Sting of Death-review with spoilers

I like the Freddy Krueger sweater Egon.

           Let’s go back to 1965.  It’s a turbulent time. “The Sound of Music”, “Thunderball”, “Repulsion” and a wee movie that few know about called “Sting of Death” came out.  Now it was nothing new to have monsters attack women while wearing stupid costumes in movies.  They have been doing that since the 1950s when movies like “The Creature from the Black Lagoon” was popular.  But this movie takes the monster movie in a very strange and cheap twist.

            First off we see a sunbathing beauty who is listening to the radio as it tells her of a couple of fisher men that recently were killed in the Florida Everglades where she is.  She is immediately grabbed by gloved hand of a man in a suit covered in tentacles.  She struggles lamely but dies.  Or so it would seem since as the monster drags the body away the body is obviously still breathing. 

            A boat arrives at the island of the dead sunbather with some girls a young man named John, a Professor and his daughter Karen.  They are talking about how their research is important but first…cocktails.  The Professor can’t be that good a man. He has a hunched back assistant with a scarred up face named Egon.  I want that to sink in there.  This is the only other movie outside of “Ghostbusters” I’ve ever heard that named used. 

            A Sheriff comes to the island saying he found one of the fishermen and is confused. It the medical examiner looked at him and he looks to be stung. The Professor determines that it was a Jellyfish but it would have to be a giant one. They send the Sheriff on his way saying they will assist if they can.

            Egon has a lot of issues about people making fun of him.  But he has a thing for the Professor’s daughter, Karen.  She of course is going for John.  John has invited a group of college folks to join the girls for some fun, drinks and dancing.   Sure enough a boat arrives and the college jackasses get off and in no time flat surround Egon in mockery like the townsfolk did Quasimodo.  Egon retreats on his boat muttering about his stapler and burning down the building.

This will put the brakes on the orgy they had planned.

            The frivolity carries into the evening while the kids do a dance called the Jellyfish. It’s absolute chaos since it looks like a swim/mashed potato/ twist sort of thing that involves arms swaying and no actual choreography was actually used it seems to develop a dance.  A woman decides to leap into the pool and doesn’t see the asshole in a wetsuit with tentacles sewn on.  She is killed and when the monster gets out of the pool another guy is struck down. 

               The Professor takes the poisoned girl into the house and the college kids put the boy on the boat.  They start to take him off the island.  What follows is the most idiotic monster attack I have ever seen on film.  The monster whacks the bottom of the boat with an axe.  Soon the boatful of people realize they are taking on water.  Then the monster uses powers like Aquaman to summon Man o’ war jelly fish to appear and surround them. They look more like plastic grocery bags floating in the swamp water.  The kids panic and abandon ship for some reason and are killed by the Jellyfish and the monster.  Wow!

How the hell do you breath in that?

            Pretty soon we see that the monster is Egon. Way to spoil the obvious ending, movie.  To bad you can see his feet peeking through the wetsuit.  A couple of the girls join the Professor and John to search for Egon at his place.  They can’t find him so one of the girls goes to get some smokes by herself. While she is cornered and killed we are revealed to the killer Jellyfish man’s face finally and it’s awful.  It’s like they just took a dry-cleaning bag and put it over his head with a wetsuit underneath. 

            Now that one of the girls have vanished the other nameless girl, John and the Professor go diving for her in the surprisingly clear swamp. While down there the other nameless girl is killed.  Back at the house where Karen is watching the poisoned girl another nameless girl goes to take a shower only to be killed by the Jellyfish man. 

Remember, the bane of the Jellyfish is the road flare.

            John and Professor show up and see Egon. They tell him to protect Karen while they try to fix the sabotaged radio.  He takes his time alone with Karen to explain that he had to kill those people because they were bad.  She takes this news like a true damsel and faints.  So he kidnaps her and we get a boat chase scene while he takes her to his secret underwater lair. 

           

            There he huffs some fumes from a tank filled with a Jellyfish specimen to become the Jellyfish man.  John arrives brandishing a flare.  They fight in a very non-dramatic way until John tosses the flare in the tank. I guess this kills him because he falls to the ground and his lair is going to explode.  He tells John and Karen to leave him. They do and he dies with his specimen and we get a big “The End.”

            Wow.  Just wow. It’s not awful but it’s not good by any means. It’s definitely one a person should enjoy by making fun of.  Not taken seriously it can be enjoyed.  The dialogue and the costumes are a joke though so take it for what it’s worth.