Haunted Sea (1997) from Johnny Web (Uncle Scoopy; Greg Wroblewski) and Tuna

Two thumbs way down for this cheapie which features a guy in a Halloween monster suit.

Scoop's comments in white:

An unimpressive salvage ship spots a large cargo freighter which seems to be deserted and adrift. The captain (Mr Barbra Streisand) sends a boarding party, which discovers a treasure-trove of Aztec gold.

Well, the people on that boarding party have obviously never watched any movies, because if they had, they would have learned these simple rules:

1. Anyone trying to remove valuables from a derelict ship is doomed.

2. Aztec gods never give up their treasures without a fight.

And I mean these Aztec gods carry a grudge forever. This is gold which was stolen by the conquistadors, sunk to the bottom of the sea, salvaged by the ghost ship, then taken from the ghost ship from James Brolin's crew. Even after all the years, those gods are still pissed off about that whole conquistador thing. They are really into revenge against Spanish people and stock footage of Spanish people. They automatically kill anyone Spanish. They will maim you if you even have a vowel at the end of your name. There were several Aztec gods picketing theaters for showing Play it to the Bone just because it starred Antonio Banderas. Hell, they will seriously kick your ass just for reading Don Quijote in high school.

It turns out that one of Brolin's crew had a former life as a sacrificial Aztec princess (didn't we all?), so she establishes a special relationship with the Aztec gods and, if I understand the ending correctly, actually becomes one of them.

Or not. It doesn't really matter.

Very dumb movie.

Haunted Sea is a cheapazoid quickie produced by Roger Corman. It is actually a remake, well sorta kinda, of a film called Creature from the Haunted Sea, which was directed by Corman himself. Oh, now that I think about it, it isn't really a remake at all. The two movies just share a common title and a Roger Corman pedigree.

• The original is a fun movie to watch. It was deliberately made as cheaply as possible for humorous value. And it is actually pretty funny. The dialogue is corny, the story is deliberately confusing, and the deadpan voice-over narration is obviously played for intentional laughs. The monster in the original is, without question, the worst monster in the history of films, basically just seaweed and inner tubes with a couple of ping-pong balls for eyes.

• As far as I can see, the remake has no humor at all, and the monster is almost as bad as the one in the original, but it just looks like a really cheesy 1950s "guy wearing a monster suit" type of monster, not like a ridiculous monster played entirely for laughs. You can see the obvious difference below.

The original monster in Creature from the Haunted Sea (1961)

The remake monster in Haunted Sea (1997)

In fact, as you might guess from the somewhat less-than-sterling IMDb score of 2.5/10, the only thing the remake has going for it is plenty of nudity from the stunningly beautiful Krista Allen.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

The Haunted Sea (1997) is an "Aztec ghosts protecting their gold" story set on a derelict freighter. Interestingly enough, the first and second mate of the ship that hopes to claim salvage rights are both women, Joanna Pacula and Krista Allen. The rest of the boarding party get greedy and try to pilfer part of the treasure, at which point one of them is possessed by a very pissed-off Aztec God. What follows is a painfully long series of chase scenes around the freighter.

There was little or no effort made to include a little reality here. For instance, when they first discover this large freighter, it is steaming directly for their own ship. However, it is dead in the water, with no power when they board it. They start steering a new course as soon as they get on board. To steer a course, you must have forward motion, and it took quite a while to get the thing started.

Special effects were nothing special, and I could have done with much more character development. This Roger Corman effort is weak, even when judged against other Corman efforts.

Scoop's note:

Speaking of reality, they didn't even try to duplicate nautical talk. At one point, crusty old captain James Brolin tells his helmsman (or, as Brolin liked to call him, his steering guy), to "turn left 180 degrees". I made up the thing about "steering guy", but didn't make up that quote. The salty old sea dog actually said that - in one of the many accents and character voices he tried out from time to time in the course of the film.

Oh, yeah, and Brolin keeps talking about finding out which country, if any, controls the salvage laws in the particular stretch of water they are navigating. It shouldn't be too goddamned hard to figure out. When they first spot the freighter, land can clearly be seen just a mile or so behind it!