MartinHafer "Curucu, Beast of the Amazon" is pretty much what you expect from a movie by this title! Yes, it's cheap, cheesy and pretty silly stuff...and is best for folks who like seeing terrible films.The story begins with one of the silliest looking monsters in film history killing some woman in the Amazonian region. Soon, a burly he-man (John Bromfield) is recruited to find and destroy the monster...and he ends up getting paired up with a head-strong doctor...you know, the feminist sort in the 1950s that talks a good talk but ends up falling for the lunk-head leading man! Along the way, there are a few nice jungle scenes...and some total crap scenes as well where it's obvious they are using old and badly made stock footage. The buffalo charge, in particular, is terrible...and what you'd expect from an ultra-cheapo film like this. The only real surprise is the monster itself....when you learn more about it, it turns out to be a bit of a shocker! But even this isn't enough to make me recommend the film to anyone but masochists like myself who occasionally enjoy a laughably bad movie. By the way, despite what you see in the picture, tarantulas are NOT deadly nor are they particularly poisonous.

GL84 Hoping to quell the fears of superstitious natives, a rancher and a doctor head into the Amazon jungle to find a supposedly awakened demon but learn of a dangerous native tribe lurking in the area and must stop it from spreading.Overall this was a pretty disappointing and thoroughly disappointing effort. What really tends to hold this one down is the fact that there's not a whole lot of time here spent among the confines of the genre, tending to focus far more frequently on the Adventure drama aspects of the story. The majority of the film is simply watching the two and their guide trek through the jungle and commenting on the different animals present in the area which is then shown in stock-footage inserts of the specific species told they're observing only to then be treated to widely different levels of film-stock quality to showcase that. The piranha attack is the most egregious, showing badly-framed underwater footage in black-and-white no less despite the rest of the film being in color from an angle that has nothing to do with what they pointed to but is just clumsily thrown in since it's a piranha attack footage, while shots of the animals brawling and fighting each other tends to dominate the main parts of the film that it's entirely possible to forget there's a creature at the center of the film. That aspect doesn't help the film any further as there's only two attacks by the creature in the entire film and is then twisted around into another storyline thread which is dropped off the film quite easily and early which is quite troubling and again makes it hard to believe this was supposed to be a horror effort all along. These here make this one quite hard to get into as a horror film, despite having a fairly decent amount of stuff about it. Despite only being seen twice, each of the attacks aren't all that bad and manage to get some mild suspense from them as the creature stalking them in the jungle before jumping out to launch the surprise attack makes for a few decent times here. Likewise, the film also manages to get some decent mileage out of the fantastic brawl at the end as the two rival Indian tribes get into action and begin fighting each other in a fairly large-scale scene, from the fire-laced huts and the hand-to-hand brawling and the long-range battles with the spears and arrows coming into play to make a fine action scene that's quite exciting. Even still, that also plays more into it's Adventure setting that it tends to wash away the positives here and aligns this more as a flaw here.Today's Rating/PG: Violence.

twanurit Having not seen this picture in almost twenty years, it's not on video, and rarely, if ever, re-shown on television, one can understand why. It's a wretched mess. Filmed in color on location in Brazil, Beverly Garland plays a doctor in the Amazon who learns that if the local headhunters can shrink heads that maybe the formula can be used to shrink cancer cells for the cure. Interrupting her potential medical breakthrough is a legendary monster that is killing the natives as she accompanies hunter John Bromfield in the search. Anyone expecting a real beast will be gravely disappointed. The insipid musical score detracts from the creepy goings-on; it's poorly directed with abysmal special effects. The jungle cliches are in abundance, with Bromfield making a play for the un-receptive (at first) Garland. Check out the tent scene wherein the beast creeps up on her - she screams before even getting a good look at her intruder. Some of the scenery is beautiful, but can not save this dreary disaster. Last scene is freaky.

BaronBl00d "Like nothing you have ever seen" states the tagline for this film, and it is accurate beyond belief. This film is beyond description in many ways. The story details how a plantation owner and a doctor go up the Amazon in search of a Head-shrinking tribe and a mythical beast. The beast looks incredibly inept and totally silly, as is the plot for this film. The leads are horrible, particularly Beverly Garland as the sassy doctor out to always prove herself. Her expressions, not to mention her screams, are enough reason to see the film. I cannot remember laughing so hard at a film. Although the settings are genuine, the folksy South American tune in the background throughout most of the film only serves to belittle any real tension the film might have provided. The direction is poor and the camerawork even poorer. One sequence in particular, when Garland and male lead "Rock" run up a tree to avoid being trampled by a herd of water buffaloes is a real hoot! The scenes were laid on top of each other and just look so idiotic. A great film to ridicule with friends or just for private laughs!