Sting Of Death
(1965)
Director: William
Grefe
Cast: Joe Morrison, Valerie Hawkins, John Vella
Although I have extensively covered a lot of different
genres in my reviews for this web site, there are still some genres
that I have given little to no coverage of. One of them is big budget
epics; the fact that the majority of them are "known" makes them not
qualify for this web site. (I did once have plans to review Inchon,
but when I sat down to watch it I found it overall to be too dull and
mediocre to give me any enthusiasm to write a full-length review.) Then
there are Nigerian movies. I've heard the Nigerians make some wacky
movies on poverty-row budgets, but not only have I not seen any, I have
never seen any place offering them for sale or rent. Somewhat better
than those two examples are my dealings with movies that are considered
so bad they are good. Over the years I have reviewed several examples
of this particular genre - Troll 2,
Little Ninjas, Fantasy Mission Force, The Force On Thunder Mountain, and Robo Vampire are just some of the so
bad they are good movies I have reviewed. But when you compare my
offerings on the genre to those offered by many other B movie review
web sites, you will probably see that my offerings are somewhat short.
Why is that? Why have I not sought out more movies of this kind when I
have proven on those occasions that certain kinds of bad movies can
tickle my funny bone just like they tickle those other movie critics?
Like the time I had to explain why I have not reviewed many
significantly older movies for this web site, I feel that I should go
back to the beginning, when I was a child and I was starting to become
a film addict.
As I explained once before, I grew up in a town that was
pretty much lacking in entertainment. The few Canadian (and American)
television channels that we got in our community, when it came to
movies, would seemingly and exclusively air movies that would be
competently made in nature. And if the movie playing turned out to be
"bad", it was simply bad - no humor to be found anywhere in its
badness. So in my first few years of growing up, I was totally ignorant
about how unintentionally wacky a movie could be. Then one day, when I
was in a book store with my parents, I spotted a copy of the Medved
brothers' book The Fifty Worst Films Of All Time. I thumbed
through the book, and I was intrigued and a little excited by what I
was reading. There were movies out there that were so bad you could
have fun by seeing how ridiculous they were? Eventually the book
vanished from the book store, but the seed had been planted - though
the seed took a while to sprout, and the sprout took a long time to
grow. I was still starved of so-bad-they-are-good movies for years
afterwards, but I started to collect books and magazines so I could at
least read about how funny certain bad movies were. (Including the
Medved books... though their eventual politics and finding that many of
the "bad" movies they claimed were bad were actually competent now has
me turned off by their books.) Then when I was grown up, and in a new
community, I could really start to sample (via new TV stations and VHS
tapes) so bad they are good movies, many of which I had learned about
by my previous years of reading about them.
I am still trying hard to make up for those lost years
of my childhood. I have been trying for a long time to widen my
cinematic vision, and watch all kinds of movies, including those that
are so bad they are good. I think my track record of reviewing
hilariously bad movies is pretty good under those circumstances that I
just wrote about. But there is also another factor to think of - the
vast majority of hilariously bad movies are "known". I can't very well
write a review of Plan 9 From Outer Space for this web
site, because I'm pretty sure you have heard of it, even if you haven't
actually seen it. I have to really dig around into the unknown and hope
I will find a hilariously bad movie you haven't heard of - which
doesn't happen very often. So you can imagine I was excited that I
would have the chance to review a reportedly hilariously bad movie with
this particular B-Masters' roundtable. The movie chosen by the group
was Sting Of Death. It certainly seemed unknown enough -
I have to admit that even I hadn't heard of it before this roundtable.
What got me more excited was when my research of the movie uncovered
the fact that it was directed by the director of Impulse, which I had found to be pretty
unintentionally funny. Another thing that made this movie seem very
promising was that it was filmed in Florida - I have learned over the
years that Florida is a hub for unintentionally funny movies, with
examples including Blood Freak
and Jimmy The Boy Wonder. In
short, I was pretty pumped up before I watched the movie.
Sting Of Death actually begins in a way
that suggests the whole enterprise might be made in a competent way.
What will immediately hit you in the first few seconds of the movie are
its colors; the movie looks bright and vivid, something you usually
don't get in a bad movie like this. (The DVD box says that the print
used for the DVD was transferred from the actual negative.) Then after
those first few seconds have played out, you'll get the first clue that
maybe everything in this movie won't be so competent. What happens? A
hand enters the frame and picks up a screwdriver. But no ordinary hand
- this hand and its arm is best described as one that has been totally
burned and then covered with strands of what appears to be partially
burned red licorice, and with a few burned pizza ingredients like
onions. Meanwhile, a woman apparently nearby is listening to the radio
while sunbathing. The radio station she is listening to is "WFUN" -
whoa, that's hip! Anyway, the radio announcer reads a report on some
missing people in the area. Could this be connected to that creepy hand
we just saw? Is the woman in danger? We soon find out the answer to at
least that second question, when the movie cuts back and forth from the
woman to what I guess we are to assume is that creature whose hand we
saw. Though this time we get to see the bottom part of the monster. The
monster's feet look exactly like black swim fins, and its legs look
exactly like they are covered with wet suit leggings. Dangling in front
of its legs are numerous strands of blue and red licorice that I assume
come from its yet unseen torso and head.
Could it be that we are dealing with some kind of
monstrous mutated scuba diver? You've probably correctly guessed that
we don't get the answer to that yet, and you've probably also correctly
guessed that the monster makes short work of the woman just before the
opening credits pop onscreen. Just as the credits
are ending, we get some underwater shots of a boat making its way
across the surface of the water. These shots were clearly taken at
night. Then all of sudden, when we get a shot of the boat from above
the surface of the water, it's daytime. Anyway, we are introduced to
the passengers of the boat. College student Karen Richardson is being
accompanied by her college friends to her scientist father's island.
Dr. Richardson is with them, along with his assistant John. He explains
to Karen's friends that he and John are working on "sea life and
evolution". He doesn't explain, however, why the wound that's on his
forehead is now the size of a quarter, when it was about the size of a
dime when they were getting off the boat. Just as John tells Karen and
her friends that he has invited some college students over for a party,
they are interrupted by the appearance of Egon, another assistant of
Dr. Richardson. It takes a few seconds to wonder why Karen's friends
seem so shocked, because we don't see Egon's face in the first few
seconds of his appearance. You'll probably be expecting the revelation
to be something horrible, but when his face is revealed, you'll be
wondering why Karen's friends were so shocked. He's not good-looking,
but he really looks little different than the short and grizzled
construction workers in your city.
Despite this, Karen's friends start to tease poor Egon
("Will you be my date for the party?") - and right in front of Karen,
Dr. Richardson and everybody else! Geeze, didn't they teach manners at
their college? Even John gets into this dubious spirit by telling Egon
he scared the girls. Then there's a short scene when the sheriff comes
by with a body he pulled out of the swamp. Egon's theory of jellyfish
being the culprit is quickly dismissed by Dr. Richardson and John - the
poor guy can't get a break, can he? Further proof of this is found
several minutes later when the party guests arrive. When they get one
look at Egon, they chase him, surround him, and create a long sequence
of close-ups of laughing faces and finger-pointing. Egon gets away, and
Karen is pretty upset by their behavior... though for some reason a few
minutes later, she is shown to be joining these rude partygoers in
their dancing and beer-drinking with little reluctance. The party soon
moves outside beside the pool, and everyone starts dancing to Neil
Sedaka... though not one of his famous songs like "Laughter In The
Rain". No, we have what appears to be a song specially written for this
movie. Here's a sample of the lyrics: "Wella, I'm saying fella / Forget
your Cinderella / And do the jella / The jilla-jalla jella! / It's
really swella / To do the jalla Jellyfish! / Monkey, don't be a donkey
/ It's nothing like the Monkey! / It isn't funky or anything that's
junky! / It's something swella! / The jilla-jalla Jellyfish!"
Believe it or not, the whole song is played two and a
half times in this scene. Maybe the producers wanted to get their
money's worth for landing Sedaka... or more likely, it was an attempt
to pad out the running time of the movie. But what's really
unbelievable in this scene is that the monster scuba diver has made its
way into the pool the youths are dancing around - and nobody notices
it. So it's understandable that when one girl decides to go swimming
(in her clothes), she is (eventually) attacked by the monster... though
a hand shoved into the face barely qualifies as being attacked. The
monster does this same "attack" to another partygoer when it surfaces,
then quickly vanishes. Panicking, most of the youths gather one of
their two wounded friends (why not both?) and board their boat so they
can quickly get back to the mainland. But underwater, the monster takes
a hatchet from its belt (which it never had before) and smashes a hole
into the boat. It takes a while for the youths to realize their boat is
sinking, and once it does start sinking, I started to wonder if they
realized like I did that their swamped vessel had suddenly and
magically changed into a completely different looking boat. Once the
youths are in the water splashing about, they are suddenly attacked by
jellyfish (Where did they come from? We didn't see them in the
monster's belt.) Actually, it's the youths that identify them as
jellyfish - to me, they looked more like sandwich bags with pieces of
colored cellophane inside, and with tied pieces of string dangling down
when we see underwater shots of them.
It doesn't take long for the jellyfish to make short
work of the youths... though just how these jellyfish actually kill the
youths is never answered. Anyway, we cut to what seems to be the
monster's underwater lair. We finally get a partial shot of the
monster's head, and it sure looks like some kind of translucent blown
up plastic bag. We get more footage of the creature's feet and lower
legs, and even though the first shot of the movie established that the
monster's skin was black and covered with burnt stuff, we get to see
the creature's ankles in the space between where the wet suit ends and
the swim fins begin, and these ankles look surprisingly flesh-colored.
In an awkward scene that doesn't make clear how the monster makes its
plastic bag head disappear, we find out that the monster is really...
Egon! Now we know the truth. Will Egon succeed in his plans to get rid
of everyone who has laughed at him? Will he manage to get his hands on
the desirable Karen? Will Dr. Richardson's head wound keep changing
size during the second half of the movie? I think that by now you have
a good idea of the answers to those questions, especially if you have
seen a good number of ineptly made movies as I have. It goes without
saying that Sting Of Death is a laugh riot. While I
would not put it up as high as such classics as Troll 2 and the works of Ed Wood - it's
from a merely inept mind, not an insane one - it's still a movie that
bad movie lovers will savor. In fact, I find it hard to believe I
hadn't heard of this movie before. I feel a sting of shame because of
that. Well, I hope informing you of this movie makes up for that
oversight.
Check for availability on Amazon (DVD)
See also: Blood Freak, Impulse, Troll 2
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