The She-Creature (1956)

Starring Chester Morris, Tom Conway, Cathy Downs, Lance Fuller, Marla English
Directed by Edward L. Cahn
(actor & director credits courtesy IMDB.com)

A mentalist runs a sideshow attraction in which he mentally regresses a young woman to her past lives, but one of those is a prehistoric monster that commits murders in the seaside community.

We have here one of the early films distributed by American Releasing/American International Pictures and notably one in which Roger Corman was not involved, but plenty of his past and future collaborators were.  It also is worthy of attention for starring Chester Morris, a familiar 1930s and 1940s leading man in a slew of detective pictures.  I read that producer Alex Gordon had wanted to get John Carradine for the role, and Carradine would have been excellent, and an improvement on Morris, but Morris is capable enough playing the role with a creepy visage highlighted by bags under his eyes and a sinister mustache.  Paul Blaisdell provides and acts in the monster outfit, which is structurally similar to several of his other monster costumes, but has some unique twists.  The picture's certainly low-budget, but I think it has a number of problems beyond financial limitations, starting with Fuller's extremely low key leading man, whose romance with English is relegated to scenes of them talking with the sound removed, and several unexplained developments in the script, including why Morris is using English to kill in the first place.  Still, the movie's not unwatchable, and it's fun to spot all the familiar 1950s actors in the cast.