GamerTab That was an excellent one.

Konterr Brilliant and touching

SparkMore n my opinion it was a great movie with some interesting elements, even though having some plot holes and the ending probably was just too messy and crammed together, but still fun to watch and not your casual movie that is similar to all other ones.

Sarita Rafferty There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

Bezenby I'd never heard of this one until yesterday, and now I find out that Mario Bava was involved too. That's nice, seeing as I've just watched Baron Blood. This is a proper creature feature, and the creature featured is one of my favourites – a man-eating blob!This one is called Caltiki and our very white scientists discover him while mooching around some Mayan ruins looking for some cool jewellery to pawn at the local Cash Converters. We begin with one scientist staggering back to the camp, howling about Caltiki and how his mate has gone missing. Our other scientists (one is our square-jawed, married hero and the other a snivelling snidey guy who's hitting on our hero's wife) go looking for the missing guy and find some camera footage, which makes the film turn in Cannibal Holocaust for a couple of minutes.The film shows the two guys finding a cave revealed by a recent volcanic eruption which leads to a temple to Caltiki. Suddenly, they are attacked by some unknown creature, which prompts the rest of the expedition to head down there and instantly forget about finding the missing guy after they find a huge stash of gold at the bottom of an underground lake. Dismissing the many, many skeletons lying around, a diver goes for the gold, gets attacked, and comes back to the surface minus his face. As the huge blob Caltiki attacks the rest of them, the snidey guy tries to get the gold and gets all the skin from his arm dissolved. Our hero is having none of it and drives a truck full of gas into the cave, cooking Caltiki and saving the day. However, this is only fifteen minutes into the film, so maybe everyone should start worrying about that small piece of blob stuck to that guy's melted arm…and the fact that the guy's going nuts…and the radioactive comet that's passing by Earth (don't dwell too much on that plot point or you'll go nuts).I wasn't expecting too much from a horror film made in 1959, but I was wrong. Freda (or Bava, depending who actually made it) knew that if you have a giant blob, you've got to have it eat people, fight the military, and destroy things, so that's what they have Caltiki do here. The special effects are quite well done (using tripe…very Roman!) and there's a lot of miniature effects on display too. There's the added bonus of the film only being seventy-five minutes long.Giacomo Rossi-Stuart appears as a professors assistant who is dubbed with a rather camp voice and is there mainly to explain the strange comet sub-plot which barely makes any sense. Talking about not making any sense, I'm not sure quite what forced the professor to swerve off a cliff (unless it really was because he was thinking too much about the blob), and I'm also not sure why the military were dispatched before the hero could convince the cops there was such a thing as a giant man- eating blob.Nice!

O2D The other people who reviewed and rated this mess must have watched a different movie than I did. This movie has absolutely no plot and it almost never makes sense. It takes place in Mexico yet there are no Mexicans. You can quickly tell that it's been dubbed into English without ever looking at the screen. They say "mustn't" a lot. Have you ever said "mustn't"? The star has a three year old nameless daughter who is clearly voiced by an adult. At one point her mom even calls her "the child". Normally I would tear apart a movie like this but I'm not writing ten paragraphs about a movie that no one should see. Just know that if you watch this, you can never get the 75 minutes back.

Coventry With Mario Bava being my favorite filmmaker of ALL time, I couldn't afford myself to miss out on "Caltiki" as this film – along with the equally impressive "I, Vampire" - marks his debut as a director and then still the poor man didn't receive the proper credit he deserved for it. Riccardo Freda, the official director of the two films, is also a fairly prominent and admirable name in the Italian horror/cult industry, but both films simply have Bava's style and trademarks written all over them. His already gained craftsmanship as a cinematographer and his visionary look on directing built up during the fifties undoubtedly are the main reasons why Bava became one of the greatest of all time; starting from the early 60's already (with the tremendously brilliant "Black Sunday") and onwards. "Caltiki" clearly is a blatant rip-off of other and hugely successful "unidentified monstrous substance attacking people" Sci-Fi movies from throughout the 50's decade, like "The Quatermass Experiment" and most obviously "The Blob". But there were "The Blob" is an overall disappointingly dull and politically correct thriller, this Italian dish of deliciousness is a downright outrageous and extremely fast-paced shocker. The main characters are much more vivid and identifiable, the body count lies much higher, the violence is more confronting and the special effects and make-up art are more explicit than those featuring in American and British horror productions of that era. And still, in spite of the familiar concept, the screenplay of "Caltiki" nevertheless attempts (and often succeeds, I may add) to bring some variety and inventiveness. The titular monster doesn't come from outer space, for once, and it doesn't necessarily have to consume human flesh in order to grow in size or strength. "Caltiki" has always resided here on earth and relies on radiation instead to become more dangerous. It very much likes to turn victims into skeletons, but doesn't have to! How cool is that? A group of scientists and their whiny women embark on an expedition near an ancient Mayan temple in order to finally find out why an entire civilization just disappeared in a nick of time. Shortly after a volcano eruption it becomes clear to them that the lake underneath the temple homes a hideous and unstoppable monster. They have the opportunity to bring back a piece of the monstrous substance when the greediest member of the crew nearly loses his arm trying to reach for a piece of treasure when he clearly shouldn't have. Instead of researching the matter, they quickly find themselves battling the thing again as it grows in size and hunger. "Caltiki" is packed with suspense and an unexpectedly large amount of violence and disturbing imagery.

Michael_Elliott Caltiki, the Immortal Monster (1959) ** 1/2 (out of 4) Some hidden Mayan ruins are being searched by a group of archaeologists and before long they are battling a blob-like monster. They're able to destroy the thing but before long it is brought back to full strength and goes on a rampage.CALTIKI, THE IMMORTAL MONSTER is a film that's best known for its director controversy. Riccardo Freda is the credited director but he says he had very little to actually do with it. Mario Bava did the cinematography and special effects and is now considered the co-director of the picture. It seems that when people discuss this movie it has more to do with the directors and not really the film itself.For the most part this is a mildly entertaining "B" movie but it's certainly a long way from being one of the best that the genre has to offer. What impressed me the most about this movie is the fact that it looks wonderful and was done on such a low-budget. Bava certainly deserves a lot of credit because the opening alone makes you feel as if you're really in Mexico but it's all special effects. I was really impressed with the atmosphere and look of the film and how they were able to do it with such little money.The look of the monster was also quite impressive but I'm not going to lie, it's nowhere near as great as what we saw in THE BLOB, which was obviously an influence on this film. What really hurts this film is the fact that the characters are all rather lame and I personally didn't care about any of them. Whenever the monster isn't on the screen the film really drags and I'd argue that the dialogue is rather boring and doesn't help things.CALTIKI, THE IMMORTAL MONSTER certainly isn't a masterpiece or even a good movie but at the same time there are enough interesting moments to make it worth viewing. Fans of the genre will certainly enjoy what Bava was able to do with such a small budget.