Creature from the Haunted Sea (1961)

Interesting facts

Creature from the Haunted Sea is a 1961 horror comedy movie directed by Roger Corman. Written by Charles B. Griffith, the movie is a parody of spy, gangster, and monster movies, concerning a secret agent, XK150, who uses the name "Sparks Moran" in order to infiltrate a criminal gang commanded by Renzo Capetto, who is trying to transport an exiled Cuban general with an entourage and a large portion of the Cuban treasury out of Cuba. Filmgroup released the movie as a double feature with Devil's Partner.

Production

In 1959, after the completion of The Little Shop of Horrors, Roger Corman assembled a small cast and crew and arrived in Puerto Rico to direct Last Woman on Earth and produce a World War II movie titled Battle of Blood Island. According to Corman, "I had discovered that tax incentives were available if you 'manufactured' in Puerto Rico.

Corman telephoned Charles B. Griffith, who was Corman's main screenwriter, and "told him I wanted to make a comedy-horror movie while I was in Puerto Rico. He had six days to come up with the script. I told him how many actors I had and explained that I couldn't fly any additional cast members in because I just didn't have the budget for it." Corman agreed with Griffith's suggestion that Corman play one of the roles himself.

Griffith wrote a script using the same structure as two earlier Corman pictures he had done, Naked Paradise and Beast from the Haunted Cave, and would use again for another Corman movie, Atlas. "Everything was the same," said Griffith, "The crooks were waiting to get away in an airplane, the gangster’s moll falls for the rented hero and there’s the speech about security; everything was the same. "

He felt he was not being paid enough for the job and decided to punish Corman by writing him a part of Happy Jack Monahan, the most difficult role he could think of, requiring the character to be laughing hysterically in one scene and crying like a baby in the next. "This fellow was a tropical Hamlet," recalls Corman, " crying one moment, laughing the next, going from killer to victim—the works.

Corman claims "Chuck had sent us the script on a Thursday. I read it Thursday night, rewrote sections of it between takes on the set Friday, had it duplicated Friday afternoon, passed it out and rehearsed it Friday, Saturday and Sunday, prepared it on the location on Sunday, and started shooting on Monday."

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