You know that sad feeling when a movie that you thought was really cool and scary as a child turns out to be not quite as great as you remember? Here’s a prime example, although it still works for me. Nothing associated with Mario Bava could be a total wash, and this movie has a lot to recommend it. It is certainly different in tone from other contemporary horrors, with some tense moments and scary effects (courtesy of Bava).
Tagline: “Stripping Flesh From Bone…Creeping, Multiplying, Devouring…Hungry For The Blood of a World!” This is a movie rich in taglines (also see poster):
- “None Can Stop It! Nothing Can Kill It! The Ever Growing Thing!”
- “Crawling, Crushing Colossus of Terror!”
- “Will the First Life on Earth Be the Last Terror of Mankind?”
- “The more it DIES…the more it LIVES…the more it KILLS!”
WTF Factor: ***
Notable Dialogue:
- Inspector: “What is it?”
- Policeman: “Inspector, that man was right! The garden in there is full of enormous monsters.”
- Inspector: “I know.” [How?]
Notable credit:
“Screenplay by Philip Just “da un’antica leggenda popolaire Messicana” [from a popular ancient Mexican legend].” One wonders if Mexicans are familiar with it.
Synopsis: A narrator expositions about the Mayan culture of Tikal, rich in mathematics and astronomical knowledge. We are told that in 607 AD, the Mayans abandoned their cities and migrated north; the reason remains unknown. Then we see a volcano erupt. The Mayan descendants believe that their ancestors fled the wrath of the vengeful goddess Caltiki. Roll credits, with the same quick shot of volcanic sparks shown over and over again underneath.
We see a man fleeing a cave, casting shadows on the backdrop.
Nieto (Arturo Dominici; soon to be Javuto in Black Sunday (1960)) reaches camp and collapses. His partner Ulmer is missing and Nieto is in shock. He keeps calling out, “The mummy! Caltiki!” Dr. John Fielding (John Merivale, who was living with actress Vivien Leigh at the time), Max Gunther (Gerard Haerter, in his film debut), and Bob (Daniele Vargas) go to investigate. Bob has no last name, so he’s probably doomed. John’s wife Ellen (Didi Sullivan) tends to Nieto.
The men reach a grotto filled with Mayan inscriptions. A new opening in the wall leads to stairs downward. There they find a deep pool emanating radiation, along with a sculpture of Caltiki. They believe this is where Mayans sacrificed victims to the goddess. They find Ulmer’s video camera, and as they are leaving, we see a recently mummified corpse, although they don’t.
Bob develops the video footage; something bad and off-camera happens to Ulmer while filming. Now it’s time for the requisite 1950’s native dance.
Ellen is unhappy with John, who is always working. She plans to return to Mexico City tomorrow and they have a loud argument. Max listens in and then hits on Ellen when she comes out for a smoke. Ellen is not pleased. Linda (Daniela Rocca), Max’s lover, taunts Max for being turned down. Max says he won’t marry someone like Linda, a “half-breed.” Nice guy, that Max. Bob gets caught watching the dance. Now we know he’s doomed.
Ellen apologizes to John, who sends her and Linda back to Mexico City the next day anyway. Bob dons underwater equipment tied to a rope [this is before the use of buoyancy devices for scuba diving]. The deep bottom of the pool is covered with skeletons and gold jewelry. Bob grabs a few pieces and then comes up to tell the others about the gold. Bob insists on going back down with a sack to collect some of the loot, then something attacks Bob in the pool. When they pull him up, his face is eaten away.
A giant blob surfaces from the pool and rolls toward them. Max runs back to grab the bag of gold and the blob seizes his arm. John cuts him loose along with a piece of the blob. John then crashes a gas truck into the crevice with the monster and everything blows up and burns real good.
In Mexico City the doctors perform surgery to remove the blob from Max’s arm. Apparently they’ve never heard of anesthetic either, judging from the sounds Max is making. The arm is eaten away to the bone.
John studies the organism and discovers it is part of a single cell. Professor Rodriguez (Vittorio André) and his assistant use a machine that goes beep to determine the age of the material; It’s 20 million years old! The news makes all the papers.
John briefs a scientific gathering and proposes that the monocellular organism is Caltiki. He translates one of the Mayan inscriptions:
“Caltiki is one and immortal. When her bridegroom comes from the sky, the power of Caltiki will destroy the world.”
John and Ellen live in a fancy villa with daughter Jenny. John sets up a piece of Caltiki in his study.
Meanwhile, Max is not feeling so hot. John visits Max, who asks how Nieto is. John lies and says fine, but Max realizes he’s dead [from being scared?]. Max’s face is disfigured in addition to his arm. The doctor tells John that Max’s skin is mummified and there is poison being released into his bloodstream. In time, he says, Max may go mad. Max is eavesdropping on the conversation and he is not pleased with where this is headed.
John is researching possible cures, then a light bulb goes off. Caltiki may be related to the same radiation that they detected at the pool. He takes part of the organism to the research lab to consult with Professor Rodriguez and leaves the rest of the sample at home. They bombard the specimen with radioactive energy, and Caltiki grows. John suspects that radiation will also allow Caltiki to multiply.
Max is having paranoid delusions, and he tells Linda that he is pissed off at Ellen and everyone else.
Hours later, Max murders a nurse and escapes the hospital. Meanwhile Linda tells Ellen that Max is ashamed of her. Ellen tells Linda that she should leave Max, because he’s not a good guy. No kidding. The doctor calls the house and summons Ellen since John isn’t home. Linda is horrified to see the body of the nurse.
The police are searching for Max, who is one step ahead of them. He’s even ready to kill a child who is called away from his hiding spot at the last moment.
That night Max sneaks into the villa. John is summoned to the research facility because the piece of Caltiki is inexplicably growing. He tells them to set fire to the lab in order to stop it. John rushes to the scene, while Max disables the villa phone line.
Meanwhile the professor consults an astronomer to find out if there were any known astronomical events in the year 607. Why yes, there was, as a matter of fact. The comet Arsinoë briefly appeared in the sky. The Mayans considered the comet evil because of the radiation. [How the Mayans detected the radiation, I don’t know.] As it turns out, the comet is coming back tonight. The professor tries to call John with a warning but the phone is out. The professor then crashes his car on the way to the villa. Meanwhile the research lab is totally destroyed.
Jenny says she saw a bad man in the house, but Ellen reassures her. Ellen checks the house and sees Linda with a heaping tray of food. Linda says she’s hungry.
Guess who eats the pile of sandwiches. Max threatens to kill Linda if she gives him up. At this point the organism in the study is pulsating.
John is at the destroyed lab when the professor’s assistant arrives and tells John that the professor went to warn him about the comet. John finally remembers the Caltiki fragment that he took home. We now see it growing and dividing.
Ellen investigates the sound of broken glass and Max confronts her. Things are looking bad for Ellen, but she breaks free. She finds Linda, who tries to talk Max down and protect Ellen. In response Max shoots Linda.
There are lots of little Caltiki blobs now. Max investigates the noises from the lab because he thinks it’s John. A Caltiki grabs him and that’s the end of Max. Ellen runs and grabs Jenny. Several blobs are heading upstairs.
John crashes a police roadblock and is arrested. Meanwhile Ellen and Jenny climb around a ledge outside the house. Caltiki spreads into the garden. The police inspector doesn’t buy John’s story of a monster at the villa. John breaks out and heads home.
The house is being torn apart. The army converges on the villa just as John arrives [who alerted them?]. There are little Caltikis everywhere outside and indoors. The police shoot at the blobs with no effect. The army arrives and also shoots at the blobs. John tells them to use flamethrowers and the flames drive the blobs back. Ellen and Jenny are in an upper window now and Caltiki is breaking the door down. John finds a ladder but once they are out, John sees a Caltiki blob at the foot of the ladder. He pushes off the ladder from the building and they vault over the blob to safety. Now the flamethrowers move in big time.
There is one giant Caltiki left so it’s time to bring in the toy tanks. The villa is toasted to the ground. John intones, “Caltiki is destroyed forever.” The End.
Thoughts: As a (sort of) grownup, it’s easy to note the wooden characters and lapses in budget. And yet, I still have a fondness for Caltiki, The Immortal Monster. It is paced reasonably well, with an exciting beginning and finale, and the mundane but short middle section isn’t too painful. Gerard Haerter makes an appropriately scummy human monster; his appearances are enough to make anyone queasy, even before he meets the monster. Unfortunately we are not all that involved with his planned victims, none of whom are particularly sympathetic, except for Max’s mistress, Linda.
As with any foreign low budget movie, it can be difficult to judge quality from a poorly dubbed print. I watched both a dubbed version and the Italian language version with subtitles. As usual, I recommend the subtitled version; the action is straightforward so you don’t miss much, and at least the voices come closer to following the actors’ mouths (although the synchronization is not perfect; the three leads are British, German, and Italian, after all). One dealbreaker for me in the dubbed version was Max’s voice, which is squeaky and non-threatening.
Of course, any monster movie lives or dies by their monster and how it is handled. Caltiki is front and center for a good piece of the movie, and its effectiveness seems dependent on the lighting. In bright light, it looks like a ropy rag, but it is much more effective in the low light scenes in the grotto and villa. Caltiki herself is actually made of tripe (cow stomach, pictured below). Apparently there was a big problem on set with the tripe becoming, shall we say, ripe over time. The presence of flies was a major problem for filming, because the monster was mostly shown on miniature sets, and this isn’t a movie about monster flies.
The big controversy surrounding this movie is the question of who deserves directing credit. The movie credits Robert Hamton, a pseudonym for Riccardo Freda. Mario Bava is listed as Director of Cinematography and Special Effects. However, there is disagreement over whether Bava should be credited as at least the co-director, if not the director. People who were on the set have widely differing accounts of who did what and when. There is agreement that Bava handled the effects shots and miniature work. It is also agreed that Freda walked off the picture at some point before it was finished. Freda has said that he left the set early so that his friend Bava would have a chance to direct his first movie. Others claim that Freda did not walk away until the movie was at the editing stage and only missing some of the miniature shots (which Bava would have directed in any case). Most of the participants are no longer with us, so what really happened is likely to remain a mystery.
There is no denying that Bava’s touch is all over the movie, not surprising given the pervasive presence of the monster at the beginning and end. Some of the middle scenes are flat and uninspired, and it’s not hard to imagine that these were directed by someone other than Bava. We probably need to be content with calling this a co-production from Freda and Bava; one that acts as a harbinger for the soon-to-come Black Sunday (1960), which is indisputably Bava’s work.
In short, this movie is more effective than your average low budget horror movie, and I recommend it, especially with subtitles.
Quick bits:
- In real life, the Mayans migrated north about 300 years later than 607 AD. Maybe that wasn’t known at the time of the movie. I’m not sure why they wanted to be so specific about the year anyway.
- The plastic toy tanks at the end would be more convincing if they didn’t bounce around so much.
- Mario Bava made a rare, uncredited cameo in the scene where John escapes the police station.
Suggested double feature: The Blob (1958) for an American take on the same theme, or the 1988 version of The Blob if you would like something more gruesome (and modern).
Tagline for Coming Attraction: “A tidal wave of slithering, slimy horror devouring, destroying all in its path!”
