User Reviews

A web-covered creature is disturbed when a bunch of thieves set off an explosion in an old mine as a diversion while they steal some gold from a nearby town. The monster scuttles around the snow covered mountains of South Dakota, eventually focusing its attention on the criminals, who are hiding out in a cabin owned by unsuspecting mountain guide Gil Jackson (Michael Forest).

Barring the occasional brief glimpse of a hairy spider-like leg, the beast from Beast From Haunted Cave remains hidden until the end of the film, and it's easy to understand why: it looks so laughably bad that if viewers had seen it earlier, they'd probably have stopped watching and found something better to do with their time. Mind you, I can imagine many people not hanging in there for the final reel, such is the overall shoddy nature of this low-budget stinker, the film suffering from turgid direction, a weak script bogged down by too much talk, and a cheap aesthetic.

Forest makes for a bland hero, Sheila Noonan is forgettable as gangster's moll Gypsy, and most of the supporting cast do little to help matters. Only Frank Wolff as head criminal Alexander Ward impresses, the actor succeeding in making his character genuinely loathesome and fully deserving of a nasty fate.

This film details the plot of a group of gold-robbers who unwittingly run into trouble when they become stalked by a strange spider-like beast while hiding out from the police in the woods.

This film is Slow..very slow..too slow for most people to stick with till the end and that's a shame as the ending has a surprisingly effective climatic showdown with the monster which is certainly entertaining. There's some decent thoughtful dialogue in this movie as well.

On paper, this simply couldn't go wrong! The long-feature debut of brilliant director/producer Monte Hellman ("Two-Lane Backtop", "Cockfighter"), owing its existence to legendary producer Roger Corman, and fully belonging in one of my favorite cinematic hypes of all time: cheap 50's monstrous B-movies! Evidently, a whole lot went wrong… From sheer boring dialogs over irrelevant sub plots and onwards to a largely absent and – above all – uninspired titular monster design. The "beast" looks like a vague shape covered in cobwebs and that's just plain lame; even according to zero-budget 50's horror standards. The basic plot definitely holds potential, and for the first 20 minutes or so, I felt convinced I was watching a undiscovered gem of the genre. But the, incomprehensibly, the plot somehow stopped evolving and became an unendurably boring ordeal to struggle through. A quartet of gangsters carefully planned a risky gold heist near a skiing resort. Whilst the drunken love interest already embarks on a skiing trip with the instructor, the other three break into a bank before joining the others. During their perfect alibi, however, the assembly encounters (eventually) a hairy and aggressive monster living in the mountain caves. "Beast from Haunted Cave" is a nearly insufferably dull film, and that's all the more painful to acknowledge due to the promising intro. The heist concept is ingenious, the characters are intriguing (the girl is a manic depressive drunk and one of the robbers is a womanizer) and the ski-resort setting is quite effective (cashing in on the contemporary Abominable Snowman paranoia). The rudimentary plot ingredients for a charming 50's monster-mayhem flick are well present, but I'm extremely reluctant to announce this movie is an utter failure. Disappointing to the nth degree

In the great scheme of all things cinematic this is certainly not a great movie, but it is in many ways an intriguing one. Made in 1959, it is billed as and pretends to be another example of the '50s creature-features, but it largely eschews the standard formatting of those films for a deeper, character-driven narrative, more in common with subsequent films of the sixties and beyond. In that sense, it is slightly ahead of its time.

In fact, the horror elements take a back seat for much of the film, which plays more as a drama of tensions between a band of criminals and the skiing guide they have hired as part of their cover story. From this point of view, the film's real strengths come to light. The characters are written as though they could be actual people and not just devices to move the plot along, as some earlier films of the genre tended to portray their casts. The photography is very good, and there is a superb performance by Sheila Noonan as a troubled moll, one that virtually carries the movie and makes it much more interesting whenever she is on screen.

While the characterization is good for a B-movie, the writing is somewhat uneven. There are some quite deep philosophical insights offered up by the characters, such as the benefits of city life versus country living. If the writer wanted to take these musings in a more serious direction, perhaps this could have been Beast From Plato's Cave. But we can't read too much into a film where the guide's sister - Kay Jennings in a neat little performance - tries to sweet-talk a handsome stranger with the line "Did I tell you I knitted this sweater?" to which he replies "Is knitting your scene?" Some find the ending quite disturbing and scary for a film of its time. Others may find it somewhat flimsy and rushed. Either way, this film still has enough going for it to rate as a must-see for the serious fans of the genre.

In a skiing station in Dakota, a gang of criminals leaded by Alexander "Alex" Ward (Frank Wolff) plans the heist of golden bars from a small bank. While the lover of Alex, Gypsy Boulet (Sheila Carol), goes to an isolated cabin with the ski instructor Gil Jackson (Michael Forest), a time bomb explodes a cave to divert the attention of the locals and the gangsters steal the gold. But the explosion releases a spider-like monster and due to a storm, the group becomes trapped in Gil's cabin and threatened by the creepy beast.

The debut of Monte Hellman as director is a typical trash movie of the 50's. The story is not bad; the low budget effects are very poor and laughable; the heroine is gorgeous; the sudden conclusion gives the sensation that the shooting was interrupted; and the cover of the Brazilian DVD is extremely funny with the following text: "Young girls scared and sucked by a maze of horror and blood of a hunger beast from hell", which is delightfully funny and ridiculous, since the story has nothing to do with it. In spite of these remarks, I like this type of film, which are part of mine childhood, therefore "Beast From Haunted Cave" is a good entertainment at least for me. My vote is five.

Title (Brazil): "A Besta da Caverna Assombrada" ("The Beast From the Haunted Cave")

One of the rarest experiences for a B-movie fanatic is to find a film you haven't seen in 30-plus years is much better than your childhood memory of it. While "Beast From Haunted Cave" was obviously made on a shoestring -- it's a Gene "Brother Of Roger" Corman production, so what do you expect? -- first-time director Monte Hellman (The Shooting, Two Lane Blacktop) had a better-than-average script and capable actors, not to mention a director of photography who made effective use of the stark winter landscape near Deadwood, South Dakota.

The film starts out slow as a gang plans and executes a robbery, but then it veers off into darker territory as they and their guide are trailed to the hideout by a surprisingly well-realized and startlingly nasty monster.

This is by no means a perfect film: There are occasional stumbles in motivation, dialogue and the timing of events, yet for me these inconsistencies actually contributed to an atmosphere of dreamlike disorientation as the story plays out against the bleached-bone white of the snow and the soot-black shadows of winter pines. The plight of the Beast's victims -- cocooned alive, and fully aware as it feeds on them -- yields a heaping helping of shudders.

The DVD transfer (I'm talking about the most recent release, not the one paired with "The Brain That Wouldn't Die") was made from an excellent print; the soundtrack is quite clear. You may recognize the score as the same used for "Attack Of The Giant Leeches" and -- I think -- "Night Of The Blood Beast": These guys knew how to recycle!

Even with its defects, this is a distinctly weird and surprisingly gruesome chiller, a fine example of how much can be accomplished even with limited resources.

Beast from Haunted Cave (1959)

** (out of 4)

Slow-moving but mildly entertaining horror film from director Monte Hellman has a group of thieves stealing some gold and deciding to hide out in the snowy mountains. Their plan seems to be working at first but soon they come across a giant spider deep within the cave.

This here was an early Roger Corman production and like a lot of the films from this era you soon realize that they were working with very little money, which means that there's going to be a lot of talking and very little action. One of the Corman's most known sayings was how when you're monster looks bad it's best to keep it hidden. That pretty much happens in BEAST FROM HAUNTED CAVE as the spider is rarely seen outside of a part here or a part there. The bad costume finally shows up at the very end but at that point it's too late to turn the film off.

I thought the cast were decent for what they were asked to do, which was basically hit their marks and say their lines. The cast were at least interesting enough to keep you glued to the movie and to stick with it longer than you probably would have otherwise. The spider creature design is obviously very cheap but there's some mild charm that you can take from it.

Hellman would go onto make much better cult movies but this one here was mildly entertaining as long as you don't take it too serious.

The film clearly was done on little money, but there are a number of matters that elevate it above other cheap monster films of the era.

Charles Griffith does a much better job with dialog than he did in It Conquered the World or Little Shop of Horrors. There's some actual meaning in the banter. Furthermore, it is delivered in an interesting style that also might derive from the low budget, so that chunks of the dialog are oddly timed, and naturalistic for that. I was only half-watching early on, and suddenly the delivery of the lines made me really attend to the thing.

I liked Sinatra in this--never heard of him before watching this movie.

As others have said, it's slow in the middle, fairly exciting at the end.

This is chilling in more ways than one: actually filmed in the cold, snowy Dakotas, it's the story of crooks who create a diversion by blowing up a cave, so they can rob a nearby town. Trouble is they've disrupted the lair of a vampiric spidery beast which follows them as they head toward a hide-out in the forest. This is a truly eerie effort, enhanced by ripe dialogue, excellent direction (Monte Hellman), co-produced by the Corman brothers, to maximum effect. The music is especially shuddery, also used in at least "Attack of the Giant Leeches" (1958), "Night of the Blood Beast" (1958) and "The Wasp Woman" (1959). Three performers never reached their potential: Richard Sinatra as a crook (and relative of Frank's) only made a few pictures, Frank Wolff, the head honcho, committed suicide 12 years later at age 40, and lastly Sheila Carol, who did only 3 films, and is memorable as the Lauren Bacall-ish, unhappy moll who longs for the kidnapped guide (Michael Forest), but is stuck with the abusive Wolff. The final sequence in the atmospheric cave, (pre-dates "Alien" - 1979), will give you nightmares for years.

Drive-in classic is the first time cult director Monte Hellman made a feature. Here its the story of a bunch of gangsters on the run after a robbery who hide out in a cabin in the mountains. Adding to the complications is a monster lurking in a near by cave. As the gangsters try to figure out how to get away from the law they also have to deal with the monster who is whittling away at their number.

Its a creepy little movie thats perfect for late night movie viewing on a cold winters night. Far from the greatest film ever made its just an enjoyable little horror film that manages to balance both the crime and monster (although I'm the first to admit that the monster at times seems to have been a secondary thought.) Worth a look and a bag of popcorn, especially on Halloween.

(The running time of this movie was originally 65 minutes. Additional scenes were added for TV broadcasts)

While this movie doesn't have all the typical low budget horror clichés, it's still manages to move slowly and confuse you at the same time. The acting isn't too bad, it's not a constant tight shot and they are smart enough to never let you get a good look at the low quality monster, yet somehow it's still not good. The premise is bad enough. Some guys steal six bars of gold and are prepared to kill multiple people to get away and they have the longest and slowest possible get away planned. The beast is first seen in a gold mine and then later it lives in a haunted cave so I'm not sure what's up with that but that's the least confusing thing about the movie. The best thing I can say about this is that most 70 minute movies are much worse. Two stars.

A bunch of gangsters holed up in a remote ski cabin face off against a giant monster...or something. But that doesn't really happen until the last 10 minutes or so! The rest is just a so-so gangster drama dealing with the members and their interactions. The monster is just incidental to the plot.

The movie isn't terrible. The script is OK (if predictable) and there's a very good performance by Sheila Carol. Also they manage to actually work up a few scary moments. But the rest of the acting is lousy, there's endless padding (even at 65 minutes) and it's never explained what the monster is or how it came into being (it's suggested once...then dropped).

I've seen worse but I've seen better too. An OK time waster--nothing more.

In snowy South Dakota, handsome ski instructor Michael Forest (as Gil Jackson) gets involved with sensuous Sheila Carol (as Gypsy Boulet) and a gang of thieves led by her jealous lover Frank Wolff (as Alexander "Alex" Ward). The other crooks are wily Wally Campo (as Byron Smith) and Frank's cousin Richard Sinatra (as Marty Jones). The latter has the convincing line, "Nobody takes my watch!" The former takes cocktail waitress Linné Ahlstrand (as Natalie) out for a quickie, but she gets spun by the "Beat from Haunted Cave" instead. The monster is played by future soap opera star Chris Robinson, who also appears in the bar. The location and a couple of set-ups are okay, but that's about it for this dull, unwarranted horror.

*** Beast from Haunted Cave (10/30/59) Monte Hellman ~ Michael Forest, Sheila Noonan, Frank Wolff, Wally Campo

BEAST FROM HAUNTED CAVE is a truly pathetic horror/thriller produced by Gene Corman, Roger's brother. It's clear that Roger had plenty of input in this film because it's stylistically similar to the likes of ATTACK OF THE GIANT LEECHES and just as inept. The storyline, which isn't too bad, is about a group of robbers who use a skiing trip as cover for their criminal activities, and the giant, cave-dwelling beast that scuppers their plans.

The problem with this film is all in the execution, because it's rubbish. At a running time of just an hour and fifteen minutes, it feels slow, slow, slow, and really tests the patience. The production values are low but the real problem is the script, which is full of time-wasting inanity. We never learn anything interesting about the stock characters and there's not a single witty line either.

The monster of the piece isn't seen too frequently, which is no bad thing seeing as it looks rubbish. At least the last twenty minutes has a little action to recommend it, but otherwise this film is a real chore to watch: bad acting, bad scripting, a lack of action and incident, and zero suspense. Of the cast, only future spaghetti western actor Frank Wolff and Shirley Eaton lookalike Sheila Noonan are worth mentioning. Incidentally, BEAST FROM HAUNTED CAVE was the first feature for cult director Monte Hellman; thankfully he went on to better things.

Two hired goons, a crime boss and his half-drunken, fed up 'secretary' plan a gold heist up in some ski/mining resort. This involves creating a diversion by blowing up a nearby mine, then raiding gold reserves, then tricking a guide into taking them cross country by ski to his cabin to await uplift by plane. The heist goes to plan, with a couple of minor setbacks: they manage to kill someone in the mine explosion and also unleash some sort of monster who then follows them across the land to finish the job.

First time I tried to watch this I started immediately falling asleep due to the constant banal dialogue and dark print. Second time round I was a bit sharper and enjoyed it a lot more. Although there is a lot of needless dialogue (including a pointless scene with one of the goons chatting up a character with no bearing on the plot) things do pick up a bit when the monster makes an appearance, as it is pretty freaky. Director Monte Hellman keeps glimpses of the creature to a minimum at first, but it does become clear that it likes to wrap up its victims in webs to feed on. It also has really long legs and a creepy call and really needs a haircut.

Our folks are all bickering, the bad chick wants to turn good and run off with the guide, and one of the goons is quite taken by the Indian housekeeper. It was refreshing to see these folks for the most part weren't exactly scared of the monster, instead always running out to try and kill the thing before it killed them. For a fifties horror film (a roger corman affiliated one at that) this carried a bit more atmosphere and had a scarier monster than, say, the creeping terror.

Roger Corman and brother Gene spent about $72.50 on this one. I'm kidding of course. It was probably in the thousands, but still cheap. Roger got composer Alexander Laszlo to do the soundtrack, had a cast that included Playmate Linné Ahlstrand in a small part and was able to piggyback this shoot with another one of his films, Ski Troop Attack (1960). After coming up with a plot that mimics that of Key Largo (1948), he added a monster then landed the biggest star of the film, Deadwood, South Dakota.

That's right, the best thing about this film is its shooting location. Beautiful, majestic, snow-covered, Black Hills mountains that made the film interesting enough to say, "check it out". The shooting of the film was treacherous, cold and scary. If you are going to go get Playmates, Composers and picturesque locations, write a better script, bring a better camera along, check your audio equipment and don't shoot it in thirteen days. If you have no money for special effects, drop the monster. The effects in this film are atrocious and you could easily have made it a much better film, by taking one of the characters and making them a crazy killer or something.

In closing, the acting wasn't too bad, but the creative technique just isn't there. The directing and editing is freshman at best. If it wasn't for the skiing scenes, the snow-covered landscapes and the cool, creepy cave locations, this film wouldn't be worth watching at all. In my opinion an IMDB rating of 3 or less is unwatchable, but I gave this a 4, because you need to see it as a chapter in the legendary Corman film-history.

4.0 (F MyGrade) = 4 IMDB

when I saw it on TV, back in the mid-sixties, when I was about 14 years old. I was then, and continue to be, a lover of horror films. For some reason, this one really got to me, more than just about any other in this genre, except maybe "The Pit and the Pendulum". I don't recall now just what the beast looked like but I recall that it was suitably realistic for its time. It took a while for the story to get moving but was well worth the wait. I recall that I was truly horrified as the beast fed on its living victims. I had some nasty dreams for several weeks after seeing it. I haven't viewed this movie since then but would definitely jump at the chance. I recommend it.

I hereby inaugurate a 10-movie tribute to the director of this film on the occasion of his birthday; I had always been interested in catching up with the horror/thriller hybrid under review, as much due to my fondness for the former genre as Hellman's own well-deserved reputation (here making his debut). I had even intended purchasing the Synapse DVD but balked at the hefty price-tag of their bare-bones edition (especially when considering that this is a 'Public Domain' title); as often happens, after going the extra mile to acquire the film, it turned up virtually unheralded on Italian TV (albeit in the original language)!

Anyway, the version I watched was the slightly extended one – running 72 minutes against the official 64, though I have no idea what constitutes the additional footage. By the way, the film is reportedly a semi-remake of a very minor Roger Corman outing called NAKED PARADISE (1957); incidentally, this one was produced by his brother Gene! It is obviously a low-budgeted effort whose lack of proper funds is mainly evident in the muffled soundtrack and the sparse, indistinct appearance of the tentacled, wraith-like titular monster itself (which is seen stalking the gang throughout and eerily keeps its victims, still alive, in a cocoon – the latter scenes are said to have inspired the ALIEN films to some degree)!

The main plot deals with a skiing trip (complete with instructor/guide) and an explosion in a cave (the ongoing excavation works had unearthed the prehistoric{?} beast to begin with!) being used as cover for a heist of gold ingots from the neighboring small town. The gang is the usual assortment of tensed-up types: a quarrelsome couple (he being played by future "Euro-Cult" regular Frank Wolff and she a hard-drinking nymphomaniac); a slightly beefy and nervous young man which, however, does not preclude him from eyeing a couple of ladies along the way (played by Frank Sinatra's cousin Richard{!}, he is the first to come into contact with the monster and also the one to ultimately dispatch it); and the obligatory comic relief character who is easily the least interesting and most annoying (especially when turned on by the hero's Hispanic maid!); the male lead, too, is the customary handsome fellow to whom the movie's female counterpart becomes attracted, in spite of her husband's repeated warnings to steer clear (a situation which eventually erupts into a violent row that involves practically all the protagonists), and whose own sister flirts with Sinatra but exits the picture soon after very early on into the movie!

The thieves-hiding-out-in-a-snowy-locale element of the plot (for the record, the film was made concurrently with Roger Corman's negligible war adventure SKI TROOP ATTACK {1960}) recalls Jacques Tourneur's fine, recently-viewed noir NIGHTFALL (1957) – having mentioned Corman, he would himself repay the tribute done him by Hellman here by remaking it yet again (monster included this time around, and with a similar title to boot) as CREATURE FROM THE HAUNTED SEA (1961)!; since I also own the latter, I will be watching it as a companion piece to this one…and, reportedly, Hellman was actually engaged to shoot new scenes in order to expand its length for the TV version! On the other hand, the effective (if somewhat rushed) climax of BEAST seems to have influenced the finale to John Carpenter's THE THING (1982; itself a remake of the 1951 Howard Hawks sci-fi classic)! In the end, Hellman only returned to the horror genre when he needed the money to get his inherently personal projects off the ground – resulting in the straight-to-video sequel SILENT NIGHT, DEADLY NIGHT III: BETTER WATCH OUT! (1989)...

It's not a beast from *a* haunted cave, it's from a cave called Haunted. Or not. I think they need an indefinite article in there. Either way, this is a low-budget, low-effects, low-costume thriller about a gang robbing a lodge and then escaping via cross-country skiing. There's a menacing leader, the sensitive guy, the dopey guy, and the 'secretary.' And the guide who's smarter than any of them know! Plus a formidable Native American housekeeper. But the real star of the show is the monster, which looks quite tame (and humorous) by modern standards. Roger Corman was the producer, and Monte Hellman made his directing debut, so you know expense was spared all over the place. I did like some of the dialog, particularly from Sheila Noonan as the moll. This is probably best viewed as an unserious example of wacky monster movies of the 1950s.