Tartu/Sting review

'Death Curse of Tartu'/'Sting of Death' - 1967/1966

Story in Brief: 'Death Curse of Tartu' - A group of archaeologists and their students camp at an Indian Burial site within the Everglades. In doing so, they awaken the spirit of Tartu, Indian Shaman, who placed a curse on any who would trespass on his gravesite. People die.
'Sting of Death' - A scientist and his crew welcome the scientist's daughter's return home from college. She brings a number of her friends along to their Everglades island home for a party. Recently there's been a number of strange deaths which appear to be caused by a impossibly large jellyfish. People die.

Thoughts:

I am particularly fond of Something Weird Video. First off, I just like the name of the company. Secondly, they dig up well known and not so well known cult movies, mostly from the independent days of the sixties and seventies, and present them as best they can to an eager audience. These are weird movies. I've never been completely disappointed with a tape or DVD from Something Weird Video. Now that they moved to primarily releasing double and triple feature DVDs it's even more likely that the disc will have something to interest a person for their twenty bucks, if you have the right frame of mind.

'Death Curse of Tartu' is a title I've read about for years. It's a great title, it has a great premise, and a great makeup job/character design for Tartu. It's not a great movie unfortunately. I always try to give credit where credit is due and any low budget film made by people just trying to get their movie done gets extra points for finishing their film (it can't be that easy, if it were, I'd have a bunch of films out already). Tartu is held back by a really awkward beginning. The first twenty or thirty minutes of the film are slow, really slow. Even worse, most of the explanations we get early on are repeated after this opening sequence or are merely verbalizing things we've already seen. It felt like the movie had restarted at this point. I get the impression that the film ran short and an extra section was added to the beginning to fill out the running time. The film is only 84 minutes long and it would have been dreadfully short had even ten minutes gone missing. In all fairness, once the film gets past that first half-hour or so, it is quite good and did grip my attention. The fact that the females were by-in-large rather attractive didn't hurt any. The last hour is a good movie.
The film is presented in full frame which may or may not be an accurate representation of how it looked in the theatre in the sixties but it's just as likely that this is the only format the film currently exists in. The colours look a bit odd, but aren't necessarily wrong. The video does look a little weird, but I'm not sure why. The image is visibly damaged, but it's not been battered to pieces either. The image quality doesn't significantly damage the enjoyment of the story. The sound is tinny sounding, but considering the likely low budget of the film and the fact that it's probably not been well looked after over the years, that's not unexpected. It's not bad.

According to the back of the case, 'Sting of Death' has been barely, if at all, seen in thirty years. This would explain why I've seen less information about this film than Tartu. Both were made by the same company with essentially the same crew working on both (the only major exception being that Neil Sedaka recorded a song for 'Sting of Death'). After being mildly disappointed by Tartu, I expected less from 'Sting of Death'. I was pleasantly surprised. The movie flowed well, the story was well developed, the characters were moderately developed and had reasonable motives. There are a few surprises, but the villain is easy to spot early on. The result is a fun, very watchable and entertaining film that is logically developed within the 'rules' it develops for itself. More attractive females don't hurt any either. There are some good makeup effects (perhaps done by the same individual that turned out the grand Tartu makeup) but it's a good thing they don't show the jellyfish monster much. It looks too much like a guy wearing a garbage bag over his head.
'Sting of Death' was transferred from the 35mm negative and it shows. The image is surprisingly crisp and clean, especially when compared to Tartu. This film is also presented in full frame but it looks proper at that composition. The sound is good, nothing special, but certainly better than Tartu sounded.

While Tartu isn't fully bad, the beginning is enough to turn most people off. 'Sting of Death' is pleasant fun and I recommend that movie. The extras might help interest you into checking this out. Both films have an audio commentary track done by the director (I must note I've not listened to either track). There are six trailers, apparently all films done by the same company or filmed in the same area. Trailers for 'Tartu' and 'Sting' are amongst the six. Thirty minutes (or so) of 'highlights' from the el cheapo feature (brace yourself for a grand film title) 'Love Goddesses of Blood Island' are included (from a video master by the look of it). Rounding out the disc is the featurette 'Miami or Bust' which only goes to prove the saying 'No one wants to see an old stripper'. If you invest in this disc or rent it I really suggest you avoid this extra. It's not a good thing.

I'm not sure what SRP is on this disc, but since I found it for $19.99, I'm going to guess it's about $24.99.

Mild recommendation to view/rent.

(As per before, this review was written some years ago and I have no updated information on the availability of this DVD nor its pricing.)