OMG!! This is so laughably bad it's ridiculous! And yet, I wouldn't call it one of the worst movies I've ever seen because it's so downright entertaining. When I read that it was one of Stephen King's favorite flicks, that was endorsement enough for me.
Where to start? The acting is non-existent, the monsters are incredibly cheesy, and the dialog is remarkably insipid. How about this line from one of the eventual victims - "Sounds like somebody big walkin' in mud"! For old timers like myself, a big kick is seeing storefronts of businesses that existed back in the Sixties that are no longer around, names like Rexall Drug, Thom McAn Shoes and Cities Service Gas. Admiral TV and Castro Convertible are still around as different business models, and it was a kick reminiscing over all of them.
But the best has to be those goofy monsters from the deep. Coming to life when radioactive waste reanimates human skeletons, the creatures emerge from the sea to raise havoc with the local beach population, an interesting mix of teenage party seekers, slumber party gals, and biker hoods who get into a scrap with the All-American types, all to the musical accompaniment of The Del-Aires with lyrics so bad you have to listen closely to appreciate. My favorite for no other reason than its title had to be The Zombie Stomp, maintaining a very loose connection to the monsters who were literally raised from the dead.
Quite surprisingly, the gore factor was reasonably well done as the party beach horrors mangled their victims, but that was offset by a wonderfully goofy clip of a monster's severed hand from a broken glass window - dry stuffing fell out of it! The funniest though, might have been when two drunks who felt they were cape-ab-able of driving ran their cars into each other!
All in all, this is a fun flick if you can manage to see your way through it. The 3.3 IMDb rating as I write this is pretty fair given its schlock value, but in my case I have to give it a bonus point for the sheer audacity of having a teenage girl changing her own flat tire! Too bad a monster was right around the corner.
Where to start? The acting is non-existent, the monsters are incredibly cheesy, and the dialog is remarkably insipid. How about this line from one of the eventual victims - "Sounds like somebody big walkin' in mud"! For old timers like myself, a big kick is seeing storefronts of businesses that existed back in the Sixties that are no longer around, names like Rexall Drug, Thom McAn Shoes and Cities Service Gas. Admiral TV and Castro Convertible are still around as different business models, and it was a kick reminiscing over all of them.
But the best has to be those goofy monsters from the deep. Coming to life when radioactive waste reanimates human skeletons, the creatures emerge from the sea to raise havoc with the local beach population, an interesting mix of teenage party seekers, slumber party gals, and biker hoods who get into a scrap with the All-American types, all to the musical accompaniment of The Del-Aires with lyrics so bad you have to listen closely to appreciate. My favorite for no other reason than its title had to be The Zombie Stomp, maintaining a very loose connection to the monsters who were literally raised from the dead.
Quite surprisingly, the gore factor was reasonably well done as the party beach horrors mangled their victims, but that was offset by a wonderfully goofy clip of a monster's severed hand from a broken glass window - dry stuffing fell out of it! The funniest though, might have been when two drunks who felt they were cape-ab-able of driving ran their cars into each other!
All in all, this is a fun flick if you can manage to see your way through it. The 3.3 IMDb rating as I write this is pretty fair given its schlock value, but in my case I have to give it a bonus point for the sheer audacity of having a teenage girl changing her own flat tire! Too bad a monster was right around the corner.