• Directed by William Grefe
• Written by Al Dempsey
• Starring
  • Joe Morrison
  • Valerie Hawkins
  • John Vella
  • Jack Nagle
  • Sandy Lee Kane

In honor of the ten-year anniversary Brainathon ‘99, the event which brought together the loose consortium of bad movie websites that became the B-Masters Cabal, we present — Stingathon ‘09! For years, the cheapo shot-in-Florida drive-in flick Sting of Death has been soundly ignored; now, it’s getting ganged up on. That damned JellyManFish won’t know what hit him.

Sting of Death is an example of a kind of movie which has not only become extinct but slipped out of the general movie audience’s consciousness: the regional release. Back then, a cheap indie throwaway flick could be put together outside the Hollywood system (in this case, in Florida) with the intent to sell it to a small regional distributor (in this case, the misnamed Thunderbird International Pictures) for exhibition only in a certain locale (in this case, the South) on the drive-in circuit (in this case, as a double-feature with the similarly Florida-lensed Death Curse of Tartu (1966)) with no designs to ever have a wider audience. Compare that to today, when a DVD distributor like Something Weird can recycle those meant-to-be-forgotten flicks for consumption across the Internet-enabled world, along with every Saw ripoff made by an undergrad with a DV-minicam. In other words, It is the best of times, it is the worst of times…

But you know what? These films made money. Not a lot, but when your greatest single expense is the price of 35mm film stock…

Not that any of the original audience who saw this as the second feature after Death Curse of Tartu were confused, but you know exactly what it is as soon as it starts, since the first thing you see is — a slimy, monstrous hand! One that reaches for a screwdriver! The horror! While this hand and its nefarious tool start messing around in a huge radio console, somewhere nearby a blonde in a bikini (Judy Lee) suns herself on a dock while listening to a transistor radio. The top-of-the-hour news leads with mysteriously missing fishermen in the everglades. The blonde turns off the radio without concern, and then — a slimy hand grabs at her ankle from the water! A few minutes of struggle later, a mysterious man-shaped creature with tentacles (mysterious because we don’t see its head at this juncture) drags the blonde’s drowned corpse through the water by her hair.

Although part jellyfish, the manly part of him still lusts for tools…

The introductory attack out of the way, let’s get to know the characters that matter. Dr. Richardson (Jack Nagle) is a marine biologist who lives and works on an island halfway between the everglades and the Gulf Stream, aided by his assistant John (Joe Morrison) — who’s also a doctor, but insists that everyone call him “John.” Who is everyone? Richardson’s college-age daughter Karen (Valerie Hawkins), who left for school before John came to work with her father, and four of Karen’s co-ed classmates, arriving at the island for their midterm vacation. John being a strapping fellow, all of the girls are trying to straddle the line between “demure” and “coquettish.”

Oh, and there’s also Egon (John Vella). If this production had had enough money for a fake hunchback, you can bet he’d be wearing it; as it is he has an appliance-caused lazy eye, a wardrobe that was picked up in the ditches along the side of the interstate, and a social demeanor somewhere between “Asperger’s” and “poking sticks at a monster in a castle in Bavaria.” Oddly enough, he speaks without any slurring or hesitancy. Karen has known him since childhood and is comfortable with him; the other girls, not so much.

We also get to meet, for the one and only time, Sheriff Bob (Robert Stanton), who stops at the island in his boat after having found the body of one of the missing fisherman; he entreats Richardson and John to take a look at it because, you know, scientist. They know stuff. Richardson and John take one look and say, puzzled, that it looks like the poor sap was attacked by a Man O’ War, but there’s never been a Man O’ War big enough to leave welts of that size. (Within the context of the movie, it’s ominous foreshadowing, of course. In a more real-world context, it would be two marine biologists attacking the problem with a “If your only tool is a hammer” philosophy.) Of note, Egon disputes that Man O’ Wars (Men O’ War?) can only get about eight inches across, but is pooh-poohed by John. Given the straight A-to-B-to-C style of the script, you just know that’s meaningful.

Feminine beauty, before the damned hippies ruined it all.

Oh, and let’s introduce a few other people: grad students from “the University” (that would be the one that Richardson and John work at, not the one that Karen and her friends are attending — and come to think of it, why didn’t Karen take advantage of the tuition specials that come from being the daughter of faculty?) whom John has invited. (Cue panic, as five gorgeous girls suddenly protest how terrible they look and rush to “get ready.”) It’s a boatload full of the best-looking grad student contingent you’ve ever seen, and they’re already dancing on the boat before they even get to shore. Once there, let the dancing continue! It’s scenes like this (there will be others, oh, yes) that establish the redeeming characteristic that Sting of Death has picked up over the decades since its production: as a time capsule. The fashions of the “young people,” their eagerness to dance with reckless abandon at the drop of a hat… It’s really charming, in its way. (Scenes like this also establish this movie as “exploitation-lite” — the dance scenes keep coming back to shots centered on the gyrating posteriors of the co-eds, but there’s not a chest shot to be found, and very few are in even something as skimpy as a one-piece bathing suit. In other words, this movie is from the era in which “T&A” was spelled “pulchritude.”)

But something mars the perky scene, and it’s ugly: The male grad students catch side of Egon standing to the side, quietly enjoying the music and dancing, and make it their job to humiliate him because he’s, yes, ugly. They lead the others to surround him and point fingers, laughing and insulting, until he breaks away and leaves in an airboat. Karen immediately says, “What the hell’s the matter with you cretins? Get off this island before I get out the shotgun!”

No, wait, she doesn’t. She does decry their actions as “cruel,” and John chimes in, telling them that they’ve “gone too far this time,” but we can gauge how effective their protests are from the ringleader’s response:

“Okay, so we’re sorry. He’ll get over it. Besides, I’m starved!”

So yes, a whole bunch of death warrants have just been signed.

But first — more dancing! As featured prominently in the credits, and even more prominently in the original theatrical trailer, Neil Sedaka contributed the song to which they cut a rug by the pool, “Do the Jellyfish.” He does not appear in the movie (despite his “Special Singing Guest Star” credit, nor is the song terribly memorable, but you’ve got to play up your star power where you can. And hey — more semi-choreographed white kids shaking what they’ve got! How can you go wrong?

“I’m sorry, but our stripes just aren’t compatible.”

Here’s how: Unbeknownst to them, something has crept into the pool and, despite the crystal blue waters, they don’t see it. When Karen’s friend Louise (Sandy Lee Kane) gets tired of dancing and dives into the pool to cool off, the something grabs her and leaves her with livid welts across her face (or rather, with streaks of red greasepaint); when grad student Ben jumps in to save her, he gets much the same treatment. And then the something leaps out of the other end of the pool and gets away. Significantly, Louise is the one of Karen’s galpals who treated Egon poorly when first introduced, and Ben is the only who led the students in persecuting him because he dared to intrude on a celebration of the Beautiful People. (We still don’t get much of a look at it, but this much we do know: the “monster” costume is constructed out of a bvarely-disguised wetsuit and SCUBA flippers.)

At Richardson’s advice, the students all load up the two injured people into their boat and head for land. But before they leave, the something uses a hatchet (!) to pry a board off the hull of their boat. Halfway back to solid land, the boat starts to go under, and then…

(snicker)

Remember that scene in Attack of the Killer Tomatoes! (1978) that spoofs a Jaws attack, with prop tomatoes “ominously” bobbing in the water as the swimmer flails in panic? As Ed Wood is my witness, that whole scene happens here, only played supposedly seriously. The students point in panic to the “jellyfish” around the sinking craft — but the “jellyfish” are clearly inflated clear plastic bags with something colored in them, and strings attach to dangle down like tentacles. And when the students scream, “They’re attacking!”, the bags… simply bob there. The boat goes down, students thrash and splash in the water, and the “attacking” “jellyfish” just float. I haven’t seen inanimate props treated like such a threat since Bela Lugosi fought both sides of a battle with an octopus in Bride of the Monster (1958). To try to enhance the illusion, all of the “jellyfish” shots are deliberately out of focus. It doesn’t help.

Well, if we haven’t clued in, we find out the secret behind it all when the ominous (and still not entirely hidden) form of the something enters a cave via and underwater passage. In the cave are several beeping and booping electronic devices, including — yes! — a Jacob’s Ladder. And with much further beeping and booping, the something becomes Egon. All becomes clear, doesn’t it? Except the part of why anyone would even think of transforming themselves into JellyManFish. Or why, when in ManJellyFish form, his clearly-human heels still show at the backs of his flippers.

All that this scene needs is Schroeder on his piano.

That’s the first half, and it’s all you need to know to understand exactly how the rest of the movie plays out. Egon’s carrying a huge torch for Karen, see, and lashes out at everyone who makes fun of him, especially in front of her. That includes all the rest of her galpals, two of whom accompany Richardson and John the next morning on a SCUBA expedition to check the traps and to see the lab in the woods which doubles as Egon’s residence (no room in the palatial manor house for you, pseudo-hunchback! To the shack in the woods with ye!). I could describe for you in detail the slow attacks of the never-clearly-seen JellyFishMan, the offscreen teleportation which characterizes his movement around the island and the rest of the everglades, the perfunctory romance which begins between Karen and John… but there are no more dance sequences with co-eds gyrating their bottoms, so how could I be expected to pay close attention? And I’m sure there are other reviewers willing to take you through those scenes in excruciating detail, should you so desire. (There is a shower scene, with artful suggestion of nudity seen through a frosted glass shower door, but without Neil Sedaka it just isn’t the same.)

I do know this: Egon ends up dragging Karen back to his cave lair to bear witness to his oversized jellyfish pets (again, inflated plastic bags), their growth accelerated by electricity, human blood, and good ol’-fashioned love; and then he transforms into one of them — how we don’t exactly know, except that there’s more beeping and booping involved — and stands before us in all his ManFishJelly glory. And here’s what I wrote in my notes at that point:

Because the FishJellyMan costume is surmounted by a giant inflated plastic bladder, translucent to the point that you can’t tell that it’s costume and makeup designer Doug Hobart, not John Vella, who plays Egon in his gelatinous form. He is, essentially, a man with a plastic bag on his head. (“To avoid danger of suffocation, keep this JellyManFish costume away from babies and children.”) Well, I guess there’s some continuity with how the “normal” jellyfish were realized, right?

I say again:

And then John comes to rescue her and there’s a fight and blah blah blah. Really, after they showed us the plastic jellyfish head, who cares? The camera has always been so careful to withhold that final piece of the FishJellyMan’s anatomy from us that it’s revelation comes almost as a epiphanic moment. It’s beautiful! I kiss you!

“Hm… That’s the fourth stuntman who’s passed out today. What are we doing wrong?”

And I don’t know how to end this. Aside from the ludicrous monster costume, Sting of Death is the kind of lazy movie that has nothing to keep it from being both lost and forgotten. The cinematography is cheap and quick, with focus being the supreme goal (excepting, naturally, the on-purpose blurring of the “jellyfish” in the water). The acting is as wooden enough to give you splinters. The dialog is wholly artless; it’s like cinderblocks with punctuation.

And a wonderful time was had by all.

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 11
• breasts: 0
• explosions: 1
• ominous thunderstorms: 0
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 0