Cheesy but watchable. Bad acting by some but not all bad. Has a nice microphone hiss in a few scenes which I enjoy. Nice opening shots of Venice, California. The lead girlfriend continues to get worse as a character the more the film goes, with awkward lines and shots. Has the typical Vietnam vets as street bums. Highly stereotypical and normal for films during this age. An odd play on various scenes with comedic music set to more awkward camera shots. The monster itself is pretty cool, also offering a hint of comedic action with its noises and walk. This film is really an interesting study of a America at the time frame filmed, more specifically California.

I won't go into any other mentioned details. But typical of the time period, the death scenes were sexist. Meaning to say, in one scene a young couple are attacked in a house boat. The guy is quickly and cleanly killed and that's it for him. The girls death, however was nothing less than a rape scene in slow motion, as the monster rips her clothes off a garment at a time and casually slurps his leech-like mouth on the exposed body part while she screams while kicking her black-leather booted legs helplessly in the air. We even see her breasts exposed in one slashing, yet they are not cut by his claws...but are slurped on rather noisily. Uh, but being a guy myself, I'm not really complaining...hee hee hee!

"Spawn of the Slithis" takes place in Venice, California, where a slimy monster born of nuclear leakage and contaminated mud goes on a murderous rampage. The hero determined to solve the gruesome killings is a journalism teacher and wannabe journalist named Wayne Connors (Alan Blanchard). Although authorities are quick to disbelieve good old Wayne, he does get some people on his side, like his friend Dr. John (Dennis Falt), his wife Jeff (Judy Motulsky), and upbeat diving boat operator Chris Alexander (Mello Alexandria).

This movie, a LOW budget update of "Creature from the Black Lagoon", could have and should have been a bit more fun, but too much time is spent with the monsters' victims. There's a lot of character stuff that pads out the run time, not all of it that entertaining. Blanchard is a likable enough but rather bland lead. Fortunately, despite much of the acting being of the amateur variety, it's quite engaging nevertheless, especially from Alexandria. Bald-headed, beefy J. C. Claire is priceless as an exposition provider who goes to great trouble to enunciate his words. Win Condict does an adequate job as the monster. However, it's character actor Hy Pyke that truly steals the show. He obviously believes that any role worth playing is worth OVER playing, and he tears into the scenery for a riotous couple of minutes as a police captain.

The music score is fairly decent, there are some hilariously silly moments of slow motion, the creature suit is actually pretty cool, and there are effective doses of gore here and there. The ending is very clichéd, but that's often par for the course with this type of dopey B level genre entertainment.

Six out of 10.