Review of Spawn of the Slithis

"Spawn of the Slithis" is another ultra-cheap, badly dated and utterly goofy late 70's toxic swamp monster movie. They were quite numerous back in those days, as eco/environmental horror was a popular trend, but the vast majority of these flicks are awful beyond belief. They generally feature cheesy rubber monster costumes, amateur ensemble casts, absurdly grotesque scientific monologues that the writers didn't understand themselves and hilariously inept make-up effects. These films, and "Spawn of the Slithis" is a wondrous example, are insufferable for viewers with a minimum of good taste, but quite amusing for bad B-movie lovers. Nuclear waste leaking into a river slowly develops into an entirely new life form that spontaneously begins to terrorize the dimwit villagers of a small community called Venice Beach. The local school teacher slash amateur journalist investigates the cover-up conspiracy, for some reason against the will of his yummy girlfriend, but never really gets anywhere. "Spawn of the Slithis" is exceptionally slow, cheap and boring. I wouldn't even fully dare to recommend it even to the most trained and tolerant horror movie fanatics. There's for example a sequence with two homeless guys that goes on forever and ever! Basically they are just random victims for the toxic monster, so nobody is interested in their redundant conversations and quests for alcohol. The only murders we properly get served are preceded by an inexcusably long introduction sequence of an old playboy and his young mistress. They meet at a turtle race track (!), have an overlong and pointless conversation in their convertible, head out to a private yacht, meet up for a friendly chat with the neighbor and organize a cute make-out session in front of his obnoxious self portrait. Then, and only then, the monster pops up to do some nasty killing! The monster outfit, obviously inspired by "Creature from the Black Lagoon", is fairly cool and scary, but apparently the screenplay prefers to elaborate on the pitiable lives of his victims. Shame, as this could have been a genuine guilty pleasure like "Prophecy" or "Humanoids from the Deep".