Monster from the Ocean Fl

Lemme take a moment to talk about the director, Wyott Ordung. Never heard of him? Well, if you like B-movies, you should be familiar with some of his work. As a writer, he penned such classics as Robot Monster (1953) and Target Earth (1954), the latter actually being pretty good. But wait, he was also an actor, actually appearing in Monster From the Ocean Floor. Writer/actor/director? A triple threat, to be sure.

Anyway, the movie stars a couple of actors not really worth mentioning, playing a blonde vacationing in Mexico (you can tell this in the beginning as she's donning a giant sombrero with the word 'Mexico' embroidered on it...how tacky) and a less than hunky marine biologist who actually has an incredibly bad musical performance about halfway through as he plucks a guitar and warbles on in some sort of strange mating ritual meant to impress the blonde woman but just ended up revolting this viewer.

So the blonde woman learns of a 'devil' creature within the cove eating local residents and various animals. She also learns that the attacks begin about 1946, around the time the Bikini Island atomic testing began. Okay, so radiation fallout has caused some kind of embiggening of a sea creature, and it is now feeding within the cove. Taking an odd interest in these happenings, she decides to investigate. Her new friend, the marine biologist, poo poos the idea and chalks it up to superstition and proposes the attacks are caused by a shark. After a number of solo scuba excursions into the cove (not the brightest idea, if I may add), the woman finally does encounter a creature, and it's discovered to be a form of life we normally don't see. I thought it was going to be a giant octopus, and it actually looked like one, but that was wrong.

The creature, who we get to see for a total of about two minutes, looks like something made for another film that got rejected because of it's silliness. I suppose it was probably too expensive to show it more, and, you know what? It was probably for the best that it had the limited screen time that it did. The acting, along with the dialogue, is extremely clunky, causing a copious amount of groaning on my part. A very silly subplot was thrown in, one involving the local residents (all two of them) deciding that they should sacrifice the 'fairest of them all' (meaning the blonde) to the sea 'devil', in hopes to appease it and keep it from depopulating the tiny village even more. The underwater scenes involving the main characters swimming around in scuba gear were pretty nice, although sometimes a little too murky or blurry to really be enjoyed. I did like the biologist's little man powered submarine, and it was quite maneuverable. Thankfully the film only runs for 64 minutes. The movie does have some merits, but ultimately gets dragged to the depths of banality by the various aspects I've already mentioned.

For under ten bucks, I wasn't expecting much, and I didn't get much. The picture does look pretty good, with minimal deterioration, and there are absolutely no special features except for chapter stops. All in all, cheaply done non-thriller that will have you rooting for the monster to finish the cast and provide a quick end to this lack luster affair.

Cookieman108

This movie stars a strong female lead, who is fairly easy on the eyes without the obscenity of modern-bathing suits. Julie Blair, played by Anne Kimball, investigates stories of an underwater, single red-eyed, monster that is terrorizing a small Mexican community.

Steve Dunning (Stuart Wade), a marine biologist working in the cove provides the romantic interest. He pedals around a real neat one-man mini-sub. Without giving away the ending, this fact will be important at the movie's ending.

A local witch influences one of the peasants to make an attempt to sacrifice her, "the fair one," as an appeasement to the monster. His haphazard attempts make us sympathetic to him in a movie that drags somewhat and where there is little significant action.

I read that this was Roger Corman's first production, making it a must see for his fans and collectors. The director is Wyott Ordung who also appears as the superstitious Pablo in the movie. Roger Corman is in the movie, too, as Tommy. There is nothing on the box from RHINO or on the DVD to tell us this.

Kimball gives a good performance although the other actors often come off wooden and as if they are reading. The music is not bad and compliments the suspenseful water scenes. The one-eyed monster comes off cheap by today's standards, maybe even by those in 1954, but it is still rather neat with its one bulging eye. Unfortunately, we do not see much of it. The underwater scenes with the monster used a puppet in an aquarium. The live sequences, with just the swimmers and the sub was purported to be actual deep-sea footage. Usually such shots are done a few inches under water in someone's pool.

The RHINO DVD is a conventual pan/scan 1.33:1. There are no extras, just the movie and a few chapter divisions. The picture is pretty clear although the sound is below average. I had to turn my speakers way up. Part of the problem rests with the original production. There is too much background noise and the constant blowing wind becomes a distraction.

In retrospect the peasant woman, really a witch who disavows the local padre for her ancient superstitions, comes across as a real monster. However, she has little screen time. Further, while the character played by Kimball incessantly seeks the monster, she goes out unarmed and passes out every time she sees it. While she has proof of her discovery at the end, she goes back into the water looking for it again, for no good reason whatever. It simply provides the final situation for the movie's mild climax. The logic fails somewhat at this point.

Nevertheless, I like B-grade movies and this is a fair one.

>No foul language or blasphemy.
>Conventional bathing suits, but no bikinis and no nudity.
>Light romance, but nothing lewd and no sexual situations.
>Light plot violence.