Sting of Death - 1966

 Is it wrong to complain about something being "amateur"?  I mean, what are we saying?  "These people didn't have vast amounts of natural skill, talent, or schooling that taught them things, so when they did it, it wasn't as good as those that did have natural talent, skill or schooling"?

Also, isn't that obvious?  Most people, I would argue, are not born with huge amounts of natural talent.  If they were, we'd have a lot more marvelous inventions, a lot more doctors, a lot more singularly known people who defined industries, history, or in this case genres of film.  What I'm sort of saying, in a way, is how dare I ever downgrade something for not specifically being made by those with magnificent presence enough to make it amazing?

I say this in a way because Sting of Death is fun, is captivating, but also brazenly amateur.  This is the type of movie where there was only a second take if someone botched a line.  If they were somewhat short on film that day, who knows, they may even let a botched line into the film, figuring "who will notice?"

Sting of Death is in short about a group of people at a beachside resort who are being terrorized by a school of jellyfish that are there along with something worse: a giant mutated jellyfish man.  The jellyfish man is hilarious, and points out most of the amateur part of this movie.  The costume changes from shot to shot sometimes, and it is super obvious they just glued on seaweed or moss and painted it, or in the case of the huge rubber fins, they simply did nothing.  You can even see the actors ankles in multiple shots.

There's long, nothing shots of people snorkeling.  There's endless scenes of guys driving around on hovercraft.  There's a truly obvious villain who never gets explanation, but is also pretty well acted and very creepy.  And there's helpless women aplenty: being attacked, carried, rescued, hunted, and stripping down to bathing suits or less.  There is no nudity of course, no blood, no scares.  

The definition of this film is "regional" horror.  This means that it was made outside of Hollywood, by no one connected to Hollywood: it was shot, distributed, and remained in one place.  Manos The Hands of Fate belongs to that club, as does this.  These movies were funded and made entirely by non-filmmakers, using non-actors, DIYing the entire thing.  For that being said, hey, it could most certainly be WORSE!  What's really fun about these is to watch it for what they do have, and they things they did put importance into, instead of criticizing it for being "amateur".

Despite all this internal arguing, it's not like this is all that fun though, and it is slow and it is funky.  It has a place for those who truly care to try.  I'll give it a 2.