If you want to know what kind of movie entertainment could be made for no money in the Florida Everglades in the 1960s, here’s your best bet. Apparently it didn’t require competent actors, but airboats were a must. There’s nothing else quite like this one. It’s hard to believe this was released the same year as Dracula Prince of Darkness.
Tagline: “Special Singing Guest Star NEIL SEDAKA!”
WTF Factor: ****
Notable Dialogue:
- John [examining large welts on a dead man]: That’s what we don’t understand, Bob. It’s too big, much too big to be the sting of a small tentacle.
- Egon: I tried to tell you it is possible, doctor, for them to get that big…
- John: Egon fancies himself quite a biologist. For a long time now, he’s been trying to convince us that it’s possible to cultivate a giant man o’ war.
- Sheriff (Bob): Well, is it possible?
- Egon: It is, I know it. Nobody will listen to me. But I know it is.
- Richardson: No, it isn’t, Bob. Not by any method we know. They never get bigger than eight inches across.
Disclaimer: First things first, as a science person: While the movie (and reviewers) discuss monster jellyfish, the Portuguese man o’ war is not a jellyfish, but a colony of organisms. That said, I will continue to use the term jellyfish as in the movie.
Synopsis: We start out with a bang [literally] when a creature’s arm reaches out and makes a radio explode with a cartoon [literally] bang.
We cut to a bikini cutie sunning on a dock, while creature feet [diving fins] shuffle through the woods and into the water. The monster pulls the woman down and then drags her corpse away by the hair under the credits.
A boat arrives on the island with Dr. John Hoyt (Joe Morrison) and his mentor Dr. Richardson (Jack Nagle), with Richardson’s daughter Karen (Valerie Hawkins) and four friends wearing business casual with white gloves [???].
Dr. Richardson says the island solitude is necessary for his research. He and John are marine biologists working on “sea life and evolution.” Karen notes a bloody bump on her dad’s forehead [we will watch this highly noticeable lesion get smaller, larger, and everything in between over the next hour]. They wonder why Ruth [apparently the creature’s previous victim] didn’t meet the boat.
John says they’ve invited a group of biology students from the university for a party that afternoon. Suddenly Egon (John Vella), who is weird AF, appears and freaks out the visitors. He does odd jobs on the island for Dr. Richardson. Immediately one of the women, Louise, teases him, which upsets Karen. Apparently she is rather fond of Egon; he sure likes her, but clearly in a different way. Egon is very sensitive to teasing because of his mild facial distortion.
The sheriff arrives by boat. Richardson hopes he has information about their stolen equipment, but instead he has the body of a missing fisherman. He shows it to the scientists and asks what happened to him.
John say the welts look like they were made by a huge Portuguese man o’ war, but that’s impossible, right? Richardson agrees. However, Egon has been trying to convince them that they can grow a giant man o’ war. The scientists scoff at this notion [hmm]. John suggests the pathologist look for venom in the victim’s wounds.
The women change into their swimsuits and go-go outfits while Karen and John flirt.
Dr. Richardson goes to check the hatchery while the party gets underway. When Karen is alone, Egon sneaks up on her [This guy totally lacks a sense of personal space]. He is eager to show her his own experiment out in the swamp. A boat of rowdy “seniors and grad students” arrive, littering the swamp as they go [most of them look thirty-ish]. Everyone starts frenzied dancing on the dock, while we get the first of many, many female butt shots.
Egon watches in amusement, until one of the guys notices him.
Jerk [in keeping with a pirate theme]: “There he is, there’s the blackguard. He tried to disguise himself as a man. Grab him.”
Egon runs but falls by the pool, while the entire gang surrounds him, Lord of the Flies-style, and taunts him. Karen objects and the crowd turns on her too.
Egon manages to break away with the crowd in pursuit and gets away in an airboat. John and Karen berate the crowd, which really doesn’t care and congas back to the house.
John apologizes to Karen for his friends.
Karen: “I know they mean well. It’s just that they don’t consider his feelings.” [Way to normalize cruelty, Karen.]
Meanwhile the creature goes into the pool just as the partiers arrive, but no one seems to notice the intrusion. God help us all, here comes “The Jellyfish Song” [also known as “Do the Jellyfish”], by Neil Sedaka. Everyone does a different dance, while the cameraman, tired of regular butt shots, also gives us upside down butt shots. We get to hear the whole, prolonged song on record [Neil Sedaka does not actually appear].
Dr. Richardson returns in alarmingly short shorts and black socks, while Louise decides to take a swim in the pool. Guess who’s waiting, although no one notices anything wrong until after Louise is mauled pretty good. The creature gets out of the pool and scares everyone, lashes the lead partier with his tentacles, then disappears into the swamp.
The partiers are taking Ben to the hospital by boat, while we see the creature underwater with an ax. The boat is zooming along and apparently the creature can keep up with it. Suddenly the engine stops and water starts pouring into the boat. They’re surrounded by jellyfish!
Carnage ensues as everyone goes into the water with the creature and the jellyfish. Mostly it’s actors treading water and looking around at each other. Everybody dies, though.
Meanwhile, Richardson gives John a gun and goes to fix the radio. The creature goes to a cave, and reveals itself to be…gosh, who do you think?
John and Richardson will be going scuba diving in the morning to check their breeding traps. Jessica and Donna ask to go along. Meanwhile, Karen and John flirt some more.
Karen: “It’s raining.”
John: “It fits our mood…”
Karen: “Is it impossible to fall in love with all that’s happened?”
John: “Very possible.”
The diving group goes out on the airboat in the morning. It feels like a long trip [especially when they clearly go around the same circuit more than once].
They stop at the research station where Egon lives and go looking for Egon to bring him back to the house. The creature watches Donna go back to the boat for her cigarettes. [Smoking kills.] She’s so intent on smoking that she doesn’t notice the creature until he is about 5 feet away. She runs right through the middle of the swamp water to escape the creature, but finally gives up. We get our first, unfortunate look at the head of the creature, which appears to be an inflated clear plastic bag over someone’s head.
The others clearly hear screaming but ignore it until it stops. They eventually find Donna’s scarf and go diving to investigate. Jessica lags behind and the creature gets her, while the men swim on, oblivious.
Back at the house, one of the other women, Susan, decides to take a shower, with the creature in the bedroom. She doesn’t notice the creature right outside of the shower [clearly she didn’t see Psycho] and the creature gets her. Karen sleeps through the prolonged screams until she is awakened by John and her father, who tell her they need to evacuate the island. Karen finds Susan’s body and runs out of the house, hysterical, only to be intercepted by Egon. It turns out that their boat has sunk, their airboat is out of gas, and Egon says his airboat is not there. John gives Egon the gun while he and Richardson try to fix the radio.
Egon is flat out putting the moves on Karen.
Egon: “You like me, don’t you, Miss Karen?”
Karen: “Yes, Egon. Stay away.” [No wonder the poor guy is confused.]
Egon confesses that the others were no good and he took care of them. Karen finally buys a clue and faints. Egon loads her onto his hidden airboat and takes off, while John and Richardson take off after them in the airboat with no gas [??]. Lots of Everglades scenery ensues, accompanied by bongos. The scientists almost catch up with Egon but then their motor goes dead. Finally they jiggle a few wires and it starts again.
Egon arrives at his destination and tenderly dumps Karen into the water. He then grabs her and pulls her down and then up into a grotto adorned with flowers and skulls. Karen’s honor looks to be in grave danger for a bit, and Egon is not happy with Karen’s rejection. He tells her that he has achieved what he said he would with his experiment. He has bred giant Portuguese man o’ wars in a tank.
Egon: All the bright marine biologists said they couldn’t be grown. But I found the answer: seawater, electricity, and human blood, mixed with a chemical that I stole from your father’s lab.
Egon says he can do other things as well. He backs this up by sticking his face in the aquarium.
He comes up looking like this:
A little electricity and he’s ready to rock. Meanwhile, John and Richardson find Egon’s stopping point and John dives in. Egon transforms completely and goes after Karen. John surfaces in the grotto and squares off with the fully revealed creature.
They go ‘round and round and round to little effect. John appears to be impervious to the tentacles. Finally he dunks his flare into the aquarium. The creature collapses and the equipment starts to smoke. Karen tries to get Egon to come with them but John finally drags her away as the grotto explodes. The End.
Thoughts: This regional B movie from South Florida is a good representative of the thriving independent movie industry in the 1960s, when the demand for creature double features for regional theaters and drive-ins was high. Sting of Death was released to drive-ins in 1966 on a successful double bill with Death Curse of Tartu, also directed by William Grefé. Grefé directed more than a dozen movies in Florida, including the better-known Stanley (1972), Impulse (1974, with William Shatner!!), and Mako: The Jaws of Death (1976). Sting of Death was one of his early efforts and none of his other monster movies exhibits the imaginative flair of his jellyfish man.
Grefé’s direction is certainly better than the wooden cast. The exteriors in the movie were all done in Everglades National Park and the interiors were filmed in the home of one of the producers. There is a significant amount of underwater photography, which is done rather well.
The only movie, as far as I know, with a killer jellyfish man as the monster wisely keeps the creature under wraps until the finale. Up until then, we see arms and legs, which doesn’t disguise the fact that the monster suit is made out of a grungy wetsuit with swim fins and electrical cords for tentacles. What sends this suit over the top is the jellyfish head, which is obviously a semi-clear, inflated trash bag. It’s a…unique conception.
And then there’s “Special Singing Guest Star NEIL SEDAKA!” Sedaka was a well-known singer/songwriter in the early Sixties, but his type of middle-of-the-road pop was on its way out by the time this movie was made. Sedaka had enough sense not to actually appear in the movie, but he did accept the commission to write and sing, “Do the Jellyfish.” Some of the immortal lyrics:
Monkey, don’t be a donkey.
It’s nothing like the Monkey.
It’s isn’t funky or anything that’s junky.
It’s something swella!”
The jilla-jalla-jellyfish!”
And yes, he does indeed manage to make “donkey” rhyme with “monkey.”
Notable Credit: “choreography by THELMA SHERR and GARY HOLTZ”
Sedaka’s song is all about doing the new jellyfish dance craze, but the most striking thing about the “choreography” is that each of the elderly teens is doing something different. The moves look just like any other beach party dance movie of the mid-sixties, only less choreographed.
This movie is well worth a watch if you can find a copy (it isn’t on any of the streaming services at present). It moves along at a decent pace, and the padded sections of dancing and airboats have their own visual/novelty interest. I recommend this as a group watch. Whatever, you do, though, avoid its double feature partner, Death Curse of Tartu (1966), which is deadly dull.
Quick bits:
- The underwater shoot took place at Rainbow Springs, Fl, the same location for Creature From the Black Lagoon (1954) and many other movies.
- Grefé was in charge of the shark scenes in the Bond movie Live and Let Die (1973).
- Both the jellyfish monster and the mutilated corpse in the sheriff‘s boat were played by Doug Hobarth.
Suggested double feature: For more down-home swamp action, try Attack of the Giant Leeches (1959). It also features a monster grotto.
Tagline for Coming Attraction: “It rises from 2000 miles below the earth to melt everything in its path!”
