Death Curse of Tartu (1966) — Triskaidekafiles

DEATH CURSE OF TARTU

WRITER: William Grefe

DIRECTOR: William Grefe

STARRING: Fred Pinero as Ed Tison

Babbette Sherrill as Julie Tison

Bill Marcus as Billy

Mayra Gomez as Cindy

Sherman Hayes as Johnny

Gary Holtz as Tommy

Maurice Stewart as Joann

Douglas Hobart as Tartu

Frank Weed as Sam Gunter

QUICK CUT: A group of teens throw a beach party, and all the noise from their dancing and music bothers their nearby neighbour, who takes matters into his own hands.

THE MORGUE

Ed Tison - An archaeology professor who doesn’t believe in the supernatural. He’s very smart, and looks out for his wife and students fairly well.

Julie - Ed’s wife, and a bit more spooked by the supernatural than her hubby. She’s your average sixties wife, but at least gets to come along the expeditions.

Johnny - One of the students, and he keeps a cool head, and is a whiz at track.

Cindy - Johnny’s girlfriend, and is even more typical love interest than Julie.

TRISK ANALYSIS: Happy Triskgiving! This week's holiday turkey is Death Curse of Tartu, which uh, I got in my head was a black and white movie, which would have continued this year's little trend, but it's not! Instead, it's a weird little sixties flick about a group of kids that anger an ancient mystic. And I also learned that it may have been remade, or homaged, with the film Scalps, which I looked at a few years ago for Thanksgiving, so it ended up being seasonally appropriate, in a very very roundabout way.

We open up as a man wanders through the jungle and comes across a cave. He enters it, sits down in front of some wood paneling, and begins to narrate about a man who will turn into a turkey...no wait. Another surprising Thanksgiving connection; yes, it's the same actor who narrated Blood Freak.

Instead, he finds a sarcophagus, and it's occupant decides to wake up and say hello...by killing him!

Is he being attacked by a teddy bear?? Who’s got the cutest widdle fuzzy feet??

Next, we find Sam Gunter and his guide Billy canoeing through the Florida everglades, until they find a spot, and start unloading things to set up for an upcoming expedition.

Well, Gunter unloads. Billy believes this place is protected by ancient spirits and there is a death curse over it.

Billy explains he agreed to bring Gunter this far, and then leave, which he has done. Well...except for the leaving part.

Once Billy does leave, Gunter finds the spot to set up camp, and then goes looking around. He finds a skull or two, digs in the ground, and pulls out something. This is apparently enough to bother the spirits watching over this place, and the sarcophagus opens again.

Tartu sends a large snake through the swamp to find Gunter and take care of him, and we spend a lot of time watching it slither ever closer.

It does finally reach the man though, and the two wrestle. I was going to make some jokes about the snake probably being dead, and the guy was doing all the work, but it turns out, thanks to the commentary, the guy was an animal wrangler the director knew, and the snake was real, and it was his. Neat!

Back at base camp, the Tisons arrive with a quartet of students, and once again we're 20 minutes in before the main cast arrives. They're a pair of archaeologists and their students, going to poke in the dirt and awaken ancient curses.

Tison gets the same warnings from Billy about the land as Gunter did, and is just as dismissive of them. We do get a bit more information from Billy though, about men killed by a tiger, so he likes to change into animals not native to the area, for funsies.

This swamp has a death curse! A deeeath cuuurse!

Ed and his students get the airboat all loaded up, and they head out to the location. And we spend even more time just buzzing through the Everglades. There is a shocking lack of dialogue in this flick, as they show off the scenery.

They eventually find the campsite, but no sign of Gunter, since he's dead. Ed makes excuses for Gunter's absence, so as to not worry the kids, and they settle in for the night, while they make plans to go digging in the morning.

While Ed tries to translate some writing on the thing Gunter dug up, the kids head down to the lake to 'roast marshmallows'. Which I guess is 60s slang for sexy times.

We can roast our own marshmallows right here.

Ed shares his concerns over Gunter's disappearance with his wife, as well as what he translated. The stone basically reiterates Billy's story, and Ed's wife finds it frightening.

But, he reassures her that it may sound frightening, but it's sheer nonsense. Oh, he is gonna get killed by sheer nonsense, I just know it.

Down by the shore, the kids are indeed making out, and eventually it breaks out into a dance party. Now, the DVD box claims this is what wakes up Tartu and starts him killing, but we know that's not entirely true. He's already offed two others before we even got this fair. Let's not blame this ALL on the kids.

Two of the students go for a swim in the river, be it by choice or otherwise, and Tartu decides to take care of them with a fresh water shark attack. Be careful, Syfy Channel might sue.

All the screaming gets the attention of their chaperones, who come running to the shore, and Ed shoots at the shark to scare it off.

He's too late though, and we are now already down a third of our cast.

They make the smart move to get to the airboats and get out of there, but they find their transportation has been destroyed somehow.

Any time you wanna wake up and join the rest of the movie…

After discussing what to do next, they decide that Johnny will travel the 25 miles back to civilisation on foot, and Ed will stay since he is better suited to protect the people staying behind.

We start to hear drums taking over the soundtrack of the movie, as Tartu slowly wakes up. Take your time pal, no hurry or nothin'.

The Tisons and Cindy get comfortable while Johnny walks off into the swamp for the very long walk ahead of him.

We’re not gonna watch him walk the whole 25 miles, are we?? What is this, Science Crazed: Swamp Edition??

As Johnny does his walkabout, another snake slithers along slowly behind him through the water, and we get it. Get on with it. Spare us all!

There is a lot of walking, a lot of slithering, and a lot of hacking through brush and trees, but eventually, the snake DOES catch up with Johnny and pops out of the water to bite him.

And it was almost worth the wait, because the snake bites him A LOT, so at least there's that.

Back at camp, Cindy suddenly starts screaming, knowing Johnny is dead, she could see it happen, being bitten by a snake. And sure, why not, let's add psychic visions into this if it moves the plot along.

Ed decides that if this is all true, the only thing they can do is find Tartu's burial site and destroy him. Sure, that's the ONLY thing we can do. Oh, but it's not THAT easy, Tartu can only be stopped by mother nature.

So they go in search of the burial site, and pretty much follow the sound of the drums until they find it. But it still takes awhile, because everything does in this movie. I seriously need someone to enable fast travel.

They do find the cave though, along with Sam's dead body, and Cindy freaks out and rushes back out into the swamp. The cave entrance swings shut behind her, leaving the adult supervision trapped.

It's not long before Cindy meets her fate, at least not by the standards of this movie. She trips into the swamp, and a crocodile comes along to eat her. Or is it an alligator? I can never get it right.

Ed blows the door so they can get out of the cave just in time to watch Cindy get killed, but then they head right back to deal with Tartu.

Please don’t bang on the styrofoam walls, you’re making them sake…

They try to get the casket open, but nothing seems to do the trick, it's just too darn heavy to move.

At least, until Tartu decides to finally enter the fray and do his own dirty work, so it opens right up. I guess it was a push and not a pull.

Ed takes a few shots at the mummified corpse, and that doesn't do a lick of good. Tartu just keeps on coming.

Oh, have I got some sheer nonsense for you…

Tartu and Ed get into a fight, but it's not much more than slapping their weapons against each other for a bit.

So the couple run out of the cave, to at least have more space to work with, and Tartu gives chase.

Julie stumbles into a pit of quicksand, while the menfolk roll around in the dirt for a bit. Eventually, Ed shoves Tartu into the quicksand, and pulls his wife out. And thus, nature is the end of Tartu, as he sinks beneath the surface, and the movie comes to a close.

TRISK ASSESSMENT

Video: It’s not great, and it’s clearly the bare minimum done to get it on DVD early in the life cycle back around 2001. It’s also the best they had to work with, so I can’t ding it too hard. Everything is clear enough, but it’s definitely an early DVD on a low budget movie.

Audio: Again, about what you’d expect from a sixties movie on a first wave DVD.

Body Count: A decent enough showing.

1 - About two minutes in and the cave explorer meets his end.

2 - Gunter dude gets attacked by a giant snake

3 - Sharktu eats Tommy

4 - And then Joann gets sharked as well

5 - A snake bites Johnny

6 - Cindy gets eaten by a tartudile

7 - Tartu is sucked under the quicksand

Best Corpse: Rough pickings here, since this was the sixties, and most deaths are a scream at the camera and cut away. But Cindy’s arm gets gnawed off by the reptu, so there’s that.

Blood Type - C: Again, not a lot of blood because of the times, but they get a bit in, especially with Cindy’s arm, but I’m giving a few extra points for using real animals a lot, and adding a bit to the movie. Aside from shark stock footage, but I don’t blame ‘em.

Sex Appeal: Nothing but dancing students and bikinis.

Drink Up! every time some traveling starts and the dialogue stops

Movie Review: I dug this. Grading on a curve to compensate for 60s movie, it’s a fun bit of camp. The story is decent, and some fun kills, especially that anaconda one at the start. It’s a bit slower paced, but part of that is the time, and part of that is wanting to show off the everglades, since that was novel for the time. The characters are mostly likable, and the students all blur together, but whatever. It’s not gonna blow you away, but it’s a fun campy romp from the sixties. Three out of five sharks.

Entertainment Value: I wish it was a little campier, or a little more bad. There’s not a huge amount here to laugh at or have fun with, outside of some silly moments with the kills (I’m pretty sure the snake biting Johnny is a stick) and with the slower pace, it does tend to drag. Two out of five airboats.