Caltiki - The Immortal Monster is a 1959 Italian movie set in Mexico. An archeologist returns to camp, he's all screwed up and needs some medical attention. They wonder where his partner is and set out to the ruins to look for him. They find a cave with a giant statue of Caltiki and a deep pool of water. In the water they find a treasure of gold. The diver's second dive proves fatal as the blob monster makes an appearance. The party escapes but one man has some blob on his arm. The blob monster is destroyed by fire and the group returns to Mexico City. Doctors remove the bit of blob from the man's arm and scientists discover radiation makes it grow. A radioactive comet happens by and the blob grows and attacks. The man who got the blob on his arm goes nuts and kills some women before he's digested by the newly formed blob. There's a lot of reacting to so-so effects which are typical of the time. Lucky it's a short movie, only 75 minutes, and it's over quickly. Riccardo Freda is credited as the director, under the name Robert Hamton in the US version, but the Wikipedia says that an uncredited Mario Bava also directed. This is before his first credited feature Black Sunday. The version on YouTube in the link in the title is watchable but a bit fuzzy. It's not worth watching unless you're like me and want to see all the monster movies there are.
Amphibian Man is a 1962 Russian film that's set in Argentina but filmed in Baku Azerbaijan. There's trouble with the pearl divers, a strange monster has been terrorizing the divers, their boss is a mean dick who doesn't believe them until the creature rescues the woman he wants to marry from a shark. The woman doesn't want to marry him but her father is forcing her to do it so he can be rich too. The boss wants to capture the sea creature, which turns out to be a human with shark gills, and eventually he does. The scientist who created the sea creature wants to lead the human race into the water to escape their oppressive masters. He has a cool underground cave with a giant window to the sea. There's a bit of romance between the daughter and the sea creature but that ends sadly. I hadn't heard of it before but I thought I'd take a chance and it turned out to be a more interesting film than the first one I watched. It's well made and the copy on YouTube looks pretty good. I'd recommend it.
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