Directed by:
Wyott OrdungScreenplay:
Bill DanchCinematography:
Floyd CrosbyComposer:
André BrummerVOD (1)
Plots(1)
Julie Blair's idyllic vacation in a Mexican village along the Pacific coastline gets even better when she falls for handsome marine biologist, Steve Dunning. There's only one thing troubling her - disturbing reports from the natives about a gigantic one-eyed sea monster lurking off the coast, which they believe is responsible for a number of recent killings and disappearances. Steve dismisses the natives as superstitious, but Julie wants to help ease their fears. When Steve's research takes him farther down the coast, Julie remains behind to search for the monster. But there's something Julie doesn't know - the natives believe that the only hope of bringing peace back to the village is the sacrifice of a "fair one" to the hideous creature lying in wait on the ocean floor. (official distributor synopsis)
(more)Reviews (1)
Poster tagline: TERROR STRIKES FROM BENEATH THE SEA! Looking at this monster reminds you of the chorus of a hit song by the once excellent rock band from Brno Narvan (may they rest in peace). It seems as if B-movie legend Roger Corman decided to take all the medal positions in the imaginary competition for the most ridiculous monster in the history of monster-movies, and here he came up with an octopus with a head like a football and one luminous eye in the middle. Corman really didn't mess around much in the early days of his career as a producer, he shot this, his first full production with Wyatt Ordung, in 3 days and you can see the result. The vast majority of the action takes place on an empty beach, there are no more than 3 actors in any one shot (out of 7 total), Corman constantly recycles three locations – beach-ship-neighbourhood nearby – and there was simply no money for special effects, so the monster appears in all its glory only 5 minutes before the end (unless you count the subtle emergence from the water somewhere in the distance about halfway through the film). The mini-submarine of the main character is amazing, you wouldn't buy that for your kids at a fair even as a punishment for bad grades on their report cards, the bakelite model is uncontrollable during the underwater shots, so it flips over every now and then with the cabin down and belly up, but that was left in the film, because they didn’t want to waste celluloid, apparently. The bad actors and idiotic dialogues are pointless to discuss, but otherwise I'm struggling to think what I would highlight here as interesting at least in the guilty-pleasure category, but in the flood of all-encompassing boredom there's really nothing to highlight, except for the final five minutes (and that's the 1*). There, an octopus puppet flops so adorably on the seabed that you'd eat it all on the spot, and the way they put it out of commission, by poking out its single eye with the mini-submarine, is a representative example of low-budget C-budget filmmaking of the time. You could see that there was some potential in the fledgling Corman .... :)
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