Demon of Paradise

This is another boring low budget horror/monster movie. The video box art is quite cool (as usual) but the film itself is far too dull. The monster is a guy in a rubber suit, which usually would give you laughs due to the cheese factor, but sadly the monster isn't shown nearly enough to be entertaining. There's no gore nor suspense to be had either. The acting ranges from OK to terrible.

Demon of Paradise reminds me of another horror flick in a similar vein called The Evil Below, which is equally as boring. All horror fans will want to avoid both of these films - all they're good for are the VHS covers.

When I was a teenager I used to watch a lot of Cirio Santiago's war/action flicks like "Equalizer 2000","Nam Angels" or "Last Stand at Lang Mei".His cheaply made but highly energetic movies were popular during VHS revolution in Poland."Demon of Paradise" tells the story of Hawaiian fishing community terrorized by a man sized amphibious monster.I consider myself very tolerant when it comes to rating and reviewing Z-grade trash,unfortunately "Demon of Paradise" is simply dull.There is no gore and the bloodless killings are mostly off-screen.Admittedly Hawaiian landscapes are beautiful and the music is fine,but "Demon of Paradise" is a misfire.4 out of 10 for this low-budget monster dud.

Hunters become the hunted when illegal dynamite disturbs the age-old slumber of a carnivorous lizard-man. Resort owner Angela, joins forces with Sheriff Keefer to save tourists from the beast's path of death. This doesn't sound to bad, right? wrong. I am guilty of a crime many science fiction fans are guilty of. I call it "cool-box-syndrom". It's a common thing that happens, renting a movie because of a cool cover art. In this case, the cover showed a fanged reptile dragging a bathing beauty into the water.I was fooled. The monster looked nothing like the one on the cover. The plot was bad. The acting was ho-hum. The creature suit was mediocre. Some nice photography & locations, but that's not enough to make this sinker worth a renting. I now know to check with the Internet movie data base before I rent a film with good cover art.

Someone wakes me up when something starts happening. Other

than Kathryn Witt's form fitting 80's jeans I see no reason to bother

with this stinker. Seems to have been fashioned as an excuse to

shoot a bunch of footage with one of those helicopter engine

pontoon swamp boats & discussion scenes at a Hawaiian tourist

resort during an off-season winter lull. I also love how the

hero/heroine are thrown out of the resort one scene & the next

they go back to have a drink. THEN they get thrown out again, and

are back four scenes later since that was the best set they had.

I love low budget horror trash as much as anyone else, but

something ought to happen every once in a while, and if you are

going to have an attractive woman play a herpatologist in a horror

film she had better be seen at least topless & getting far more out

of her career than she bargained on, or you have blown it.

As for the monster suit, heh, I thought it was kind of fun to see

someone not even bother to make something that looked "realistic" -- Kind of like Lamberto Bava's MONSTER SHARK, but

without any point to it & lacking that movie's ridiculous

entertainment value.

Best line: "It takes two to mate." [Flushing sound]

Mmm… the poster artwork looked alright; too bad the feature didn't draw out the same excitement. 'Demon of Paradise' isn't the complete pits, but for most part is quite an flatfooted cheapjack co-American/Philippines monster feature, which treads water for too long and then amusingly erupts in the unimaginative final quarter. Philippine exploitation director/producer Cirio H. Santiago ('Cover Girl Models', 'T.N.T. Jackson' and 'Naked Vengeance') manages to keep you fascinated, but I don't know how. Maybe it's those cheap looking explosions. Yeah it could be. Caused by no other than the creature? No really it's plain stupidity. I don't know why they want to destroy it. I could've sworn when it's bobbing out of the water it likes to wave (not clawing), asking to jump in so it can hug you to death. But wherever it is about, for some reason there's dynamite and then explosions seem to follow. Maybe the director was adding those bangs to wake-up the viewer from the miserable dialogue exchanges and mainly limp acting. One scene involving a helicopter and the creature efforts to get up close for a ride is embarrassingly shonky. No wonder why he went all out in the final twenty minutes, but this creature could've been mistaken for a machine since all of the punishment it encounters and still it doesn't bleed. Where's Arnold Schwarzenegger when you need him. But more than one grenade thrown at the same time will get you a result. BOOM!

Really there wasn't enough buzz. Everything here is a cut and paste job with the story lazily mixing 'Jaws (1975)' and 'Creature from the Black lagoon (1954)' together. The prehistoric underwater monster (formed by some superstitious groundwork) is a lousy looking rubber suit, and the rest of the make-up FX is quite tatty. Performances come across rather drab, but Laura Banks, Frederick Bailey and especially Leslie Scarborough kick up plenty of spruce. The music score was painful.

Pointless trite, but watchable.