The Creeping Terror (1964) Review *spoilers*

Only a select few movies are inherently unwatchable. Most movies that are "bad" fall into the category of "So bad it's good". Well, for day eight of my twelve days of creature features I found a movie that perpetually lives in that category. It was directed by Vic Savage and was made on a very low budget. The budget was so low that it was actually funded by the actors that appeared in the movie. It had such a limited release, people really can't agree on its release date. With great mediocrity, I give you...

Not just any terror; a CREEPING one

The movie begins with out hero (Vic Savage) and his new wife coming back from their honeymoon. Savage is a cop whose Uncle is the sheriff of the town. An alien ship has just crashed on the outskirts of town. While our hero and the Sheriff go off to check out the crash site, one of the aliens escapes the ship. The alien is some sort of slug beast, but to me it looks like a Chinese New Year dragon that is missing a head. The slug beast attacks a couple who are getting hot and heavy in the woods (kind of a weird scene to see in a movie from the late 50's). Meanwhile, the Sheriff enters the ship to find out whats wrong. The sheriff screams, then Savage goes in to help and sees another alien which is trapped in wreckage. I still don't know how the sheriff was killed by a trapped creature... must have fell right into its mouth. With the alien confined to the ship. the army and a scientist are called in to check the site.

What do you mean my cowboy hat is too big?

The alien who is free roams the countryside, killing any person it can find. It goes to the fishing hole, it attacks lovers lane, it kills at a hootenanny with beatniks, and then finally a dance hall (there is an extra in the dance hall scene who is the worst dancer ever.  here is a link to see just how terrible. You'll know who it is when you see it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUCQSeuVBno ) Eventually the army shows up to take on the monster. The general has the army line up in a row and fire upon the slug beast. The attack does nothing except make an easy meal for our creature. With limited options, the general throws a grenade at the creature. the blast kills the creature... don't know why you wouldn't lead off with a grenade throw though. Also, if a grenade killed it; why didn't gunfire do anything?

Don't movie, stay in one line men. Make it easy on the creature!

The alien that was trapped on the ship is now set free and attacks everyone including the scientist. While it was snacking on the professor, Vic Savage shows up and rams his car into the beast, killing it (for being superior outer space beings, they certainly are easy to kill). The professor lays dying saying that monsters were sent to study earthlings via digestion. All the data they had was sent back to there home world in the event of the aliens' demise. The doctor says that they won the battle but lost the war. However, maybe by the time the aliens finally bring reinforcements to Earth, humans will be ready and more intelligent. Then the movie just ends. Nothing like ending the movie on a prosaic high note.

This movie was a mass of good ideas, but they were executed rather poorly. The movie follows a general formula of a 60's scifi movie. It offers nothing new to the genre except am all new low in standards. The movie was plagued with a lot of problems. For example, the monster used in the movie was not the intended monster. Apparently, a different monster costume was supposed to be used but was stolen days before filming. Short on time, the crew came up with the rug monster this movie is known for. Another problem this movie suffered from was lose of audio. There are many scenes in the movie where the audio is simply lost and very few people know why. There was a running joke that the reel was dropped into Lake Tahoe during the filming, but that has been debunked. To fix this problem, Vic Savage had a local radio host narrate over those scenes in post production. Many times in watching the film, it feels like 50's educational film used in high schools. A lot of the scenes have poorly dubbed audio too which can take anyone out of the movie.

Even if the those issues been remedied, I can not say if the movie would've be any better. The script and story of the movie are just simply bad. The acting is by far the worst part. Most of the actors in the movie were random town peoples who paid money in order to be in the film, and it shows. You can't make a great film solely using country folks who wanted to be Hollywood stars. Any director or production company would have cut there loses and never released the film. For whatever reason though, it was released and will forever remain as a terrible scifi movie.

People have probably purchased this

The movie may be horrifically bad, but it was not a chore to watch. It is actually entertaining from a spoof stand point. Savage had to have been some sort of fool not to market this as a comedy. It's everything comedy scifi movies are made of. There are actually two sequels inspired by this film (college students at the University of Michigan created Return of the Creeping Terror and The Creeping Terror Strikes Back). If anyone was going to watch this, bring some friends over and take shots at how bad the movie really is. Everyone will have a great laugh at the movies expense. I'm going to give this movie, two carpet slug monsters out of ten. A bad movie technically, but a funny movie worth the time to watch if you want to laugh hard.