Sometimes a black
and white film can surprise you ... and such it is with Caltiki The Immortal
Monster. In some respects this is a reworking of The Blob (1958) and
X The Unknown (1956), as it features a flesh-eating amorphous blob which
goes on the rampage. Here, it’s an ancient Mayan god called Caltiki which rises
from an underground pool when an archaeologist called Max (Gérard Herter) falls onto the creature trying to get some
gold (a supreme moment of daftness) and it attaches itself to his arm. The lead
archaeologist, Professor Fielding (John Merivale) cuts a bit of the monster off
trying to rescue his friend and takes it back to the USA where it grows when
subjected to radiation. As time passes, the creature (a single celled organism
apparently) splits itself into multiple copies and they go on the rampage until
the army stops them with fire.
What’s great
about the film is that the effects, by Mario Bava, are pretty gruesome and
impressive, with a face eaten away by acid, an arm reduced to a skeleton, and
the blob-things themselves growing and moving at impressive rate. There’s a lot
of model-work in the film too, something only revealed by flames being the
wrong scale, but it’s impressive nonetheless.
There’s even a
bit of sexy dancing for the dads, where the dancer has a torn off skirt and
flashes her knickers far more often than an American film would usually allow
at this time.
Overall it’s a superior
example of the Italian horror/science fiction film, even if it rips off the
‘hungry blob’ movies mentioned above. I
also felt that perhaps Island of Terror (1966) had been ‘inspired’ a
little, with its radiation-created blob monsters.
Directed: Ricardo Freda, Mario Bava
Story by: Philip Just
Arrow DVD Released 10 April 2017
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