User Reviews

Another dubious "classic" to file away at the back of the brain under "What the hell was i thinking watching this? - What the hell was anyone thinking filming this?!!?"

This is another of those films that hold a rancid but special place in my black and evil heart due to repeated viewings via worn-out old VHS in the early 90s. Some annoying American students decide to trip out, drop out, and - thanks to our undead friend - check out in the Florida Everglades of the 1960s. Tartu himself is - so far as memory serves - a mummified Native American (can we say that these days?), who periodically lolls back and forth in his tomb in a spectacularly unmenacing fashion, before taking on such forms as a crocodile etc., to despatch the defilers of his tomb, like a z-grade mummy meets Manimal on acid. Only crapper than that sounds, because that actually sounds cool.

Seemingly filmed on the '60s equivalent of camcorder on a budget of booze and jellybeans, this is film that i love to hate, and hate to love.

With thanks to the now defunct Spotlight Videos of South Shields for causing me to suffer this circa 1993. I have never fully recovered. Thank you.:)

I used to catch this movie every once in awhile on my local creature feature show Saturday afternoons back when I was a kid in the mid 70's.

Scared the crap out of me then. Made me afraid of snakes. I remember at the end when the snake was biting the guy (Fake snake of course), and it would strike the lense of the camera, I had to cover my eyes (remember, I was a kid).

The skull in the quicksand was freaky too.

I had no idea what the name of this movie was, and a few years ago I went searching. After a few months sleuthing on the net and posting descriptions on numerous forums, I got the name, and was happy to know it was out on DVD as a double-feature. Ah...B-movie Bliss.

If you are a lover of B-movies, I highly recommend picking this one up!

Death Curse of Tartu is in the vein of some of the cheesier monster movies of the 50's. Set in the Florida Everglades, it involves a vengeful Indian attacking researchers for desecrating his burial ground. The Native American turns into an animal such as a snake, an alligator, or a shark (in the 'glades?) and then kills the kids one by one. Most of it is silly and low budget, but it was mostly fun. I liked the setting, even though you don't really get to see much--it looks like they picked out one clearing and shot most of the scenes in the same spot. Still, I have a soft spot for scary movies set in swamps. The scene where the Indian comes back to life and fights one of the researchers was one that sticks out. There is also a goofy scene where some of the college kids take a break to do some dancing on the sacred ground, complete with a swinging 60's soundtrack. 5 out of 10.

Death Curse of Tartu is set in the Florida Everglades where Ed (Fred Pinero) & his wife Julie Tison (Babette Sherrill) are anthropology teachers who are educating some teens out in the field. They are supposed to meet up with Ed's mate Sam Gunter (Frank Weed (!) who is also listed in the credits as 'Animal Trainer') who isn't where he 's supposed to be, like a typical woman Julie begins to worry for no reason but it seems that she might be right to worry as they discover an ancient tablet of rock with some ancient writing on it which talks about an incident some 400 years ago when some local witch doctor named Tartu (Doug Hobart) died & put a curse on the land (well, he probably put the curse on the ground before he died), the curse states that anyone who violates his burial ground will meet a horrible death at the hands of an animal, or something like that. Ed, being the level headed guy that he is, thinks it's nonsense but when two of his students Tommy (Gary Holtz) & Joann (Maurice Stewart) are attacked & killed by a shark he might have to rethink...

Written & directed by William Grefe Death Curse of Tartu is quite simply one really bad film, it's as simple & straight forward as that. The script is a joke, it's awful it really is. For a start it is incredibly boring to sit through, there are so many drawn out scenes & sequences here it's conceivable the term 'padding' was coined for this film while most of it is just dull people walking through the Everglades getting from 'A' to 'B' & not doing much when they eventually get there either. The 60's inspired dialogue is embarrassingly bad, did people really talk like this even in the mid 60's? I have my doubts with lines like 'Cindy your a real drag' inspiring bouts of laughter from me. Damn, I hate this film. The character's are poor, the whole film is utterly predictable & without any sub-plots extremely one dimensional & dull. Nothing is explained that well, the whole nature theme is muddled & has little impact & it lacks any decent exploitation elements. Death Curse of Tartu is an absolute waste of time with no redeeming features, do yourself a favour & don't bother.

Director Grefe sure knows how to put his audience to sleep, this thing is so boring it makes a party political broadcast look exciting. There are constant boring shots of the Everglade area & some of it's wildlife. The murders are all committed by animals as in the curse but don't expect much violence or gore. There is one funny bit at the start though when a huge Python literally jumps out of a tree & wraps itself around someone, I didn't know snakes had the ability to jump sideways out of trees, did you? I also have to mention the almost constant sound of drums in the background, after about an hour of it it was really getting on my nerves.

The budget for this might not have been as low as one thinks, I mean it was hot in colour wasn't it. Then again considering what ended up on screen I'd imagine that's where most of the money went. It's a pretty shabby film set almost entirely in the Everglades & it has an awful soundtrack as well. The acting was poor & there's nothing else to say.

Death Curse of Tartu is one seriously crap film, it's just that it's so slow & tedious to watch. The stupid, dull, boring & one track storyline doesn't help much either when I think about it. Not good folks, not good at all. Probably best to avoid this one.

A team of young archaeologists who disturb the burial site of an evil Seminole witch doctor. He returns with a vengeance in the form of an animal and knocks off most of the cast. DEATH CURSE OF TARTU is made B-movies are truly made for! From the ridiculous dialogue, to the ludicrous acting, and unbelievable situations. The 50s and 60s were saturated with films of this ilk. It's these kinds of films that set the bar for B-movies today.

Despite all the cheesiness, the landscape of the locations were beautiful photographed. Pop this in on a Friday night and enjoy making fun of it with your friends.

If you didn't have enough of teenagers in the Everglades screwing with forces they didn't quite comprehend in Grefe's Sting of Death - which was the other part of a double bill with this film - then good news! Four students on an archaeology assignment decide that it would be a great idea to have a shindig on the grave of Tarty, an ancient Native American medicine man.

Frank Weed, who played Sam in this, owned all of the animals that Tartu comes back from beyond within. He did not own the stock footage that was also used for some of these animals, nor his own voice, as he was dubbed for this movie.

Somehow, Tartu has the power set of your average mummy villain, except you know, he turns into animals. One of those animals is a "lake shark," which I had to look up, and learned that true freshwater sharks can be found in fresh water in Asia and Australia, as well as bull sharks, which can swim in both salt and fresh water and are mostly found in tropical rivers. Actually, bull sharks have been found as far north as Illinois. Yet another reason why the Everglades are totally terrifying.

Why Tartu's weakness is mud - when he makes his home in the Florida swamps - is beyond me. Man, who knows? This is kind of a nature film, you know, except for all the killing of teens after they dance. It's got a great name. an awesome poster and really, isn't that all it needs?

I see it every time I fly down to Ft. Lauderdale to visit my family: the dividing line between civilization and the primeval. As the plane banks west from over the Atlantic, one can view below the sprawling metropolis of the city and its suburbs...until one's eye hits that dividing line. The line is drawn straight as a rule for as far as the eye can see; the line separating the habitations of Man from the greenish-gray expanse that is the Everglades. The demarcation never fails to impress, no matter how many times one makes the trip. And from my two personal experiences into the Everglades, as a casual tourist, I can tell you that I cannot imagine a more hellacious environment in which to be lost or stuck; almost 2,000 square miles of empty sawgrass prairie, freshwater marshland, mangrove swamps, pinelands, hardwood hammocks, and sloughs. But not quite empty, of course; the area just teems with all sorts of wildlife, both harmless and inimical, there in one of the most inhospitable environments in the southeastern U.S. (The thought has always struck me: How did Ponce de Leon and his men trudge around this area, back in 1521, dressed in their full gear?!?!) But despite my imaginings concerning the very unpleasantness of the area (and I'm not denying that there is also much in the way of beauty to be seen there...just that the place, for me--who am not a lover of heat, humidity and dangerous critters--is something of a steaming hellhole), it is hard to conceive of having a worse time there than the seven characters in the 1966 film "Death Curse of Tartu" suffer through. The film, written and directed by one William Grefe, was just one of the filmmaker's three offerings that year, the others being something called "Sting of Death" (supposedly featuring some kind of mutated jellyfish monster!) and "The Devil's Sisters" (some kind of true crime tale taking place in Mexico). It is a film that just barely manages to get the job done, but that ultimately squeaks through pleasingly.

But the film does not begin too promisingly, to be sure. During its first 15 minutes, we see a man named Sam Gunter (Frank Weed, a Joel McCrea type, who was also the "animal trainer" for the film; the first actor in this film's no-name cast) endlessly prowl around his Everglades encampment, after having been warned by his Seminole guide Billy (Bill Marcus) that the spirit of Tartu--an Indian witch doctor who had died 400 years earlier--protects the area from desecration. Tartu had been buried nearby and, as legend has it, can turn himself into various animals to take vengeance on those who would profane his burial mound. And surely enough, Sam IS soon attacked by a humongous constrictor and smothered to death in very short order. And then his colleagues arrive on the scene: anthropology teacher Ed Tison and his wife Julie (Fred Pinero and Babbette Sherrill), and two student couples: Tommy and Joanne (Gary Holtz and Maurice Stewart; I know...Maurice?) and Johnny and Cindy (Sherman Hayes and Mayra Gomez; I told you it was a no-name cast!). Despite finding the Indian tablet that Gunter had discovered, and despite being able to decipher its dread warning regarding Tartu, Tison still insists, "Anyone that believes in that should believe in ghosts, goblins, and the Wicked Witch of the West!" But, of course, the vengeful spirit of Tartu IS in fact quite real, and before long, changes into a shark (in the freshwater canals of the Everglades, no less; serves those dumb kids right for taking a swim in the dubious-at-best waters there!), a poisonous snake, and a relentless gator to eliminate the pesky intruders. And then matters somehow grow even worse, as Tartu himself returns to life in the human flesh (played by the surprisingly handsome Doug Hobart) to finish off the job....

"Death Curse of Tartu" is a distinctly amateurish production that still succeeds, somehow. The acting is just barely passable and the script was surely no Oscar bait. Sections of the film seem to drag interminably (such as that opening sequence), while others come off as mere sops to the teenage audiences of the day (such as the section in which the four teens turn on their transistor radio and start gyrating wildly on the shores of the swamp...the girls in their bikinis, natch). Still, the film does manage to build to a fair degree of suspense, and the body count is quite high (five out of the seven main characters don't make it through, and there is no way of predicting which ones will survive the ordeal). Part of the reason for the film's success, it must be said, is the overly dramatic and quite frenetic musical score by Al Green (yes, THAT Al Green, here billed as "Greene," although I'm not sure if he was responsible for all the film's background music or just the tune that the teens boogy to). And that Mayra Gomez...what a screamer she is, offering up perhaps the best instance of sustained caterwauling that I've heard since Fay Wray cowered before King Kong in the depths of Skull Island, and Carol Ohmart retreated before that living skeleton in "House on Haunted Hill." Just listen to Mayra shriek for a good solid five minutes (!) as she flees from that preternaturally persistent gator! What a pair of lungs! The film is atmospheric (yes, it WAS indeed shot in the Everglades) and somehow convincing, ultimately, and each one of its characters, even the two who manage to come out alive by the end, suffers some terrible experience in it. Ultimately, it is a surprisingly pleasing film, as mentioned, and one that reinforces my conviction not to cross that barrier line into the Everglades anytime soon....