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Anything can inspire a schlock knock­off.  Nothing is safe, not even knock­off schlock itself.  An inter­est­ing illus­tra­tion of this prin­ci­ple is pro­vided by Demon Of Paradise.  This Philippines-lensed under­wa­ter mon­ster flick is essen­tially an uncred­ited remake of Up From The Depths.  No one con­sid­ered that Jaws knock­off to be a clas­sic but it made it to the­aters.  Any idea that makes money once is worth repeat­ing in the world of schlock so Cirio Santiago — the pro­ducer of Up From The Depths and a pro­lific schlock direc­tor in his own right — dusted the con­cept off in the late 1980’s and gave it another go.

The plot takes place on a Hawaiian island that some smug­glers are using as a sell­ing point for dyna­mite.  When they test their mer­chan­dise, they unwit­tingly awaken a crea­ture that rep­re­sents a miss­ing link between rep­tiles and humans.  It begins bump­ing off locals, attract­ing the atten­tion of Sheriff Keefer (William Steis) and marine biol­o­gist Annie (Kathryn Witt).  As they try to fig­ure out a way to stop this new men­ace, mer­ce­nary local hotel owner Cahill (Laura Banks) tries to cap­i­tal­ize on it to drum up busi­ness for her flag­ging resort with the help of unscrupu­lous reporter-turned-hotel P.R. man Ike (Frederic Bailey, who also wrote the screen story for this film).

Demon Of Paradise has some key plot ele­ments in com­mon with Up From The Depths — an ancient under­wa­ter beast awak­ened from its slum­ber with deadly results, a trou­bled hotel that tries to cap­i­tal­ize on the beast’s reap­pear­ance, a sub­plot with a model vis­it­ing the island — but also adds its own wrin­kles to the for­mula.  The char­ac­ters are all dif­fer­ent, the plot­ting is a bit more ambi­tious and the beast is two-legged instead of a giant fish.  To its credit, it has a bet­ter pace and more action than its thread­bare model.

That said, Demon Of Paradise still falls short of schlock-classic sta­tus.  The writ­ing is rough, the main prob­lem being that the decent main heroes are off­set with a num­ber of one-note sup­port­ing char­ac­ters.  The per­for­mances are also weak: decent lead turns from Steis and Witt are diluted by a shrill turn from Banks and an annoy­ing “comedic” per­for­mance from Bailey that will have you cheer­ing on the mon­ster to pull him under the waves.  The mon­ster is also kind of silly-looking, a trait that is accen­tu­ated by the way he waves his claws at a per­son he is about to attack.

However, the biggest prob­lem with Demon Of Paradise is that it’s not scary.  Santiago was bet­ter known for action fare like Savage and T.N.T. Jackson and hor­ror fare doesn’t really seem to suit his abil­i­ties: despite the occa­sional nod towards hor­ror visu­als like back­light­ing the mon­ster and using fog, he never really achieves the atmos­phere the film needs.  He directs it like an action film that hap­pens to fea­ture a mon­ster for its main vil­lain and this really under­cuts the film’s appeal.

Thus, Demon Of Paradise is minor stuff in the world of sea-schlock.  It’s bet­ter than Up From The Depths — but that’s not really say­ing much.

Up From The Depths / Demon Of Paradise [Double Feature]

Up From The Depths / Demon Of Paradise [Double Feature]

Up From the Depths: A series of mys­te­ri­ous aquatic attacks indi­cate the pres­ence of a pre­vi­ously unknown giant species of shark that has risen to the sur­face and is prey­ing on tourists and fish­er­men. Demon of Paradise: Hunters become the hunted when ille­gal dyna­mite dis­turbs the age-old slum­ber of a car­niv­o­rous lizardman.