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The further I dig into the story of this film, the more bizarre it gets...

First off, I can't find any documentation that the film played theatrically in Los Angeles. Anybody know wether it did or not? I can't even find any posters/repro posters anywhere.

I DID speak to creature designer Jon Lackey last week, who cleared up the mystery of the multiple monsters.

He created the original monster of polyurethane after being approached by Art nelson. He oversaw the use of the suit, but never actually operated it himself, contrary to some online reports. Nelson and Lackey had a dispute over ownership of the creature suit. Lackey then left the production, and although he wouldn't cop to taking it, he said the suit left the production shortly therafter.

Nelson then finished his portion of the filming using a copy that he had to have assembled himself. Thus, in the film there are two different creatures in certain sequences, explained in rather convoluted fashion by the narrator.

It was at some point after this that Nelson either vanished or was booted off the film, and Thourlby took over the remainder of the production.

According to Lackey, the one interesting bit of trivia about THE CREEPING TERROR that is rarely mentioned is that the bulk of the location shooting took place on the pre-Manson-era Spahn Ranch. Nelson evidently bummed around with some of the Spahn ranch hands, including Randy Starr, who was listed as assistant director on the film. Starr was a part-time stuntman who later made headlines as the guy who gave Charles Manson the gun used in the Tate-Labianca murders. He died of an infection before he could testify at the trial. (Another Randy Starr wrote music for Elvis movies, but it's a different guy.)

Lackey himself was a pretty fascinating fellow to talk to. He was part of a group of artists on the west coast during the 1950s who had been inspired by Chesley Bonestell's book CONQUEST OF SPACE. He fell in with some like-minded folks who formed a group called the Chesley Donavan Foundation that embraced a mix of sci-fi, atheism, and an early kind of performance art and pranksterism. Illustrator Ron Cobb, who did some of the ALIEN design work, was among them.

After I did a search for Lackey's name, I found some articles describing a near-riot he instigated at the 1958 WorldCon/WesterCon (SOLACON). Dressed in a fright wig and wizard's outfit, he riled up the bums and random pedestrians from Pershing Square, which formed a rowdy mob that followed him back to the host hotel. The police had to break up the group, because they were trying to force their way into the hotel.

You can see some photos and other related Lackey/Chesley Donavan material here:

fanac.org/fanzines/LASFS/LASFS1-17.html

www.cdfnd.donavan.org/Gallery.htm

As for THE CREEPING TERROR, he considered it an example of "taking mediocrity beyond the point of any reasonable kind of understanding."

He never saw it in theaters, but says a friend told him she had watched it on TV--dubbed into Spanish!

"I can't predict what the response [to the film] might be in another culture," he told me. "But I can't think of any culture that I would offer it to."