REVIEWS 

El Monstro Del Mar! by Australian filmmaker Stuart Simpson is a giddy, modernized recreation of the golden era of American teenage exploitation films. It has the perfect combination of everything that made exploitation great in the Sixties: Sexy girls, a rockin’ soundtrack, a gross monster. Where Simpson kicks it all up a notch for modern audiences is that it really delivers on the gore that older films could only tease about.

The film’s black & white opening of three “bad” girls – and you know actresses Nelli Scarlet, Kate Watts and Karli Madden are bad from their tattoos and low-cut tops — driving through a bleak, desolate Australian landscape, El Monstro Del Mar! is a direct homage to Russ Meyer’s classic Faster, Pussycat! Kill Kill!, right down to the women’s hair color: Two brunettes and a blonde.

So, when their car breaks down by the side of road and two nice country boys stop to help the damsels in distress, you just know things are not going to end well for the gentlemen. But how soon and how violently is a wake up jolt for the film, which switches gears both story-wise and emulsion-wise. The movie switches to brilliant color just in time for the geysers of blood to start spewing.

When the girls get back on the road, they drive out of Meyer territory and straight into the land of Roger Corman. Holed up in a sleepy fishing village, an old coot (Norman Yemm) warns them not to go into the water, which of course doesn’t discourage two of them from stripping down to their undies and start splashing around.

Also just like old fashioned, low budget exploitation fare, the monster promised in the title takes its time in showing up. Mostly the film revolves around the trio of bad girls trying to corrupt the old coot’s innocent schoolgirl daughter, Hannah (Kyrie Capri). When Hannah insists she doesn’t drink alcohol, the out-of-towners make it their mission to get her wasted as soon as possible. Which doesn’t take very long.

Although watching these four sexy gals just hanging out, talking tough and dirty is entertaining in and of itself, Simpson punctuates these non-action scenes with periodic bursts of intense, violent action whether it’s a wordless flashback to the three main anti-heroines’ brutal past or an actual attack by the titular creature.

Simpson keeps his cast small, but there’s still enough victims hanging around that we get to see pleasantly disposed of in groups of two and more. While Sixties’ monster movies typically just featured a guy in a rubber suit, Simpson employs stop-motion animatronics and life-size puppets to create the illusion of a massive creature hungry for blood.

Giant tentacles with gaping mouths filled with razor sharp teeth lashing out of the water to chomp down on human limbs is reminiscent of the vicious extraterrestrials of the little seen and remembered cult classic The Deadly Spawn aka Return of the Alien’s Deadly Spawn.

The film has a nice humor about itself, but Simpson films everything with a straight face. There’s nothing jokey or insider-y here, even though monster and exploitation movie fans will appreciate all the references. Even the outright humorous scenes are pretty straight-laced, such as when Melbourne Underground Film Festival director Richard Wolstencroft cameos as a cranky fisherman who spontaneously starts telling his son about how much of a whore his mother is. That Wolstencroft is gobbled by the monster two seconds after the tirade adds to the grim and grisly fun.

With only sporadic, minimal monster sightings throughout the film, the climactic scene delivers on the film’s premise with an uproarious battle between she devils and the devil from the sea. It’s an incredibly impressive and brutally entertaining fight. Simpson doesn’t hold back and lets us see the creature whole hog, at last leaving nothing of the Nick Kocsis’-designed creature unseen.

Monster films of the Sixties were all about luridly enticing teenagers into the theaters to witness the exotic, the cruel and the terrifying. But they ultimately mostly cheated that audience by just presenting guys in chintzy rubber suits groping chicks in bikinis. While El Monstro Del Mar! is as chaste sexually as those earlier films, i.e. no nudity, Simpson totally doesn’t cheat in the violence and monster effects departments. Think of it as the first Sixties monster movie that actually delivers on its poster’s promise.

Más allá de la trama o de los personajes que se presenten, la estética y ciertos estereotipos suelen ser elementos fundamentales a la hora de atraer al espectador a ver una película. Y no sabemos por qué, pero lo cierto es que por alguna razón la onda “cine de bajo presupuesto de los 70”, el gore y las chicas pendencieras que parecen salidas de un recital de Social Distortion o de los difuntos The Cramps (léase “rockeras tatuadas con flequillos tipo Betty Page y vestidas con ropa vintage que remite a los Estados Unidos de los 50 y 60”) pueden ser recursos suficientes para despertar el interés visual de muchísimos amantes del cine de terror. En este sentido, el director australiano Stuart Simpson parece tener esto bien claro ya que, cuando uno mira El Monstro del Mar! (en español en el original), no puede más que sentir una especie de hipnosis por toda esta catarata de estimulaciones de género.
Esta última obra del realizador de Demonsamongus (BARS 2006) cuenta la historia de tres asesinas que se esconden de la ley en un pequeño pueblo costero. Rebeldes sin causa, desoyen las advertencias de un anciano que les dice que nunca deben meterse en el agua sin imaginarse que, al hacerlo, despiertan a una terrible abominación marina que las acechará y desencadenará un verdadero maremoto de sangre… ¿Podrán sobrevivir a esta hecatombe? ¡Qué importa! Lo que nos interesa, en definitiva, es la carne echada al asador: chicas malas tatuadas, estética clase B setentista, sangre por doquier y un “monstro” submarino. En lo que a nosotros respecta podemos contradecir al gran Tusam y decir tranquilos: “no puede fallar”.
 

Described as an Ozploitation genre film, Stuart Simpson’s El Monstro Del Mar is a tale of three foxy rockabilly babes - hired assassins hiding away in a seaside village after a big job. Amazonian goddess Beretta (Nelli Scarlet) appears to be the leader of the pack, and has a dominance and presence on screen that forces you to pay attention - or else she will probably slit your throat and feed you to her two sidekicks! Beretta‘s punk rock attitude (Nelli is the frontwoman of Melbourne band, The Scarlets) is reminiscent of Suburban Mayhem beauty Katrina Skinner (played by Emily Barclay) and is complimented by the more subdued nature of Blondie (Karli Madden)and the sexual allure of the Morticia-meets-Elvira raven haired vixen, Snowball (Kate Watts).

The leading ladies are quite believable in their parts, almost as though they were plucked straight from their crème Cadillac, cruising around the streets of Melbourne, cranking The Cramps on their stereo. After watching El Monstro Del Mar, I want to join their crew and drink whiskey with them and go on a sexy car stealing, killing rampage on the South coast.

However, it’s not all fun and cruising, because just when we think that the girls are indestructible, they get themselves into a bit of trouble in this apparently not so sleepy seaside town by swimming in the forbidden beach. Channelling The Mighty Boosh’s tale of Ol’ Gregg, there is something deadly and frightening that lurks beneath the sea, and it’s not happy about being disturbed. Without spoiling the plot too much, this film quickly becomes a monstrous revenge film that would make Tarantino and the residents of Tromaville equally proud.

The combination of ass-kicking babes reminiscent of Russ-Meyer femme revenge flick, ‘Faster Pussycat, Kill, Kill’ together with an amped up killer alt-country, rockabilly soundtrack to boot, make this film well worth your time and your pretty little pennies. If only to witness the sexy black and white opening title, or the frightening death skull dream sequence toward the middle. The cinematography is also quite exquisite and filmed almost entirely with an over saturated and highly contrasted film stock, giving the film a surreal and fantastical atmosphere. I half expected to see some Western clad Mermaids emerging from the waters, but let’s save that for the sequel (fingers crossed).

 Adopting the Mexican moniker of the 1953 B movie classic The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, director Stuart Simpson’s supremely sick mash-up of rebellious rockabilly, serial-killer slice-and-dice and sea-monster malarkey is a seriously out-there debut feature. Destined to have bong-toting teens and self-scarring Goths working their pause/rewind buttons like never before, Simpson’s low-budget, high-energy burlesque-infused bloodbath is a style-over-substance shocker that brazenly dares audiences not to bestow upon it cult status and midnight-screening high priority.

The ‘heroines’ of Simpson’s film are three murderous good-time girls – Beretta (Nelli Scarlett), Blondie (Karli Madden) and Snowball (Kate Watts). Bejewelled she-devils who have left claret-stained carnage in their wake, they dispense of two randy good Samaritans in a very cool black-and-white pre-credit sequence before descending upon the seaside shanty town located on Victoria’s Port Phillip Bay.

Stripping down to their bikini briefs and tattooed bods for a dip in the icy waters (and kudos to the actresses for suffering for their art, because the wintry location looks f***ing freezing), the trio attract and annoy wheelchair-bound resident Joseph (Norman Yemm), who warns them of the sea’s mysterious dangers. As the girls late-night partying grows out-of-control, Joseph’s grand-daughter Hannah (the strikingly-photogenic Kyrie Capri) tries to calm them, only to be caught up in the drunken, coke-fuelled bash until she passes out.

As most of us who have enjoyed such an event can attest to, the reality of morning brings the horrors of the night before into sharp focus. Snowball is missing; the gruesome remains of a group of local fisherman scatter the beach; and Hannah, her face smeared by make-up so as to resemble a grotesque caricature of the villainous vixens, is ashamed and fiercely hungover.

Soon, as the bodies pile up and the monstrous denizen of the deep that so frightens Joseph makes his murderous presence known, Simpson’s film begins to exude a wildly enjoyable ‘what could possibly happen next?’ mindset. And, despite a meagre budget, Simpson doesn’t let us down – his obvious understanding of the genre, precision as an editor and assuredness with both old-fashioned monster-movie lore and corner-store effects technology ensures that festival crowds who come for sultry babes, violence and B movie beats won’t be disappointed one little bit.

The frustrating downside is that Simpson the scriptwriter does Simpson the director no favours. The party sequence, which takes up an unnecessarily extended mid-section of the film, is too talky; the sense of menace that had been so cleverly established begins to dilute and character-heavy over-plotting, with particular regard to the disappearance of Hannah’s mother in the chilly depths years before, stalls the devil-may-care abandon the film had revelled in up to that point. A poignant and nicely-acted scene that culminates in Hannah’s first kiss with a local nice guy (played by David Gannon) ultimately goes nowhere and could have supplied some much-needed drama and a dollop of humour had Gannon been introduced to the party scene.    

Not that the cult-horror crowd will leave screenings of this film examining its structure, dialogue and dramaturgy. What they will be buzzing about is the smashingly seedy influence on the film of sleaze-maestro’s Russ Meyer, Tinto Brass, Roger Corman and Quentin Tarantino, particularly his segment of DeathProof inGrindhouse (2007). Throw in the guilty-pleasure monster movie references (Ron Underwood’s Tremors, 1990; Barbara Peter’s Humanoids of the Deep, 1980) and you have a fearless, modern Ozploitation spin on a dark, dirty and beautiful period of American underground cinema. 

"Faster Pussycat, Kill! Kill! is a film I like to watch once a year", says Australian filmmaker Stuart Simpson, whose drive-in, exploitation inspired feature El Monstro Del Mar, is set to screen at this year's Sydney Underground Film Festival (SUFF).

The film, which follows the story of three murderous rockabilly vixens who hole up at a beachside community, has already played in Atlanta, and received Best Screenplay, Best Director and Best Foreign Film nominations at the Oklahoma Horror Film Festival 2010. It's hard to believe it all began as a simple premise for a short film, "I was doing a bunch of short films and thought I needed one more so I could put a compilation of shorts together. Monstro was born and then it just blossomed!"

Simpson's enthusiasm for the genre, style and premise of his film is certainly infectious so it comes as no surprise that El Monstro Del Mar boasts a host of committed performances, despite the film's cast of relatively inexperienced actors. "The girls had done a little acting here and there, but they were drawn to this project because they liked the idea and thought it would be a bit of fun... I think Australia's definitely got our own tough characters and it was fun for us to play with the femme fatale dynamic on this side of the world."

Equipped with three sassy characters, Simpson did not simply sit at a computer and churn out a screenplay; for this filmmaker it was about tailoring the creative to the specific. Something of an organic process, which began with casting. "I basically wrote just the opening sequence and then found the cast so I could write the rest to their strengths."

Script completed, it was time for Simpson to juggle a variety of production based roles. While he directed, shot, lit and edited the entire film, Stuart is quick to point out that he could not have done it alone, "My producer and long time friend, Fabian Pisani, is pretty much MacGyver. He can do just about anything!"

Pisani, whose role also involved underwater diving and puppeteering, as well as set construction, also co-funded the cinematic venture. "Fabian and I pretty much financed the whole thing. We shot it over 3 months from April to June last year and it was a 14 day shoot, which is pretty tight for a feature. Basically I just closed my eyes, pulled money out of the machine and kept going! It's a relatively low budget film though, so it wasn't too bad." 

While it's easy for Simpson to laugh about it now, there's no question he put in the hard yards to produce El Monstro Del Mar. It seems like all his efforts - and money - are now paying off. The film is yet to screen at SUFF, however plans are already afoot for Simpson to travel with it to New York for the Royal Flush Film Festival before its Swedish premiere at the Lund International Film Festival. "I've been talking to a studio about making a low budget follow-up film too," adds the cinematic one-man-band enthusiastically. "With a budget that will be quite large to me!" 

Having already presented El Monstro Del Mar in Melbourne (as the opening night film of MUFF), Simpson is excited about taking a break from writing to bring his film to a Sydney audience. "I'm definitely looking forward to the Sydney premiere. The reaction in Melbourne was unbelievable. We filled out a big old theatre - a 650 seater - and everyone was cheering and screaming. I hope the reaction at the Sydney Underground Film Festival will be just as good... we'll see!"

Simpson's first feature film was the schlock horror film Demonsamongus, released in 2006. Following its release at the Melbourne Underground Film Festival 2006, Demonsamongus quickly gathered a cult following and Simpson set to work in his spare time to make a follow up piece. The result is El Monstro Del Mar! (The Monster of the Sea), a gore-and-girls tale of a sea monster terrorising a coastal town scheduled for its debut screening on the opening night of MUFF 2010. "The producer of the film, Fabian Pisani, is an avid sea diver, and we got to talking about making a sea monster film," Simpson says. "Initially it seemed like it's be too hard, but after talking about it, we realised we could do it. I love those 50's monster films, and the Japanese monster films, so I thought it's be great to do a sea monster film," he says. The twist in El Monstro Del Mar!'s basic approach came when Simpson decided to marry the monster genre with the girl-gang genre of Russ Meyer's Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill! "I'd recently rewatched Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill! and decided I'd put those elements together," Simpson laughs. Filmed in coastal Werribee - "a crappy, mangy beach with old rusty shacks - I really wanted that slow burn elements of Jaws" - El Monstro Del Mar! also features legendary Australian actor Norman Yemm as a resident of the coastal town terrorised by the sea monster. "With the films I make I try and add a human element," Simpson says. "I'm big on atmosphere and I'm big on characters. It shits me about some horror films that only have 2D characters. I prefer films like Evil Dead where you have real characters".

Simpson shot the first scene on location on the way to Geelong not far from where parts of the original Mad Max were shot. "After that I auditioned the girls, because I wanted the films to play to their strengths," Simpson says. "And as we were auditioning, I really started to see that solid scenes would come from it". Simpson points to the contrast between the "over the top" female characters and Yemm's everyman elderly beachside resident as an important element in the film: "I really wanted the girls to contrast with the beachside characters," Simpson says. With MUFF attendees typically a fairly resilient bunch, Simpson isn't expecting any tabloid hysteria in the wake of the screening of El Monstro Del Mar! "I'd be amused if that happened," Simpson laughs. "But I really don't think there's anything in there that's going to cause that kind of reaction. It's entertaining and it's fun." El Monstro Del Mar! also has a strong relationship with the local music community, with the film featuring three songs from The Stabs.

It's not unheard of for a cult filmmaker to progress to bigger, and more expensive, pursuits - Peter Jackson being the most obvious example. Simpson, however, is content to stay in his own niche artistic world - though being able to make a film without scrounging for a budget has its attractions. "I'd definitely like to do something on a larger scale, but I want to make my own films, and not be a director for hire," Simpson says. "I'd like the freedom to choose my own music for the film, and to cast whoever I want - things like that are important," he says. Finally, and back on to Simpson's new film, I ask whether there's any chance El Monstro Del Mar! will have the same paranoid effect on beachside activities that Jaws did after its release in 1975. "Well, the monster looks really cool, especially when it's smashing through the shack at the end," Simpson laughs. "But I think you only need to avoid crappy beaches - go to the Gold Coast instead."