We at HORROR-WOOD have been accused of digging up all these obscure directors and wasting precious bandwidth on their cinema mess-terpieces.  Guilty!  And here's one more for good measure--William Grefe, who gave audiences Native American mummies and jiggling Jellyfish Men.  But his monstrous creations aren't for everyone...like our author, who echoes the sentiments of many moviegoers when he says...

By DON MANKOWSKI

"Tartu’s prophecy was that only nature could destroy him. How right he was."

– Tyson

Sam Gunter, a nervous adventurer explores what appears to be a long lost cave. He is stalked and suddenly killed by a shambling, hulking figure. The murderous demon then seizes a parchment scroll that the hapless victim had been carrying, sets it down and begins to turn the pages that display the credits for The Death Curse of Tartu. Truly, an act of self-promotion unparalleled in motion picture history.

You know you’re in trouble when that happens.

All right, I admit it—I asked for this. Having reviewed four or five excellent films for HORROR-WOOD in the past year, I bemoaned that I’d have to say something negative about something, and soon, or else lose my credibility as a critic.

In between fly de-winging sessions, Editor Renfield shipped off Something Weird Video’s DVD featuring William Grefe’s Death Curse Of Tartu (1966) and Sting Of Death (1965). As both films were made and are set in southern Florida, I was a natural for the assignment, I suppose, as I am a resident of the so-called Sunshine State. Fortunately, I’m more than a stone’s throw from the Everglades locale. So, back to the story.

A stereotypically wise Indian guide named Billy (Billy Marcus) will explain to us that Tartu, a 400-year old witch doctor is buried in this haunted mound deep in the Florida Everglades. He’s of the Seminole tribe, so you’ll get to hear a chant something like that Florida State fight song in the background a lot. Tartu, Billy tells us, hates to be disturbed, and twenty years ago took the form of a tiger to kill some intrusive hunters.

Ed and Julie Tyson (Fred Pinero and Babette Sherrill) go searching for the lost Sam, but unfortunately for them, the college kids on their expedition have no respect for old traditions. They insist upon desecrating the sacred spot with prurient go-go dancing and makin’ out, that sort of thing. As all of this goes on, Tartu (Doug Hobart) slumbers fitfully in a stone casket in his cave. An ugly, skull-face dude, he uses "nature" to punish the intruders.

And so, a big python chokes one. A rare freshwater shark takes care of a couple more, and a swamp snake and an alligator complete the work. (If those accounts seem matter-of-fact, that’s how the scenes play. Most Floridians would consider it outrageous for a Gator to work for a Seminole, but the director was probably a Hurricanes fan.)

There’s some truly strange action that borders on slapstick. Tomb open, tomb closed. Gal runs away, gal runs back. Move this stone so we can get out of this tomb! Oops, there’s a ‘gator chasing her – move this stone and let her in! Get us out! Let me in! Is this counterpoint or dualism or something? It’s a good thing I’m no philosopher. If you wonder why the actor (Frank Weed) who plays Sam in the pre-title sequence gets credited, it’s because his corpse serves as a trip-over prop a whole lot.

Eventually, finally Tartu rises. (Let’s force this sarcophagus open! Oops! Let’s close it, and fast!) Although he’s been doing quite well in animal shapes, here he chooses to stay in human form (albeit younger) to pursue the Tysons. Ed holds his own with Tartu in hand-to-hand combat, finally flinging the medicine man into the bog, whereupon he re-mummifies and sinks.

The film features preposterous lapses in logic, and an altogether too-noisy musical score, but those shouldn’t be fatal to such a film if indeed your expectations are realistic. But the film is also deadly dull, with relentless shots of the scenery, of feet walking endlessly, of snakes slithering interminably, of Tartu writhing in his coffin, all photographed to invoke minimum suspense. The director seems to think that views of the same old skull on the same old stick will maintain the tension. Wrong. Tartu is the longest 80-minute film that I’ve endured in some time.

"I’m not a pathologist; biology is my line…but I can tell that this man died in agony."

– Richardson

You’ve heard that joke, wherein the author complains, "What do you mean not enough sex and violence? I’ve got sex and violence on the first page!" "Yeah," says the editor, "but look how far down the first page!" Sting Of Death immediately has a young blonde woman sunbathing by a lagoon grabbed by the leg and dragged under to her death in a long sequence under the titles. The perpetrator is a greenish humanoid figure.

The setting is an island in the Gulf of Mexico just off the Florida Everglades. There we find the usual dedicated scientist, Dr. Richardson (Jack Nagle), conducting experiments at a nice estate/laboratory. His interest is a relatively large jellyfish known as the Portuguese Man of War, the genus Physalia.

(Everybody in the film who uses the name pronounces it "Pissilliya." I think they have the Portuguese Man of War confused with the equally infamous Sargasso Urinating Squid, but then again, they’re the marine zoologists.)

Richardson has two assistants, Dr. John Hoyt, and Egon. One of his assistants (that is, John or Egon) will turn out to be the monster. John, that’s one of them, is handsome and honest, if a bit of a smoothie. Ygor—pardon me—Egon, the other one, is a defiant and belligerent geek with scar tissue over half his face.

Oh, they’re played by Joe Morrison and John Vella respectively, though Doug Hobart takes over as the monster for the one of them who turns out to be the monster. Hobart, versatile in much his own way, also played "Tartu" in the co-feature (as well as a hideous corpse, in this one).

Visiting are Richardson’s lovely (if perpetually frowning) daughter Karen, and a bunch of her college chum. (Uhh, that’s chums. Then again, wait and see.) They’re ostensibly here to appreciate Richardson’s research, but there are a bunch of babes in the group for the viewer to appreciate.

Strange things are happening: some lab equipment has disappeared, and a local fisherman turns up dead, poisoned in peculiar fashion. It could be the sting of Physalia (pron. "Pissilliya"), but it would have to be a specimen far larger than any known to science. Egon ventures the unpopular opinion that so large a creature could be bred in captivity.

A cabin cruiser hired for a party sails in, and the kids pause to boogie with the film’s "Special Singing Star, Neil Sedaka." A boring singer from the seventies or sixties or one of those eras there, Sedaka outdoes himself with his own composition, "Do the Jellyfish." We’re not told whether this particular number was chosen in honor of their host’s research or due to mere coincidence. Well, there is something gelatinous about the close-ups of the dancing gals.

(What does a lyricist rhyme with jellyfish? That’s easy: Cinderella, bell-a, swell-a, donkey…no, sorry, that last is rhymed with monkey after a fashion.)

In between jigglefests, the intolerant teenagers taunt the misfit Egon and drive him off. Then it’s back for some conga dancing around the swimming pool, no lie. You’d think that this pool is safe—it’s not too big, not too deep and full of clear water, but, damn it, the monster is lurking down there, as one of the girls finds during an impromptu swim. She and a boy who attempts her rescue get horribly poisoned. (The creature escapes. So far, all we know that it has slimy green legs, webbed feet, and lumpy strings hanging down all over the place.)

Their radio, the sole means of communication with the mainland has been destroyed, so about this time, Richardson (remember, he’s a Ph.D.) realizes that they’re trapped on the island with a dangerous killer. As most of the visitors attempt to escape in a boat, they’re attacked and slaughtered by a hoard of jellyfish.

That’s right, a veritable bounty of the buggers (transparent sacs with gunk inside them, looking much like discarded lunches) surround the craft. (The effects didn’t bother me too much. I’ve seen real jellyfish, and they do tend toward an artificial look, like badly executed exercises in balloonery. Were they only safe to handle, they’d be sold as toys and souvenirs)

You’d think these a rather passive menace, but the main monster has sabotaged the boat, and after it sinks, his icky minions finish off the hapless water-treaders with their stingers. Thus is our cast pared down to Richardson, John, Egon, Karen and a couple of tragically expendable women. These will spend the remainder of the picture meeting the threat of the bipedal green monster.

The creature will eventually be revealed to be Egon. I did set you up for this, right? The renegade assistant operates the stolen lab equipment out of a submerged cave, where he’s growing a really big jellyfish in a tank, to prove some point or other. The treacherous technician has in fact developed a man-to-jellymonster conversion regimen as a side benefit.

Airboats, those odd conveyances with the big fan propeller in back, figure prominently in this story, and there’s nice airborne race across grassy glades as Richardson and John pursue the bounder and the abducted Karen. Egon’s had his eye (literally: he only has one good one) on her, and tries to impress the woman. "Look at it, better than 20 inches across," he tells her. She’s got to be impressed by that, right?

By the way, it’s the jellyfish of which he’s speaking. Electricity and human blood—that’s the ticket. By turning the knobs on his console and bringing up an oscilloscope pattern, Egon can initiate a transformation into ol’ Mister Green Jeans. He also has to stick his head in the big fish tank and inhale the fumes or drink the water or something. ("Hey, Egon, you kiss the big jellyfish!" That’s a taunt that the nasty teenagers overlooked.)

Egon turns all custard-pie-faced during transformations, but soon becomes the now familiar stalker. Although it sure looks like a wetsuit and swim fins, his body has supposedly become fish-scaled and duck-footed. Much of the film has been shots of his green, webbed feet stalking about, with many gnarled tentacles jangling about the knees. (He does have flesh-colored, human ankles.) Until now, we haven’t been permitted to see the creature’s top half. We might have assumed that it was just too horrible. Guess again.

Perched atop the fish-flavored humanoid body is a Man of War wider than the guys’ shoulders. It’s a head to make the star of Return of the Fly wrinkle his big proboscis in envy. It is one big head. The tentacles we’ve been seeing are less dreadlocks than a veritable beard of stingers. Why it’s just as if he lifted the damn thing out of the tank and stuck it on his head.

John arrives at the underwater cave for a climactic fight with the Egon-monster. With a head like Smuckers, he has to be good, you say? No, not really. They pretty much waltz about the place, the monster trying to see his opponent through his jellybag, the hero defending himself with a flare (if not exactly with flair). But, all monsters fear fire, right? The creature’s clearly losing it: until now, its mere touch had been deadly, but currently John can grapple with him and exchange blows freely.

Egon’s console suddenly shorts out. Maybe John’s flare falling into the fish tank had something to do with it, who knows? The creature collapses and its jellyhead deflates. Egon, once more almost human, is able to speak again. He urges John to save Karen, but the woman refuses to leave Egon "like this," this being pretty gooey and disgusting. John settles the matter, stating that he’ll (1) get her to safety then (2) come back for Egon. Yeah, right, two stages, time and conditions permitting. Pretty smart there, John.

John gets Karen back to her Dad’s airboat, and the three of them at once motor off towards a safe sunset. No attempt is made to aid Egon. I guess one final bad special effect with bubbles is supposed to imply that his cavern exploded or something. The trio seem to have also forgotten about the badly-stung woman who’s still back at the estate.

As regards the menacing monster, well, you’ve got to give them credit for trying something different. Then again, I’m not certain that the term "credit" carries the correct moral tone. Of all things, a Jellyfish Man, a were-jellyfish as it were! It’s a pity that Maria Ouspenskaya wasn’t available to explain the curse to us: He who is stung by d’ jellyfish and lives, becomes a jellyfishhead himself. Well, no, it’s more like Frankenstein or the Invisible Man: he meddled with squishy things that man was meant to leave alone.

When you have a Wolf Man, an Ape Woman, Alligator People, a Shaggy Dog Boy or even The Fly or the Wasp Woman, at least there are corresponding body parts and facial features to be fused. I suppose that the rule for lower invertebrates merged with humans simply involves the former in its entirety clinging to the head of the latter, though certainly a rule best honored in the breach.

The jellyfish isn’t a fish at all. Phylum Cnidaria is considered a very low-level life form in the evolutionary scheme of things, just a step above the one-celled protozoans. They’re colonies of cells, with just a smidge of organization and specialization, tissues but no organs. Big bag o’ zoöids, that’s what they are. Not exactly bad neighbors in the ecology, they’re only dangerous in a passive sense, as they’ve developed these stinging cells so that they won’t be eaten too readily before reproducing.

Some have a free-swimming larval state, a critter that swims around eating everything within reach before resigning itself to a passive, filter-feeding adult existence. (I would now remove my zoologist hat, except that good zoologists don’t wear hats.) God knows where this trend could have gone had this film been a bigger hit. You think your brother-in-law is a sponge? Just wait.

These films were directed by Florida native son William Grefe, who is interviewed by Frank Hennenlotter (himself the director of Basket Case) on the commentary tracks. Grefe is personable, remembers much, and is only slightly apologetic about these ventures.

Screenwriter Al Dempsey devised varied ways for his aquatic menace to strike: a river, a pool, a stream, and a shower. That’s right, one of the remaining girls decides she needs a shower, and the monster sneaks up on her and sting-slays her there. Or was that a homage to Hitchcock? Who cares? What’s next, you guess, an attack in an aquarium? Exactly.

The characters aren’t at all consistent or believable. The script has quite a lot of stupid dialog, often repetitious to make a point. There’s a really inane scene wherein the scientist and the hero are searching for a lost girl on the flimsy evidence of some bubbles in the swamp waters. They glide around with aqualungs in maybe ten feet of water, run out of air and then resort to "free diving," like they’re going to find someone submerged but alive after all that. They manage to lose another girl in the process.

Still, Sting plods along at an acceptable pace, certainly in contrast to the tedious Tartu. With its diver-monster in a trash-bag head, Sting of Death could have made an interesting trilogy with Robot Monster, that film featuring the gorilla monster in the diving helmet. All we’d require is a third film involving a garbage man with a monkey face to complete the cycle.

The folks behind Something Weird Video are somewhat amateurish irritants to the big studios in the video releasing business, but that shouldn’t put you off their product. They really try to give you your dollars’ worth. Or maybe your nickel’s worth; cheap excitement is their forte. Here again they provide nice, clean prints of films forgotten for decades.

For a history of the company, get their DVD release of a film entitled, well, Something Weird. SWV has proudly released most of the oeuvre (e.g., Blood Feast, Two Thousand Maniacs, She-Devils On Wheels) of legendary gore-and-schlockmeisters David F. Friedman and Herschel Gordon Lewis, and these gentlemen provide informational and hilarious commentary tracks for all of these, abetted by SWV’s founder Mike Vraney.

But, after a dozen titles and a few minutes of yeoman service on Something Weird, they all "lost it." Choosing (wisely) to ignore the wretched film, they instead let Vraney tell of his mania for collecting "B" movies (and "D" movies and other letters well on down the alphabet) from dusty vaults and dank warehouses. We learn how it led to his formation of a company that honors this particular Friedman-Lewis turkey in its business handle as well as in its commitment to a certain kind of quality.

SWV always gives you disreputable extras, and this disk is no exception. In addition to trailers for a number of ill-advised filmmaking ventures, there’s a thirty-minute excerpt (probably half the film) from something entitled Love Goddesses Of Blood Island featuring sexy dames and mindless violence, and a tawdry short subject, Miami Or Bust wherein a stripper who’s certainly seen better days bumps and grinds on with admirable determination.

If you’ve got a few hours to spare, you could do worse than to check out this program. I think.

(Don Mankowski once dissected jellyfish in college biology, never dreaming they’d one day take revenge by wasting hours of his time. Check out his links here.) 

Thanks, Don!  Well, some folks have fun watching Jellyfish Men massacre teenagers and other folks get their jollies reading War And Peace.  Whatever.  At least, the name of William Grefe has been raised from obscurity and will likely go back there soon enough.  We prefer giant leeches to Jellyfish Men as swamp monsters any old time, but whatever floats your boat is what we say. 

Article copyright © Don Mankowski

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