Curse of the Swamp Creature – One of Larry Buchanan's Best Films

 

The films of Texas filmmaker Larry Buchanan have really grown on me over the years. I place Buchanan in the top five of my favorite cult film directors. After reading author Rob Craig's excellent book – The Films of Larry Buchanan: A Critical Examination (McFarland 2007), I have an even greater respect for Buchanan's films. Craig gives the reader great insight into the mind and films of Buchanan. Buchanan directed six made for television films for American International Television under the Azalea company title. One of these Azalea films is the 1968 science fiction thriller – Curse of The Swamp Creature, starring John Agar.

In Curse of the Swamp Creature, oil surveyor Driscoll West (Bill Thurman) arrives at the Fly-N-Fish Motel and sits down at the bar for a drink. A beautiful raven-haired woman named Brenda Simmons (Shirley McLine) sits down at the bar next to West and begins to flirt with him. Simmons pumps West for information about oil surveying in the local area, but West refuses to answer her questions and decides to go back to his hotel room.

West returns to his motel room to find young Ritchie (Cal Duggan) going through his personal belongings in the motel room. The two men fight, punching and wrestling each other to the ground. Ritchie stabs West in the stomach with a knife, killing him. The motel manager named Frenchie (Roger Ready) and Simmons enter the room and plot how to get rid of West's body. They decide to put West's body through a swamp-cutting machine.

Before West's death, he was scheduled to meet with geologist Barry Rogers (John Agar) at the hotel for a trip to survey the local swamp. Simmons comes up with the idea that when Rogers arrives, she will simply tell him that West could not attend the meeting and that she is West's wife sent to fill in for him. Rogers arrives at the Fly-N-Fish motel and is greatly puzzled by Simmons' news that West will not be joining them. Nevertheless, Rogers, Simmons and a swamp guide named Rabbit embark on a trip through the local swamp the next morning.

Meanwhile, Dr. Simon Trent (Jeff Alexander) is conducting bizarre experiments at a nearby swamp plantation not far from the Fly-N-Fish Motel. A scaly hand of a monster similar to the Gill Man in Creature From The Black Lagoon (1954) emerges from a vat of mist in Trent's laboratory. He yells at the creature to “Breathe! Breathe! Live!” Unfortunately the creature dies, and Trent wraps him up in a white blanket and throws him to the alligators who happen to dwell in his backyard pool.

Dr. Trent tells his assistants, Valjean and Tracker, that he expects them to keep close eyes on the plantation and not to allow any intruders near the plantation so that no one will interfere with his work. Local natives suspect that Trent is conducting evil experiments on the natives. Both Valjean and Tracker appear to be incompetent at their jobs because the natives have come near the plantation many times looking for lost family members. Trent tells them that he will not tolerate any more incompetence if they continue to allow natives near the plantation.

Rogers, Simmons, Ritchie and Rabbit eventually arrive near Dr. Trent's plantation. Instead of hiding from the group, Dr. Trent orders Tracker to bring them to the plantation mansion so he can offer them hospitality. The group meets in Trent's home and he discusses with them some of his experiments and research. Trent's wife Pat (Francine York) is excited to meet the group because she has not seen other people in over a year. The group is offered to stay the night at Trent's home. Trent keeps Pat locked up in a room and secluded from the rest of the world.

Tracker is persuaded by Pat to release her from her locked room. She wanders into her husband's laboratory and finds Dr. Trent's assistant – Tom (Enrique Touceda III – billed as “Anthony Huston”) floating in the lab tank with wiring attached all over his body. She flees the room, screaming and hysterical. Dr. Trent catches her and tries to assure her that Tom is not dead, and that Tom volunteered for the experiment. Mrs. Trent of course does not believe him. Tom questioned Trent's work, so he was drugged and placed in the tank for experimentation. Trent later wraps Tom up in a white sheet and dumps him into the alligator pool. Another failed experiment. The alligators feast on Tom's body.

After his failed experiment with Tom's body, Dr. Trent uses Brenda Simmon's body as his next experiment. She quickly evolves into a masculine looking green monster with bulging eyes. Dr. Trent orders the creature to kill the natives that have come to his home to confront him. The Simmons creature disobeys Trent and instead picks up Trent and throws him into the pool of alligators. Simmons then offers herself as a sacrifice by plunging off the dive board of the pool into the alligators.

One very strange aspect of this film is when Dr. Trent places his assistant Tom in the vat for experimentation. After placing Tom in the vat, he never fully evolves into a creature. Even after the camera shows him in a number of scenes in the vat, he remains in human form unchanged. However, when Dr. Trent places Brenda Simmons' body into the vat, she immediately evolves into a green masculine creature. It's as if experimenting on a woman achieves immediate results in contrast to experimenting on a male subject. Why is this? The viewer is left puzzled by this (at least I was).

At the time actor John Agar was cast in Curse of The Swamp Creature, he was battling a lifetime of alcoholism, which negatively impacted his acting career and ended his earlier marriage to actress Shirley Temple. Agar spent the decade of the 1960s being cast in a number of low-budget features, including another Buchanan Azalea TV film – Zontar – The Thing From Venus (1967), and Night Fright (1967), Journey To The Seventh Planet (1962), Women of The Prehistoric Planet (1966), and many others.

As mentioned at the beginning of this writing, Buchanan made a total of six made-for-TV films for American International Television under the Azalea company title. The five other Azalea films are: Zontar – The Thing From Venus (1967), Mars Needs Women (1968), The Eye Creatures (1965), In The Year 2889 (1969) and Creature of Destruction (1967). Stay tuned for other articles on Plan 9 Crunch about these Buchanan films produced by Azalea. Happy viewing.

- Steve D. Stones