While CURUCU is far from being a good movie, it is not as bad as its reputation would suggest. Imdb is full of negative reviews especially those before 2010 but they start to improve after that. It all depends on what you are looking for. Marketed as a horror film by Universal and double billed with the much better THE MOLE PEOPLE, CURUCU fails in that department but succeeds in others. The movie was shot on location in Brazil and works very well as a jungle adventure picture and as a travelogue of a Brazil and an Amazon jungle that no longer exists.
John Bromfield and Beverly Garland, two good looking, stalwart B movie performers, star as a Brazilian plantation owner and a doctor who go up river into the Amazon rain forest in search of a legendary monster that is killing Native Indian workers and driving them away from the plantations and back into the jungle. Today shutting down plantations and returning Indians to their Native origins would play well with a 21st century audience but not back in 1956 where the person who proposes such an idea would have to be thwarted. His fate is the final shot in the film and it stays with you.
There was so much Brazilian footage shot that some of it that was not used in CURUCU wound up in LOVE SLAVES OF THE AMAZON the following year Both movies were written and directed by Curt Siodmak who began his career at Universal with THE INVISIBLE MAN RETURNS in 1940. A year later came THE WOLFMAN followed by other screenplays in the horror / sci-fi genre including DONOVAN’S BRAIN which was filmed 3 times. There are currently no home video versions of CURUCU available although Universal has provided a quality copy for streaming. If you’re a fan of exotic photography and 1950s B movies, then check it out.
The Capsule Critic 