The Creeping Terror - 1964

Are you fucking kidding me with that year?  1964?!  19fuckingSIXTY4?!  So, only 4 years after this, one of the greatest sci-fi movie of all time, 2001 A Space Odyssey was made, and yet this movie only 4 years earlier didn't even have it's own soundtrack?  I say this because I guessed 1954 when I was inputting the year.  Even then, I had that part of me that was nagging in my head: "No, it's earlier.  Put 1953.  1952!" (I try to guess the movie's year without looking when inputting the title, and I'm often right)

This is almost an experiment in "how bad can a movie really be?"  I would not hesitate to describe it as perhaps the most amateur film that's widely known, taking that prize from the clutches of even Mr. Ed Wood.  The reason?  At least Ed Wood's films had a fucking soundtrack.  It's not like he recorded a narrator who explains what happens in the conversations instead of having the conversations!  The thing about Wood is that he's appealing because of what he did: he made almost real looking movies with barely anything, and is known because of the appeal they still had: real actors, bizarre effects, etc.  This thing is so amateur it barely registers as a movie at all.

Shot without sound, every sound had to be added in post production.  But why hire a bunch of voice actors to voice the characters when you could just have a narrator describing what happens in the conversations?!  Right?  So the narrator explains the plot, tells us what the people are talking about, even fills in the blanks as to why some things happen.  But then, there are also large parts where the narrator apparently vanishes and we're left wondering what's going on.

It's your classic killer alien plot, there's a spaceship that lands on earth, out comes the killer alien, starts to kill people.  However the alien looks balls out ridiculous.

It's obviously made out of whatever scraps they found laying around, lots of pieces of rug, and hot glue.  Apparently, there was going to be a different, better monster, but that simply never worked out.  So we get this....thing.  Whatever this is.  It moves really slow, and eats people.  But of course, it has no real mouth, just a slit that people seem to get caught in.  Being that they could not obviously afford to have it look like the monster was actually eating them, the people sort of have to climb into the monster's mouth and, and, and....and I could go on forever about how horrendously bad, cheesy, and just plain ludicrous this monster is.

There's some subplot about a girl who two different guys want, as well as a subplot about a newlywed couple, the man of which is on the police force.  There are also plenty of random badly acted extras who get killed along the way as well.

The story of this movie's making is also one of those that has a legend behind it, as it seems minor parts were "sold" to investors, like "hey, you can play the hardware salesman character if you give me $100".  They were sorta duped into it, and there's a few more things explored, all of that in this film's own mockumentary about it, here: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1686027/

It's insane, schlocky, bizarre, otherworldly and a classic.  It both deserves 5 stars for many reasons, and 0 stars for so many reasons, but that means it's up to me, so it's gets 5 f'n stars.  Oh, and it's known, so it's included because of Sci Fi Invasion boxset.