Irvin Berwick on AllMovie

Director/producer (and sometime screenwriter) Irvin Berwick's career came at the tail-end of the old Hollywood B-movie era, beginning with The Monster of Piedras Blancas (1957). A distant offshoot of Creature From the Black Lagoon in theme and origins, the latter also proved to be Berwick's most distinctive film. Strangely enough, although it was a horror film and a monster movie, this and his next film, The Seventh Commandment (a crime and blackmail drama with a subtext of amnesia that was vaguely reminiscent of classic film noir), were the closest that Berwick came to mainstream movie-making. His later movies dealt with more lurid subjects of sexual servitude and serial murderers. As a director, Berwick was probably a match for Roger Corman circa 1958, but lacked his better-known rival's subsequent sophistication, ambition, prolificacy, and luck.