STING OF DEATH (1966)

[Raffine]

Trailer!
[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kdLFtWsrnM

"This is awful! What else is going to be happening?!?"

A beautiful co-ed and several of her shapely sorority sisters spend spring break at her scientist dad's Everglades retreat. They are joined by his handsome new assistant and a gang of fun-lovin' biology students from the local university. While poking fun at local weirdo Egon and  dancing to a groovy new Neil Sedaka song, little do they suspect their happy-go-lucky vacation is about to be invaded by the horrible jellyfish monster!

Back in the innocent days of mid-sixties Miami, William Grefe' directed a couple of ultra-low budget racing films before turning to nature-gone-amuck horror with STING OF DEATH. His other Sunshine State efforts include DEATH CURSE OF TARTU, STANLEY, and MAKO: JAWS OF DEATH. I actually saw STANLEY, a WILLARD rip-off with snakes, on the big screen! Grefe' also directed that classic IMPULSE, which features a great insane performance by William Shatner.

The jellyfish monster comes close to Ro-Man to being the most ridiculous monster ever to appear in a film. The outfit consists of a muddy wetsuit, a pair of flippers, some colorful strands of rope, and what appears to be an inflated dry cleaner bag over the actor's head. I expected the "monster" to be revealed as someone in costume, but it's really supposed to be a bona fide monster.

The monster is often accompanied by regular jellyfish, which are depicted by inflated Glad bags with touches of Day-Glo paint. The movie has a surprisingly high death count for this kind of film, with just about everybody failing victim to the jellyfish monster and his sandwich bag minions. The song Do the Jellyfish by "Special Singing Guest Star" Neil Sedaka was not a hit.

Definitely worth a look! It comes on as a double bill with DEATH CURSE OF TARTU (which I haven't watched) from Something Weird. Long thought to be a lost film, a mold-covered negative turned up recently. The mold was eventually washed off and the resulting print is almost perfect, with bright, cheery colors acting as a counterpoint to all the death on screen. The commentary by Grefe' is hilarious! There are several good reviews of this out there on the web, which you can find if you use Google. 

[lester1/2jr]

Sting of Death is better than "death curse of tartu".

I'm not a big commentary track guy, but I the commentary on both of these is amazing.  The director is hilarious and, like most b movie directors, totally delusional and more or less full of himself. 

[Raffine]

I still haven't gotten all the way through DEATH CURSE. The pre-credit/credit sequence is really odd, with the mummy apparently coming to life so it can turn the pages revealing the film's credits. That's about as far as I've gotten, I must admit, but I may watch the whole thing just for with the commentary.

Yeah, this disc and many of the Something Weird releases have great commentaries, usually with Frank Henenlotter acting as a sort of host. There are some real gems on the Herschell Gordon Lewis releases.

[lester1/2jr]

does that have a extra feature of a guy who goes to some island with beautiful women?


death curse of tartu is boring, it's like a third rate comic book story.  the commentary he talks about how he would trick the actors into going in the ater by making up facts lke "water mocassins always swim away from people".  Apparently most of where that was filmed is now very high end condo property,  It's a virtually endless swamp in the film. 

It seems to me that if you are Werner Herzog or something like that, you get people saying things about you like you are a genius.  if you are a b movie maker, you have to say them about yourself!