The Worst Horror Movie Ever Made; “The Thing That Wouldnt, Couldnt and shouldnt Die”

I had thought that being a ripe 60 year old a horror fan / monster kid, that I had seen nearly every horror film ever made. I also thought that I had been rather successful at sorting through most bad films made. That is until I had the unique pleasure of seeing the movie “The Thing That Couldn’t Die”.  In my opinion, “The Thing That Couldn’t die” COULD quite possibly the worst horror film ever made. How any movie could be worst than an Ed Wood production is truely perplexing.

According to Author Jeremy Lunt of IMDB;

A psychically gifted young woman discovers a centuries-old crate buried on her aunt’s ranch. Opening it, her family discovers the living head of Gideon Drew, a 16th century devil worshiper who was beheaded by Sir Francis Drake. – Written by Jeremy Lunt <durlinlunt@acadia.net>

The movie quickly opens up with the gifted young woman using a devining rod to locate water while in the presence of the entire cast of the movie, (obviously the fastest case of character development I’ve ever seen in a movie) and inadvertently discovers an ancient wooden box which they believe to contain treasure. But eventually the cast opens the box to find the living disembodied head of a satanic cult member from the 16th century. If that don’t take the cake… Then the head takes over peoples thinking and makes them think and do evil things (sounds like the modern news media), eventually the head demands that the its new minions find its body so it can get reattached. (Logical)  to its body and use the head and body to take over the world (sounds like divorce court).

BEFORE                                                                              AFTER

In between

No super glue needed

But it just so happens that the when the original head was found, a magic amulet (why is there always a magic amulet?) was found near the burial site.  The amulet is crucial to the plot because it behaves like a Christian cross when repulsing the evil head and body. Not to spoil the end of the movie, which ends rather abruptly, the amulet somehow repulses the head (and body) and turns it into a skeleton. But the plot jumps so quickly that the viewer has no choice but to fill in many blanks that the writer and director misses. The movie was filmed in black and white which added to some of the movies creepy ultra mystic feeling (just kidding) though the sets were fairly modern and extremely simple.  The actors skills were limited at best (with the exception of the head who turns out to be the best actor of the entire cast). My biggest gripe about the movie has nothing to do with the acting or sets, but the fact that they ripped off the music from the Creature from the Black Lagoon. SERIOUSLY????Every time you see the head you hear the creature music.. not cool. The movie climaxes in the end when the head is reunited with the body and then commences with a tirade of hilarious insults (obviously stemming from weeks and weeks of living with the other cast members and working with the worst script ever written).

Music from “The Things That Could’nt die”

Music from “The Creature From the Black Lagoon”

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