Touches You

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

People say that "The Giant Claw", "Plan 9 from Outer Space", and similar films represent Grade Z movies and are among the worst ever. Well, those films are great works of cinematic art compared to "The Creeping Terror" which, if it's not the worst movie ever made, is pretty close.The plot--such as it is--involves the landing of an alien spacecraft with two monsters aboard. One of the monsters, which resembles a hairy, lumpy carpet with a kind of head, gets loose and is soon ingesting all the humans it encounters. The military (unsuccessfully) attacks it before finally destroying it with hand grenades, while the local law enforcement and a "concerned scientist" looks on. Not to worry, though--another monster takes its place. The ending poses the question "can earth be saved?", and I was beginning to wonder the same thing by that point.The interesting thing is that the creeping terror monster is so slow and awkward that it shouldn't really be able to catch any humans at all. Anyone who walks normally would be able to escape it, but it consumes everyone at a dance hall, a woman hanging her laundry, and several soldiers. The soldiers all bunch together and charge the monster from the front (it eats people using some kind of mouth) but alas, they're almost all gobbled up. Wow.The movie has no dialogue, only ominous narration throughout. The only really recognizable actor is William Thourlby, who was once a Marlboro Man and later provided Richard Nixon with fashion advice. The movie actually is rather enjoyable if you want to watch something with almost zero production values, no dialogue, and the most preposterous monster ever captured on film. Don't expect anything good, but it's entertaining in a sort of perverse way.

When I watched this movie for the first and only time I didn't realize it was made in 1964, I thought it had to be from the 50's. I mean you have a narrator for goodness sakes and it is in black and white. The creeping terror is so slow moving I can't see why anything, let alone a human, would end up as prey, well snail or a turtle maybe. Plus there is the factor of alien biology and chemical compatibility between the two species. This monster looks like a precursor to the Swiffer at it's bottom. The alien who drags it out looks like a very bad Sponge Bob Square Pants. Also if you are a space faring race why are you transporting monsters? To a zoo or some park? zi mean why are these kind of movies even made?????

I have heard somewhere that an important rule in film making is "show, don't tell" but the people who made this seems to have gotten it backwards because this i a clear case of tell, don't show, so much so that the narrator is even telling us the dialog of the characters. I barely consider this to be a film, its is more akin to an audio book, with some moving pictures in the background. What makes it even worse is that the narrator explains more or less all the things that could be inferred from the action or said in dialog, but does not explain some things that are less than self evident.Other than that, the movie is slow paced, poorly executed and rather silly, just like many other monster movies from the 60's. Normally, a movie like that would at least end up in the so-bad-it's-funny category but the overuse of narration makes this thing thoroughly frustrating to watch.

There's no denying it: this is indeed a terrible, terrible movie. Director / star Vic Savage blunders his way through this hall of infamy turkey in memorable fashion. It moves just as slowly as its title monster, and when I say slowly, I mean that the Mummy could easily overtake this thing. And since the monster - with its oddly suggestive looking mouth - can't do much of anything on its own, its nubile young victims pretty much have to willingly climb inside the thing! It arrives on Earth in a crashed saucer, and the local authorities - including a young, newlywed deputy (Savage himself) - bumble and fumble along while always remaining way behind our lethargic creature. Even at 77 minutes long, the viewer can REALLY feel the padding on this silly, silly production - for example, it's a '60s movie, so there's gotta be some dancing. The music score, mostly consisting of an organ, may well bring tears to the audiences' eyes, it's that bad. The acting? Just as abysmal as one could expect. In any event, it must be said that the stories of the making of "The Creeping Terror" are more interesting than the movie itself! Viewers can hardly fail to notice that most of the soundtrack consists of narration - ridiculous, priceless narration. Stories conflict - either the audio to the movie was lost or it was never properly recorded in the first place - so alternate takes were used. Cast members apparently had to buy their way into the movie, to help fund it! And, supposedly, a better looking monster had been built but stolen, so the filmmakers were forced to improvise something new. That's not to leave out the fact that Savage, by some accounts, was a pretty sleazy character. Admittedly, this may be nothing but garbage if you look at it objectively, but still, if you do have a soft spot in your heart but such cinematic abominations, it does have a certain Bad Movie Charm going for it. It would be impossible not to laugh at it at least some of the time. Five out of 10.