins talking to a toy doll, which is actually a conduit for the witch to enter the world of the living. The child’s interaction eventually releases the witch’s powers, making the pregnant mother sick and terrorizing the teenage niece and her boyfriend (Pedro Fernández)—who happens to be in possession of a talisman that will send the witch to Hell and restore order to the place. All of this could have been fun had the filmmakers bothered to pump any energy into the lifeless screenplay, which they didn’t. The film ends up feeling like a lazy carbon copy of its American counterparts. Naturally, Vacation of Terror was followed by a sequel. C–