Monster from the Ocean Floor
Julie, an American on vacation in Mexico, spots a giant, one-eyed amoeba rising from the ocean, but when she tries to tell the authorities, no one believes her. She finally teams up with a marine biologist in an attempt to destroy it.
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- Cast：
- Anne Kimbell , Inez Palange , Jonathan Haze , Roger Corman
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Reviews
Pretty Good
Expected more
A waste of 90 minutes of my life
Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable
When American tourist Anne Kimball learns from a Mexican boy that a sea monster has been rumored to be responsible for the disappearance of several locals, she becomes curious and begins to investigate. While deep sea diving, she comes across a scientist (Stuart Wade) in a floating contraption that looks somewhat like a giant Tylenol, she questions him about the alleged sea monster. Upon her own, she discovers a huge, one-eyed monster that looks like a combination squid/octopus that has a cute wiggle while it walks. Old local legend has it that a beautiful woman sacrificed to the monster will satisfy it enough to go away, and guess who is chosen. One of the local wise-men refers to the octopus as "the coward of the sea", but there's no Bert Lahr lion in this monster. Horribly bad acting and dialog (Wade actually tells Kimball to slip out of her bathing suit into a dry martini!) abound, this has no real conclusion, making the other giant octopus movie, "The Bride of the Monster", look like "King Kong" in comparison.
I rented this film because the composer was a good friend of my musician father Felix De Cola (who may have played the piano on the score!). It's a silly movie with an absurd monster, but there's a scene around minute 40 where the heroine encounters a shark that had me quite startled. The fish appears to be 2 meters long and its open mouth comes at the camera and then at the girl in several shots. Even if she was an experienced diver, this must have been an unsettling experience. And no, it's almost certainly not an animatronic.This was a time when the psychotechnology of horror films was developing at its fastest, so you can see how the director (clumsily) tries to manipulate our fears. Crude films often teach us more than well-made ones.As for the music, there's a distant similarity between Brummer's music and John Williams' Jaws theme, but I doubt the link is real.
Monster From the Ocean Floor was the first monster movie from Roger Corman and I quite enjoyed watching this, despite reading some bad reviews.A series of deaths and disappearances turn out to be the responsibility of a one-eyed octopus which only comes ashore on nights when the moon is out full. It also kills a cow. A woman and marine biologist team up and destroy it and also fall in love.This movie also includes an unusual pedal powered submarine, sharks, the marine biologist singing and a mad local native who wants the woman dead so the creature won't appear again (according to local legend). There is also some nice scenery and a good music score.The cast includes Stuart Wade (Teenage Monster), Anne Kimbell and Corman regular Johnathan Haze (Little Shop Of Horrors).Monster From the Ocean Floor is a good way to spend just over an hour one afternoon or evening.Rating: 3 stars out of 5.
I know many people judge a movie solely on its of special effects. This one doesn't have a lot of eye-candy, even considering the time it came from. But the story and the acting are above par for movies of this type and when all was said and done, I enjoyed myself watching this movie.
