The Creeping Terror (1964): Or, Why You Shouldn’t Let Your Nephew Build the Monster Costume

Imagine that a creature from another world arrives on Earth, but instead of sleek menace, ray guns, mantids, grays, or otherworldly dread, it looks like a phallic shag rug trying to sneak into a dive bar after hours. That’s The Creeping Terror, a film that dares to ask: what if the alien invasion were slow, visibly stitched together with bad acting and stock footage, then narrated like a fifth-grade book report read out loud over the P.A. system?

The plot—which I’m generously calling a plot—involves a UFO landing near Lake Tahoe (where it was supposed to be filmed until budget constraints made them settle for a muddy run-off pond in Simi Valley). The craft unleashes a hungry slug-carpet monster with the speed and agility of your grandmother's bath mat. Most of the victims, as is usually the case from movies of this genre and era, are teens doing bad things like dancing and making out. That'll teach 'em. The recorded dialogue was famously lost during production, so they "rescued" the film by just narrating the whole thing. It's 90% silent movie, which somehow makes it feel both more absurd and more intimate, like a bedtime story told by someone who’s done a few bong hits and keeps losing track of the characters.

This is a movie where the terror does not so much creep as… shuffle. Or possibly scoot. Meander, maybe. Watching victims crawl into the creature’s mouth (for lack of a better word) is a study in acting commitment. The feet of the actor inside the slug suit often show up on camera. They knew it was bad (lots of in-fighting during production), but they did it anyway.

And that, honestly, is why I love it.