Original title: Caltiki il mostro immortale

Technically, I vampiri (1956) had been the directorial debut of Mario Bava, who took over the reins from Riccardo Freda when the latter left the production. Bava found himself in the same position again when Freda hired him as the cinematographer and special effects artist on Caltiki the Immortal Monster, a film inspired as much by Hammer’s X the Unknown (1956) as it was the more obvious The Blob (1958). Freda again walked off the film and it was left to Bava to pick up the pieces and complete it.

Somewhere in South America, an archaeology expedition led by John Fielding (John Merivale) is exploring a network of caves deep in the jungle. One of their number, Nieto (Arturo Dominici, credited as Arthur Dominick on English language prints) is driven insane by something he encounters in the caves. This doesn’t deter the rest of the team who decide to press on and find out what it was that he discovered. In the depths of the cave system, they find a radioactive chamber containing a deep pool of water, and a shrine to Caltiki, a Mayan goddess who demanded human sacrifices. It’s worth noting that despite the expectations raised by the title, Caltiki isn’t actually the main attraction in the film – indeed beyond the title and a statue found in the cave she doesn’t feature at all.

At the bottom of the cave, a diver finds skeletons clad in gold jewellery, an armful of which he steals. . Running out of oxygen, he comes back up, clutching as much gold as he can carry. Going back for more but runs int trouble and when he’s hauled back to the surface, his colleagues are horrified to find that his flesh has started dissolving away. A blob-like creature emerges from the water and tries to absorb the remaining expedition members. It grabs the arm of Max (Gerard Haerter) but he’s rescued as another member of the team destroys the monster by driving a petrol tanker into it, causing it to explode. Back in Mexico City, the small sample of the gelatinous creature still left on max’s arm is slowly eating him away and though surgeons are able to remove it, they can do nothing to save his ruined arm. Examination of the creature reveals that it’s a bacterium that grows rapidly when exposed to radiation – and unfortunately, a radiation-emitting comet is closing in on Earth causing the blob fragment to start growing again and reproducing – and it has to stopped before it does to the modern world what it did to the Mayan civilization centuries…

As you might expect from filmmakers of the calibre of Freda and Bava, Caltiki is stylishly done given the limitations of its budget, even it was far from the sort of material that either man would favour later in their careers. There are few traces of the Gothic sensibilities that Freda would soon bring to L’orribile segreto del Dr Hichcock/The Horrible Dr Hichcock (1962) and Bava to La maschera del demonio/Black Sunday/The Mask of Satan (1960) but there are still some moody, beautifully lit set-pieces here that suggest some to what was to come – the expedition’s descent into the radioactive caverns beneath the ruins for example, home to a shrine to Caltiki, or the opening shots of a terrified Arturo Dominici fleeing through a nightmarish landscape.

But there’s only so much that clever effects and a glossy sheen can do, and they sadly can’t do much with Filippo Sanjust‘s below par screenplay. The first half of the film is a drag, the characters are strictly from stock, their relationships uninteresting and their personalities flat and dull. But it’s monster rampages that we come to see and on that score, Bava delivers. The blob might have, literally, been tripe but the effect is terrific as it squelches its way around the absurd plot laying waste to anyone it can gloop over. The menace is somewhat diluted by splitting the threat between the blob monsters and an increasingly insane Max, a move that feels counter-productive as neither are really given the focus they deserve.

Although X the Unknown and The Blob are the obvious touchstones, it’s not hard to detect traces of The Quatermass Xperiment (1955) or even Universal’s version of The Mummy (1932), the latter particularly in the opening scenes. Caltiki could never be accused of being a particularly original film – it even succumbs to that staple of 50s B movies set in exotic locales, the bit of local colour provided by some dancing and drumming in a studio set clearing in the jungle. But originality was probably never much on the mind of those involved in making it – it was designed as a disposable bit of entertainment and on that level it succeeds admirably. It may have failed to impress Italian audiences and critics but when Allied Artists imported a dubbed version into the States in 1960 it proved a popular attraction, paired with Bert I. Gordon’s ghost story Tormented (1960).

If you’re a newcomer to either Bava or Freda, this probably isn’t the best place to start as it gives only a hint of the tremendous work still to come (skeletons at the bottom of a cave lake, the grisly effects of exposure to the monster, a face behind a diving mask reduced to a hideous mass of molten flesh) from both men. But if you’re familiar with their later, better work, it offers, along with I vampiri, a fascinating glimpse into their humble beginnings.

Crew
Directed by: Robert Hamton [real name: Riccardo Freda]; Mario Bava [uncredited]; A Galatea film. A Samuel Schneider presentation [US prints]; Producer: Bruno Vailati [uncredited]; Screenplay by: Philip Just [real name: Filippo Sanjust]; Director of Photography: Mario Bava; Editor: Mario Serandrei; Music: Roberto Nicolosi; Special Effects: Mario Bava

Cast
John Merivale (John Fielding); Didi Sullivan [real name: Didi Perego]; Gerard Haerter [Gerald Haerter on US prints]; G.R. Stuart [real name: Giacomo Rossi Stuart]; Victor Andrèe [real name: Vittorio Andree] (lab assistant); Daniel Vargas [real name: Daniele Vargas]; Arthur Dominick [real name: Arturo Dominici]; Black Bernard [real name: Nerio Bernardi] (police commissioner); Rex Wood; Gay Pearl (solo ballerina); Daniela Rocca (Linda); Daniele Pitani [uncredited]

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