Creature has quite the story to tell -- and it has nothing to do with the film's plot. This B-movie, financed and released by legendary producer Sid Sheinberg (the man who famously hired Steven Spielberg to direct Jaws), went down in history as the lowest-grossing film ever to be released in over a thousand theaters. Creature's demise is fascinating not only for its failed marketing strategy, but that a flick this shoddy could actually make it to any theaters in the first place. This ludicrous man-in-rubber-suit outing comes complete with gratuitous boobs, a bit of blood, and a whole mess of stupid. Creature, to its credit, is as nutty as a fruitcake.
This swamp stinker joins an esteemed lineage of terror-in-the-muck movies such as Swamp Thing, Man-Thing, and 2005's Venom -- all of which feature zero budgets with a sliding scale of competence (also included are the two Hatchet films, which sport their own mix of gore and love-it-or-hate-it comic tendencies). This time, a cursed group of college students are terrorized by Grimley, a half-man/half-crocodile creature whose ancestors appease him by leaving well-endowed sacrifices to satiate his carnal desires (it's true). The way that the townspeople go about doing this is kind of confusing (just how does the inbred heritage figure into it again?), but the film's so chock-full of ineptitude that the plot is the least of its worries.
Starring is True Blood's Mehcad Brooks, whose scenes with his main squeeze go on for far too long, as if they were attempting to inject some sort of drama into the mix (silly actors!). Otherwise, genre veteran Sid Haig gets a bunch of juicy screen time, yet not as much as Grimley himself, as played by C-level action star Daniel Bernhardt (of Future War and The Matrix Reloaded). When he's not trudging along the swamp in his rubbery suit, the muscleman manages to wrestle a fake white crocodile and act pervy with a woman playing his sister. Recommended for kitschy horror geeks in need of a new fix, Creature is not at all good, but it's probably more fun than many of the films that break the other end of the box-office records.