Badmovies.org Forum

This is the most enjoyable movie I've seen in quite some time.  It presents all the usual cliches but presents them in such a way that I think it must be a loving spoof of bad-science-monster movies.  Think along the lines of Night of the Creeps and you'd be close.

Take, for example, the acting.  The acting is bad, as you would expect of a 60s monster movie, but it is unbelievably bad.  I can only think of a few other movies with such bad acting, and those were homebrew productions starring the director's cousins.  There's no way these people made it past auditions unless somebody wanted the worst actors they could find.

We've also got situations like a surprisingly well-lit pond inside a cave.  Okay, that's not so unusual in a movie like this.  You'd even chalk it up to standard incompetence when the pond is barely knee-deep yet a diver submerges more than twenty feet in the next shot.  But when there's a freaking coral reef at the bottom of this subterranean pond ... that's just got to be a joke, friends.

Also take into account the character of Mr./Dr./Prof. Fielding, our nominal hero.  During the course of the film, he will be identified as an archaeologist, a radiologist, a medical doctor, a biologist, an astronomer AND he becomes a macho action hero when he saves his wife and daughter from the rampaging Caltiki.  Omni-disciplined scientists are pretty rote for movies like these but it's definitely being played as a deadpan gag here.  I haven't even mentioned the Mexican surgeon who also happens to have invented the world's greatest computer in a spare room at the hospital ...

Oh, about Fielding's daughter ... she's Mexican.  Fielding and his wife are both white as the driven snow.  They fight a lot and have lived in Mexico for a while.  Hmm.  I thought that, maybe, their daughter was adopted but she is clearly supposed to be their biological child.  It's actually kind of subtle but the first scene in which Fielding played with "his" daughter was worth a guffaw or two.

Despite the fact that most of the movie is played on the level of "Airplane" or "The Naked Gun", there are a few genuinely nasty scenes in which Caltiki digests someone.  The one that stands out is a close up of a man's skull, all the flesh melted off, one remaining eye staring at the camera -- while he's still breathing.  That last detail added a truly ghastly tone to the proceedings and I can't believe it made it past the censors.

All in all, I give this movie a full pass and a hearty recommendation.  The US dubbed version is what I saw and every single line was a howler.

For years I've wanted to see this movie because the monster sounded like it was a cousin of the blob and Sci-Film's review of it only increased my desire.

Like "The Flesh Eaters", Caltiki joins the small list of movies I haven't seen yet that I want to. Also on the list is "Varan, the Unbelieveable" & "Space Ameoba" (AKA: Yog, the Monster from Space). I suspect I'd like this better than the Blob- despite the lack of Steve McQueen.

Oh, its fun!
A blob mad of wet burlap sacks, a villian who goes nutzoid, and flamethrowing tanks!
It made a great "Roll yer own" MST3K!