The Creeping Terror

Cinema Monolith: 1/10
IMDb: 2/10
Leonard Maltin’s Movie Guide: BOMB

Released sometime in 1964
Not rated
75 minutes

Directed by Vic Savage (as A.J. Nelson)

Written by Robert Silliphant

Cast: Vic Savage, Shannon O’Neil, William Thourlby, John Caresio, Norman Boone, Byrd Holland, Jack King, Pierre Kopp, Ken Savage, Les La Marr, and Louise Lawson as the Blonde in Gold Pants

Good lord, I think I’ve finally found the crappiest movie ever made, topping my previous contenders Robot Monster and Galaxina for sheer ineptitude, lack of production value, unintentional laughs, and any other negative category you can come up with: yes, it’s The Creeping Terror, a hilariously-bad hybrid of sci-fi, monster horror, and uncomfortable romance drama, and my newly-crowned best worst movie of all time.

The story is a simple but baffling one: a spaceship lands near a small back-country town, and a turd-like, parade-float-looking alien with what looks like a giant female reproductive organ on its chest begins to wreak havoc at a snail’s pace, where the newly-appointed town sheriff (as played by the director), his newlywed wife, a scientist, a military platoon, and a host of other locals do their best to stop the creature, who crawls a path of destruction through the surrounding countryside, feeding off people who are strangely apathetic about it all, and who simply refuse to run away.

Everything that could go wrong with this production apparently did: the original monster was stolen just before filming began, the director disappeared after production ended, and the film’s audio track was either lost by the crew or never existed in the first place, prompting the hiring of a local newsman to narrate the entire film! Horrific acting, dialogue, props, and situations merely added to the fun. But for me, the most incredible moment…well, all of them were incredible…but the absolute most incredible had to be the community dance hall sequence, which defies logical explanation and must be seen to be understood and fully appreciated. And that hot number in the black halter top and tight pants? Yeah, I was mesmerized…so what?

And though there were countless other jaw-dropping scenes and moments—a rotund fisherman bumbling through the brush yelling for his grandson, the creature getting it on with a sports car, a hapless baby getting its temperature taken the hard way, and the most phony live grenade stumble-and-fall acting job you’ll see anywhere—the dance hall scene served as the perfect encapsulation of everything whacked-out about this movie, and thus made it watchable for me again and again, and helped earn the entire mess a surprising one-star rating. All in all, seventy-five minutes of mind-boggling hilarity and celluloid mayhem.  (1/10)