Curucu: Beast of the Amazon

Curucu, Beast of the Amazon (1956)

Runtime: 75 minutes

Directed by: Curt Siodmak

Starring: John Bromfield, Beverly Garland, Tom Payne, Harvey Chalk, Larri Thomas

From: Universal

This had to be the nadir of the Universal Monster movies. It was a film unknown to me until Vinegar Syndrome Labs released it awhile back. The disc wasn’t picked up by me; rather, a movie that can’t legally be streamed anywhere was found by me at ::site redacted:: and as I wanted to see more 50’s film during Spooky Season this year as it hadn’t really been done the past several years…

Curucu, Beast of the Amazon was set and filmed in Brazil; this provided the few highlights for me. What sunk the picture: the lead of the film had a great name (Rock Dean) but what a chauvinistic jerk he was, a misogynistic pig who upon seeing Beverly Garland as a doctor, notes that “she couldn’t get a man so she settled for a career.” He said this about a doctor! His behavior does not improve from there; he’s a womanizer, constantly condescending towards her, belittling, and was just someone that sucked the life out of the film for me.

To be fair, the plot itself had its issues. A monster (what a goofy-looking costume it was) is terrorizing plantation workers in Brazil—oh yeah, there’s also colonialism involved in seeing a bunch of white A-holes not only bossing around Brazilians, but Brazilians from the Amazonian jungles. Slab Bulkhead… excuse me, Rock Dean is tasked with a trek into the jungles to find this monster while Garland tags along to find one of those miracle cure drugs a la Medicine Man. Expect plenty of stock footage-including that of water buffalos… yes, the animals from Southeast Asia!-and trapsing around the jungle rather than any horror scares.

The film has some moments-like a fun final shot-but when I wasn’t bored, I was irritated by the succubus that was the lead; no offense to the actor (John Bromfield), the character was just grisly death for me. Plenty do like the film at least a little more than me so if you can’t track down the stream like I did, Vinegar Syndrome still has the disc available for purchase. Sometime later this season I’ll view more Universal horror from back in the day-hopefully something more to my tastes.