The thing about Octaman is that, as a film, it doesn't do anything right. The acting is horrible, the plot is moronic, the special effects are...rudimentary. The monster is gloriously ridiculous. Yeah, we've all seen movies like this before. But Octaman ticks every single box on the "entertainingly horrible" checklist, and does so with such thoroughness that I had a few seconds of thinking it had to be a parody. Looking it up here...nope. 1971. Holy crap.
Not only is it gloriously terrible, it actually blazes new trails in failure. The movie is set in Mexico, and is listed here as a Mexican co-production with the US. But the "Mexican" accents of the locals are just as cringingly terrible as everything else. How do you make a movie in Mexico, with a presumably Mexican crew, yet somehow manage to hire actors who look the part, but can't fake the accent? That there's an accomplishment, I don't care what anybody says.
Rubber suit monsters are almost invariably ridiculous looking (I think we all know the exception that proves this rule.) Even the most inept director has to realize that the best strategy is to keep the monster in shadow, or at least mysteriously lurking somewhere just offscreen. Nope, not here. Octaman is plainly visible, frequently in broad daylight. There's even a scene where they light a ring of fire around him, for added visibility (speaking of new levels of dumb, the fire "burns up the oxygen" around it, which makes it pass out. I am thankful to this movie for teaching me that suffocation is one of the dangers of lighting a fire in an open field.)
That's not a spoiler, by the way. It's just one of the assorted ways they try and fail to control the monster.
I admit that I'm still not 100% convinced this isn't, on some level, a parody.
I will be watching Octaman again soon.
Not only is it gloriously terrible, it actually blazes new trails in failure. The movie is set in Mexico, and is listed here as a Mexican co-production with the US. But the "Mexican" accents of the locals are just as cringingly terrible as everything else. How do you make a movie in Mexico, with a presumably Mexican crew, yet somehow manage to hire actors who look the part, but can't fake the accent? That there's an accomplishment, I don't care what anybody says.
Rubber suit monsters are almost invariably ridiculous looking (I think we all know the exception that proves this rule.) Even the most inept director has to realize that the best strategy is to keep the monster in shadow, or at least mysteriously lurking somewhere just offscreen. Nope, not here. Octaman is plainly visible, frequently in broad daylight. There's even a scene where they light a ring of fire around him, for added visibility (speaking of new levels of dumb, the fire "burns up the oxygen" around it, which makes it pass out. I am thankful to this movie for teaching me that suffocation is one of the dangers of lighting a fire in an open field.)
That's not a spoiler, by the way. It's just one of the assorted ways they try and fail to control the monster.
I admit that I'm still not 100% convinced this isn't, on some level, a parody.
I will be watching Octaman again soon.