I have a copy of the original script of "Creeping Terror,"
given me by Harry Medved. I think his "Golden Turkey Awards" bad movie book picked "Plan 9" over "Creeping Terror" as the worst film of all time, because Harry and his brother Michael were on a deadline, and couldn't find any production stills from "Creeping Terror."
There is no other feasible explanation,
for I know them to be honorable men.
Wanta know something really scary?
The script isn't bad. It's pretty readable. "The Creeping Terror" is not a bad movie because it had a bad script. It's really truly bad because the Producer/Director was a really truly bad Director.
I love the narration over everything too, (yes, the original sound was lost, and horribly distorted, and they had to narrate everything).
"Todd told the General, the Creature had been caused to mutate by atomic radiation."
The girls' screams are on a loop, so they repeat and repeat without any change in inflection.
"Aeehhhh!" "Aeeehhhh!" And that music...
The monster looks like carpets stapled together at the edges, with guys underneath, with clown shoes on their knees, and a big hole in the front for the er, mouth.
It's clearly designed to look like both male and female genitalia at the same time, decorated with oddly-familiar structures, and big clumps of yarn and fur.
Yes, guys arms reach through the hole at times, to pull screaming girls into the monster's er, mouth.
The "Creeping Terror" was made in 1964, and my friend Richard Edlund says he thinks he shot the titles for it when he was at Westheimer effects. The movie is made even more stunning by how good the titles are, then how incredibly mind-numbingly bad the movie is.
I saw it first, late late one night on CBC Canadian TV,
it looked interesting - Hollywood titles, and then it was just unrelentingly, hypnotically bad, for every frame, all the way to the very end.
Even really bad movies have occasionally adequate moments,
but not "The Creeping Terror." Not one good frame.
Not a single one. It is pure.
Watching it is like being struck in the forehead by a mallet. Pungent, like a very smelly, very old cheese.
Unlike a cheese, "Creeping Terror" kept me going for years,
because watching it gave me hope, and made me realize something terribly important.
No matter how bad my footage, or low my budget, if I pulled my eyes out and tied them in a square knot across the bridge of my nose, and they locked me in a sack and set it on fire, and threw it off a bridge into the river, and it was washed out to sea and I died and sharks ate me, and I settled to the ocean floor as shark poop,
any movie I would make after that...
...would still be better than "The Creeping Terror!"
And - as bad as it was and is for all eternity, and I'm still convinced it's worse than anything, worse than "Astro-Zombies" worse than "Wild Women of Wongo," and as for "Attack Of The Killer Tomatoes" hah!
"KT" was written to be bad on purpose, and is actually intentionally funny in places, and it has a real helicopter crash in it, which is really cool. The worst you can say about "KT" is, it is merely incompetent. It is bad, to be sure, but not this bad.
We're talkin' really truly stinkin' horribly bad here,
for which "Creeping Terror" is eminently qualified,
it is in a class by itself.
And here is the amazing thing. Even as bad as it is,
"Creeping Terror" got made, it got finished, and
most incredible of all things in the whole world...
It got DISTRIBUTED!
It's on tv at this very moment, playing somewhere in the world. I tried to rent it for a screening once, and the distribution company quoted me some incredibly high price $3k I think, and they didn't care when I didn't go for it, because it goes out and plays all the time,
and apparently they get their price.
If you think anything is worse, you haven't seen it, or maybe you were stoned. There is a secret brotherhood to those who have seen and enjoyed this unique production.
As Harry wrote me, "Anybody who has seen "The Creeping Terror," and understands it to be the worst film of all time, is a friend for life."
There has to be a bottom to everything, and in my opinion,
"The Creeping Terror" is it!
Sam Longoria
Producer
Hollywood CA USA
http://samlongoria.blogspot.com