Sold as a double bill with William Grefé’s Death Curse of Tartu, this is Florida regional drive-in exploitation at its absolute best. I mean, sure there are plenty of movies where sea creatures rise to the beach to menace near-nude girls, but do any of them have Neil Sedaka* belting out “Do the Jellyfish?”
Shot on the very same Rainbow Springs that were once attacked by the Creature from the Black Lagoon, this starts off hot, with a hand reaching up from the depths of the ocean to murder an innocent young girl who just wants to listen to her radio.
A bunch of college kids — well, one of them is a doctor and his assistant, but come on, this is basically a slasher in the swamps — just want to drink orange drink and make fun of Egon, their host’s helper with the scary face. Why, it’s enough for a man to turn himself into a half-human, half-jellyfish maniac who knows how to use an axe when he isn’t sending an entire armada of Portuguese Man O’ War jellyfish to kill everyone.
And yeah, he does have a giant jellyfish in a tank and a head shaped like one. This is that kind of movie. That kind of awesome movie where the killer has obviously flippers on and a giant inflatable head.
You can get this on the He Came from the Swamp set that Arrow Video just released. It’s available at Diabolik DVD.
*They may have advertised special singing star Neil Sedaka, but they never promised you he’d show up, did they?
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