Demon of Paradise (1987)

I got this film in a pack of two films, the other being a film called, "Up From the Depths". Neither film is particularly good as neither takes the course of action that would of made both films cheesy fun which is good graphic kills and lots of nudity. Sure, there is blood featured in both and sure there is a topless scene in each, but both films would have benefited by taking the Italian horror movie approach which is excess! The two films feature aquatic monsters and the other thing they have in common is that they both take place in Hawaii and another thing they share is that neither film was actually shot in Hawaii. "Up From the Depths" did an okay job of recreating Hawaii; however, this film did not. In fact, it did quite a bad job of it as they did not even bother filming in a location with the ocean, instead electing to say that the resort featured in this film was on a Hawaiian lake which did not resemble a lake in Hawaii as it was rather dirty. I thought the people looked like they were from the Philippines and I was correct as that is where this one is shot. As I said, you just did not get a Hawaii vibe from this film at all.The story has some dudes selling illegal dynamite and it is an explosion from one of this sticks that we have to deduce freed the monster. The boat setting off charges explodes and get used to that as there are more explosions featured in this film than there are on screen monster kills. The sheriff is skeptical that there is a monster while a scientist thinks there is something and the dudes selling dynamite may be going into business with the mob. A reporter decides to not report the story and instead hook up with the owner of the most depressing looking resort ever to try and lure people into the place by advertising the monster. Occasionally, the monster shows up and oftentimes the poor thing does not get to kill anyone as there is an explosion that kills everyone. At the end, the monster goes on a full on assault because it is probably tired of not getting to kill anyone.The characters in this one are another weak point in said movie. They are all rather bad. You have sheriff with a secret past that is skeptical, but wants to stop the killings. You have the scientist who wants to take in the beast alive and who sees something in one of her underwater jaunts that is so upsetting, but I couldn't tell you what it was. You have irritating newspaper guy and resort owner who at least die, but not horrifically enough. Then, like in "Up From the Depths", there is supermodel who is staying at said resort who flashes her boobies. I guess it is not too surprising that this film is similar to, "Up From the Depths" as Roger Corman had a hand in both of them and he would literally remake a couple of his films nearly shot for shot.So, this film is bad. It is hard to believe that this one was not more awesome considering that Roger also made the similarly themed, "Humanoids From the Deep" which had lots of good kills and nudity. It is like he did not even try here and instead nearly made a remake of the equally bad, "Up From the Depths" only replacing the shark monster with a humanoid monster which didn't look all that bad. Too bad they were too busy showing us illegal dynamite sellers and other pointless plot points when they could have shown more monster on the rampage scenes. Also, the ending line where the scientist says, "You ever cut the tail off a lizard" is rather lame because the monster was blown the up in this one. A lizard can grow its tail back, but said tail cannot grow a lizard and a lizard's body cannot regenerate at head!

A quick Summary of this film: A Green Fish like Monster takes a liking to eating people 0n the Paradise island of Hawaii.With the low budget and poor acting the only watchable aspects about this film are the scenes showing the Wildlife and the Island. I managed to watch the whole film on my Film philosophy that it can only get better, Unfortuantly it Didn't!Why i gave it 2/10 instead of 1/10 shows the quality of films i have seen in my life time. I would say avoid but make your own mind up....Next

Some fishermen using dynamite manage to blow themselves up and an undersea lizard man starts attacking people. Stuff blows up every once in a while.A woman decides to promote her resort in the area of the monster sightings to people into the Loch Ness Monster, the abominable snowman, and the yeti. She hires an obnoxious reporter as her PR man. A bunch of people do show up. She has a monster egg hunt, and there's no payoff for this: we see the hunt begin, but do not see them find either the egg she hid, or a real monster egg (if there were any). The hunt starts, and then all of a sudden it's nighttime.One woman takes her top off and goes swimming. She has a nice figure. Nothing happens to her, which is OK, but there's not even any suspense in the scene.At one point the monster somehow jumps up out of the water, grabs onto a helicopter, and pulls it down into the water. This was pretty hilarious. Then the copter predictably explodes.Inexplicably, the monster is bulletproof. Grenades, however, are capable of decapitating it. Is there more than one? You'd think so, but I don't know.Not worth watching at all. You're much better off with the Creature from the Black Lagoon series, and Humanoids from the Deep. The back of the video box states "Come along on this tour and get it all., plus an unadvertised bonus: 84 minutes of monstrous terror." If the movie is 84 minutes long, how is its running time a bonus? If it is advertised by that blurb, how is it unadvertised?

Hunters become the hunted when illegal dynamite disturbs the age-old slumber of a carnivorous lizard-man. Resort owner Angela, joins forces with Sheriff Keefer to save tourists from the beast's path of death. This doesn't sound to bad, right? wrong. I am guilty of a crime many science fiction fans are guilty of. I call it "cool-box-syndrom". It's a common thing that happens, renting a movie because of a cool cover art. In this case, the cover showed a fanged reptile dragging a bathing beauty into the water.I was fooled. The monster looked nothing like the one on the cover. The plot was bad. The acting was ho-hum. The creature suit was mediocre. Some nice photography & locations, but that's not enough to make this sinker worth a renting. I now know to check with the Internet movie data base before I rent a film with good cover art.