DemonofParadise

Demon of Paradise (1987)

There is some illegal dynamite fishing happening on a Hawaiian lake. This is an issue because the disturbance created by this activity awakens a local legend. This half lizard/half man goes on a hunting spree killing anyone and everyone that it runs across. Bullets seem to bounce off of it as even the National Guard can’t stop the creature. It is only when they track it to a cave and toss lots of grenades at it do they kill it. But do they? As the lead actress says as the movie ends, “Have you ever pulled a lizard’s tail off?” Uh oh…

Yeah I told you how the movie ends. Now you don’t have to watch it, and I really recommend that you not waste your time. This thing is a mess. Now we do get to see the monster early on and it keeps showing up throughout the movie. That is a good thing, but mixed in with this is a lot of boring crap about scavenger hunts and science stuff that is sort of absurd. Yeah I used the work crap, which isn’t very professional of me. But I don’t have any other word to describe what a large chunk of this movie is. I was bored to tears, which made me really picky about what was happening on screen. See I become a lot less forgiving when I’m not having fun. This leads me to the next part of the review.

You have characters that follow zero logic and seem to do things specifically to get themselves killed. Our lead actress keeps diving into the lake after she finds bodies, but does so unarmed! Oh and it takes her a long time to finally tell anyone that the creature is increasing the body count. Yeah I dig the whole, “we must save it for science” thing that she has going on. And if you are tracking an aquatic creature why does everyone keep taking the flimsiest boats out on the water? Kind of easy to overturn them isn’t it? I had some hope when they bring in a helicopter to toss dynamite into the lake, but guess who decides to fly really low to the water because they see the monster? Damn it if everyone is going to be so stupid then I’m going to root for the lizard monster!

Now I was really hating this movie until around the last 15 minutes. It still isn’t great, but when the monster shows up to do battle on the land it does get a bit more fun. The creature is really cheesy looking and the sound effects are hilarious. But I mean this in a good way. I love those ‘50s “B” features where a guy in a rubber creature outfit portrays the monster. This is exactly what we have here and it is pretty cool to see. Plus when they finally corner it and toss a bunch of grenades at it we get a satisfying and explosive conclusion.

Sadly even this ending doesn’t make up for what we have to sit thru to get there. I can take a lot of odd plot choices and silly monster makeup, but you had better not bore me. This movie did that and I can’t recommend it to anyone. If you insist then I’ll let you know that this can be had from The Shout Factory on one of those Roger Corman Cult Classic DVDs. It is a double feature with the dreadful Up from the Depths (this is by fare the weakest that I’ve seen from the series).

1 ½ out of 4

reviewed by John Shatzer