Caltiki – The Immortal Monster

Caltiki – The Immortal Monster

Italian film poster for Caltiki - The Immortal Monster
Directed by
Produced by
  • Samuel Schneider
  • Massimo De Rita[1]
Screenplay by Filippo Sanjust
Story by Filippo Sanjust[1]
Music by
Cinematography Mario Bava
Production
companies
  • Galatea Film
  • Climax Pictures
Release dates
  • 1959 (1959)
Running time
 81 minutes
Country
  • Italy
  • United States[1]
Box office ≈₤100 million

Caltiki – The Immortal Monster (Italian: Caltiki – il mostro immortale) is a 1959 Italian-American science fiction horror film directed by Riccardo Freda and Mario Bava. The plot concerns a team of archaeologists investigating Mayan ruins who come across a shapeless monster. They manage to defeat it with fire, while keeping a sample of the monster. Meanwhile, a comet is due to pass close to Earth, the same comet which passed near the Earth at the time the Mayan civilization mysteriously collapsed. The film proposes the question "Is there a connection between the monster and the comet?"

Plot

The film begins as a delirious archaeologist stumbles into his group's camp without his partner, both of whom having been exploring a cave. He becomes mad, requiring hospitalization. Their interest piqued, the group sets out for the cave.

Upon reaching the cave, they find a deep pool of water, behind which is a large statue of Caltiki, the vengeful Mayan goddess who had been ceremonially presented with human sacrifices. Hoping to find artifacts, the group sends one of their numbers down into the pool. At the bottom, he finds a menagerie of skeletons clad in gold jewelry. Running out of oxygen, he comes back up, clutching as much gold as he can. Although the group wishes him to not go down again, he insists on doing so, suggesting that they could become millionaires from the wealth below. Relenting to him, they let him descend once more. As he collects more and more treasure, his cable to the surface suddenly writhes erratically. Fearing for his safety, the group pulls him back to the surface, only to find, upon removing his face mask, his body reduced to a decayed mass distended about his skeleton.

Moments later, the monster that attacked him rears up from the pool, attempting to digest anyone near. One of the group is caught, but is then rescued. As the team escapes, the monster begins to crawl out of the cave menacingly. Luckily, there is a tanker truck full of gasoline nearby that the main character drives into the vile blob. It explodes violently, vanquishing it.

The team travels back to Mexico City to take the man who had been caught by the monster to a hospital. Still on his arm is a small piece of the monster that had come apart from the main blob and is still digesting him. When the surgeons remove the blob, they find that his arm is nothing more than a few moist scraps of flesh still connected to his bones. The surgeons wrap it up anyway. After further experimenting on the blob, scientists later discover that it is a unicellular bacterium that quickly grows when in the presence of radiation. Unfortunately, a comet that emits radiation and crosses Earth's path only once in every 850 years or so is quickly approaching. Upon the comet's closest approach, the piece of the blob that the main character (Dr. John Fielding) left in his house with his wife and infant expands to enormous size and reproduces.

Dr. John Fielding attempts to convince the Mexican government to send its army to destroy the beast, but is then thrown in jail. Fortunately, he escapes. A colleague convinces the authorities that the monster and its threat are real and sends regiments of flame-throwing tanks to Fielding's house. Upon their arrival, they find that the blobs have overrun the house and Dr. Fielding's wife and child are desperately standing on a second-floor window ledge. The mother and child are rescued by Dr. Fielding as the flame-throwing tanks lay waste to the blob monsters.

Cast

Production

Director Riccardo Freda was angered by the way producers had treated his cinematographer's Mario Bava on his previous films.[2] Bava had previously finished I Vampiri after Freda had left the project.[2] Freda concocted a way to push Bava into the director's chair which led to the project of Caltiki – The Immortal Monster.[2] Bava was hired as the cinematographer on the film. The films screenwriter was Filippo Sanjust who was the co-author of Freda's film Beatrice Cenci (1956).[3] Along with being the director and cinematographer, Bava was also responsible for the creature in the film, which was made with tripe.[2]

As he felt that I Vampiri was unpopular in Italy due to the Italian audience feeling that Italians could not make high quality genre films.[4] The cast is credited under English-language aliases in the films promotion and credits.[4] Freda left the project early during filming leaving Bava to complete the film. Freda felt that this would lead to producer Lionello Santi to see Bava's talents as a director.[2] Bava described Caltiki – The Immortal Monster as his "my very first film" and that Freda had fled the set "because everything was falling to pieces. I managed to carry it out, patching it up here and there."[5]

Release

In Italy the film was less successful than Freda's and Bava's film I Vampiri. I Vampiri grossed a total of ₤125.3 million Italian lire while Caltiki – The Immortal Monster grossed a quarter million lire less.[6][7] The Italian version of the film has a running time of 81 minutes while the American release has a 76-minute running time.[8] The English-language dub of the film was done in New York, by Titras Studios which dubbed many of the Italian movies from this period.[9]

Critical reception

In a contemporary review, The Monthly Film Bulletin commented that "phony sets, bad acting and limitations of a small budget seriously hamper the first half" and that "once the monster asserts itself things begin to liven up."[10] The review concluded that the film was "so incredibly banal that it almost entertains."[10]

AllMovie gave the film a generally positive review, calling it "a neat and compelling science fiction-horror amalgam, squeezing cosmology together with archeology and myth to create a genuinely fascinating and original thriller."[9] In Phil Hardy's book Science Fiction (1984), a review described the film as a "minor outing [...] though the acting is routine and the script leaden, Bava injects a few stylish flourishes."[11]

See also

Notes

  1. 1 2 3 4 Paul 2005, p. 102.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 Howard 2014, p. 23.
  3. ↑ Howard 2014, p. 24.
  4. 1 2 Shipka 2011, p. 24.
  5. ↑ Howard 2014, p. 172.
  6. ↑ Curti 2015, p. 21.
  7. ↑ Shipka 2011, p. 27.
  8. ↑ Mitchell 2001, p. 41.
  9. 1 2 Eder, Bruce. "Caltiki - Il Mostro Immortale (1959)". AllMovie. Retrieved 20 November 2015.
  10. 1 2 "Immortal Monster, The "(Caltiki, il Mostro Immortale)"". Monthly Film Bulletin (London) 29 (336): 39. 1962. ISSN 0027-0407.
  11. ↑ Hardy 1984, p. 187.

References

  • Curti, Roberto (2015). Italian Gothic Horror Films, 1957–1969. McFarland. ISBN 978-1-4766-1989-7. 
  • Hardy, Phil, ed. (1984). Science Fiction. New York : Morrow. ISBN 0-688-00842-9. 
  • Howard, Troy (2014). The Haunted World of Mario Bava. Midnight Marquee Press, Inc. ISBN 978-1-936168-45-3. 
  • Paul, Louis (2005). Italian Horror Film Directors. McFarland. ISBN 978-0-7864-8749-3. 
  • Mitchell, Charles P. (2001). The Complete H.P. Lovecraft Filmography. Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 0313316414. 
  • Shipka, Danny (2011). Perverse Titillation: The Exploitation Cinema of Italy, Spain and France, 1960–1980. McFarland. ISBN 978-0-7864-4888-3. 

External links

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