The most amazing thing about this movie ‘Creature’ is that I saw it in a theater. How The Bubble Factory, this film’s distributor, pulled this off is beyond me since I thought at this day and time, movies like ‘Creature’ started and ended life on DVD. Heck, ‘Creature’ probably could’ve started its life on Crackle.com and I don’t think anyone would’ve batted an eye. The producers need to write a book, for other future film makers to read, on how to get your completely run of the mill, sub-mediocre, completely tired movie a national theatrical distribution deal. I know I’d read it and I’m not even a filmmaker.

Scene One: some chick gets buck-ass naked in a swamp to go for a swim. She gets eaten by a gator which I guess is what should happen when one goes for a skinny dip in a gator infested swamp. I’m not exactly certain what this scene has to do with anything in this movie outside of letting us know that this is the first of many titties that we will be seeing in this film.

Now we are introduced to our young adults on holiday. To the swamp. Actually I think they are going to Vegas or someplace but our navigator Oscar (Dillon Casey) knows a ‘short cut’. To any young adults reading this, if a friend of yours knows a ‘short cut’ to a heavily populated area, considering the freeway system was essentially designed as a short cut, he’s probably up to no good. Regardless, we’ve already met Oscar, then there’s Oscar’s slutty sister Karen (Lauren Schneider), Oscar’s friend and U.S. Marine Randy (Aaron Hill), Randy’s prudish girlfriend Beth (Amanda Fuller), Randy’s hot sister Emily (Serinda Swan) and Emily’s man, the U.S. Special Forces Marine Delta Force Super Badass Niles (Mechad Brooks). I’m thinking those skills are going to come in handy down the line.

In case you think ‘Creature’ might miss a horror movie cliché, don’t worry because now our heroes decide to stop at one of those horror movie gas stations populated by backwoods weirdoes. Chief among these weirdoes is the gas station proprietor named Chopper (Sid Haig) who has a mini museum in his establishment based on the some

swamp monster legend, and he has directions on where this alleged swamp monster used to live. Let’s go there! But what’s the history behind the swamp monster? In another classic horror movie cliché, one of characters knows all about the history of the swamp monster. It’s involved but it basically has something to with this cat sexing up his sister, and then eating the alligator that ate her, thus making him into a swamp monster. It happens.

Allrightythen, time to set up camp, pitch some tents, walk in the woods, drink, hit the blount, have lesbian sex, have regular sex, have incestual sex, get hoodwinked, bamboozled, led astray, get attacked by the monster, get raped by monster, get gored by the monster and then hope like hell that we have a special forces Delta Force badass nearby, with a bullet in his leg, who can save the few that are left. Oh would you look over there?

First allow me to say that I admire ‘Creature’. Not the movie itself, oh good heavens no… but the fact that the company behind it circumvented the studio system and got this movie in theaters, since I’m completely down with anarchy and sticking it to The Man. If only it were a better movie, which meant that just me and two of my close personal friends who I’ve never met were in this empty theater watching this mess. And The Man wins again, slapping us down and letting us know that he cannot be defeated.

There are so many things wrong in writer / director Fred Andrews’s movie… Yes, it’s a tired, well worn, overused horror movie plot filled with clichés, but yet it still somehow managed to have gaping plot holes, possessed a wayward, meandering plot, and was filled with elements that made absolutely no sense to me. We appreciate a monster that features some nutjob in a rubber suit, but we’d appreciate it more if this monster did more than just hideout in the woods and look at people. We appreciated the fact that pretty much every actress in this film got naked, but… okay, so I can’t think of anything particularly bad about that, but this doesn’t mean I liked the movie.

If one is going to make a movie about a slimy monster raping women for reproductive purposes, while slaughtering the dudes, a good case study for how this should be done would be the Roger Corman produced classic ‘Humanoids from the Deep’. ‘Creature’ wimped out on us, which is surprising considering the type of movie this is, by cutting away from the gory kills and completely avoiding our monster raping people. At this point and time, I’m sorry to say, simply showing naked chicks isn’t risky filmmaking. For a movie like ‘Creature’ to pick up some steam, considering the lack of marketing budget and the fact that Will Smith and Brad Pitt declined to be in it, this movie needs to do something that’s going to get people talking about it. While I don’t want to see a slimy monster rape a chick, ask anybody who saw ‘Humanoids’, that’s one of the things that the viewer will tell you they remember, and that was thirty years ago. This movie needed to be more violent, more shocking, and less formulaic. The few things that were reasonably unique about this rote film is that the Black Guy didn’t get it first, he also got shot in the leg and apparently the filmmakers completely forgot about that, and at no point did a character whip out a cell phone, only to find out they had no service. This we are thankful for.

The word is that ‘Creature’ just might be the least successful theatrically released movie ever. In the history of everything. And I saw it. Rejoice people who trekked to the theater to see ‘Creature’, we are in a unique and special club.