Creature
DVD
Directed by Fred M. Andrews
Written by Fred M. Andrews and Tracy Morse
Starring Sid Haig, Mehcad Brooks, Serinda Swan, Amanda Fuller
The Bubble Factory
Release Date: March 20, 2012

If you’ve seen one backwoods incestuous half-man, half-alligator creature feature, you’ve seen ’em all.

Directed by Fred M. Andrews, Creature follows an ex-Navy SEAL (Mehcad Brooks) and his trashy girlfriend (Serinda Swan) on a road trip to New Orleans with their annoying twenty-something pals.

The gang stops at a desolate roadside gas station owned by Chopper (Sid Haig, House of 1000 Corpses), who tells them the tale of Lockjaw, a backwoods abomination who is half-man, half-alligator. The incestuous and absurd folktale goes a little something like this: An inbred cajun creeper by the name of Grimley (Daniel Bernhardt) lost his family to a monstrous white alligator, which drove him to madness – and by madness I mean, he beat the shit out of that alligator and turned into a cannibal. Somehow ol’ cannibalistic Grimley transformed into Lockjaw, an alligator-man with a Glasgow grin that prowls about the swamps in search of fresh meat.

Fueled by their need to fulfill every horror cliche, the group plays along with the local tourist trap and journey deep into the swamplands to find an old dilapidated cabin – the birthplace of Lockjaw (or The Inbred Formerly Known as Grimley).

As Lockjaw begins picking off slutty drunk girls and testosterone-soaked jocks one by one, a ‘horrifying’ truth is revealed: the locals are entangled in a years-old incestuous tradition that Lockjaw fiercely protects. Who will survive and what will be left of them? Who cares?

Creature is a really bad movie. The acting is atrocious, which is only highlighted by the painfully dumb dialogue and a script that feels like a hodgepodge of the world’s worst horror films collected in one convenient 93-minute mistake waiting to happen.

Sig Haig does his damnedest to play a cajun version of Captain Spaulding – the scene where he recounts a local legend and draws a map is straight out of House of 1000 Corpses – but not even his B-movie background can save this piece of southern-fried foolishness.

Then there’s the whole incest angle, which hey – it’s a taboo subject and it makes for good horror fodder, but maybe I’m the only guy who has a problem with watching a girl give her brother a handjob on film. How can I be afraid of the goddamn alligator-man when these kinds of atrocities are happening!?

Apparently, Creature opened in theaters on September 9, 2011 in the U.S. and Canada, which is really quite an accomplishment considering Fred M. Andrews’ debut feature film feels like a direct-to-video title at the bottom of a $5 Wal-Mart bin. In its first weekend in the U.S., Creature earned only $327,000 from 1,507 venues. It was the lowest grossing first weekend ever for a film appearing on over 1,500 screens.

Perhaps the worst part about Creature is the monster itself. If you’re going to make a monster movie, the monster better damn well be cool. The story can be derivative and cliched, the acting laughable – but as long as there’s a bad-ass creature raising Hell then I’ll give it a fair shot.

Unfortunately, Lockjaw looks like a Mighty Morphin Power Rangers villain. He’s kind of like Killer Croc meets Leatherhead (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) – which sounds cool, right? Well, it would be cool if it wasn’t a tall, beefy dude in a dried-up rubber suit – trudging around the swamps like an reptilian sex offender.

There are more than a few scenes in this film where you see the alligator-man’s genitals – complete with Spanish moss pubic hair (and underarm hair… because every inbred mutant Alligator-man HAS to have Spanish moss body hair).

As much as I would like to say Creature was so bad it’s good – it isn’t. It’s just bad. It’s the perfect example of why we need more films like The Cabin in the Woods. Creature is a predictable, low-budget blunder that makes Roger Corman’s worst cinematic creations look like Hitchcock’s best.

Trailer