From "Leonard Maltin's Movie and Video Guide":
Cast
From "The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film":
Seventy-three year-old Bela Lugosi plays Dr. Vornoff in his last speaking role. Three of his last four releases were piloted by the notorious transvestite director Ed. Wood, Jr. In his minimal lab deep in the swamps, Bela uses atomic energy to create superbeings. Most of his experiments die, but mindless giant Tor Johnson (once a normal man) survives and is called Lobo. As the barefoot bald giant, Tor wears a makeshift torn jacket and a big facial scar. Tony McCoy gets to play the hero because his dad financed the film. To give you an idea of the budget, poor Bela went home with $1,000! Loretta King is a nosy reporter whom Bela wants to mate with Lobo. Victims are transformed by being strapped on a table with a metal light-bulb shade on their heads and shot with atoms. When Bela is given the shock treatment himself he becomes super strong and fights Lobo, only to fall into a pit containing a deadly octopus. The battling Bela is obviously as stunt man (Eddie Parker); the lifeless rubber octopus is a left-over prop from an old John Wayne film. When shot, the octopus releases an explosive mushroom cloud. The posters showed a young-looking Lugosi (with vampire teeth) carrying a beautiful woman and claimed it was "more horrifying then Dracula and Frankenstein." It was. The original co-feature was an obscurity called Macumba, similar to, but not the same as Macumba Love.
From "Leonard Maltin's Movie and Video Guide":
BOMB. A Disapated Lugosi creates a giant rubber octopus that terrorizes a woodland stream. Huge Swedish wrestler Johnson provides added laughs as hulking manservant Lobo. Another hilariously inept Grade Z movie from the king of bad cinema. Sequel: Night of the Ghouls
From "The Horror Film Handbook":
A mad scientist has fled Europe and set himself up in California where he experiments with radiation to produce superbeings. Unbelievable rubbish, with production values that include an old photographic enlarger masquerading as an atomic-ray machine, and script and direction to match. Unwatchable on any level.
Review from "Castle of Frankenstein" magazine, 1955:
"Abysmally inept horror; likely candidate for worst film ever made. Produced on a shoestring budget with what must have been 30 cents."
