If you enter into an intellectual and emotional contract with something like It Came from Beneath the Sea, don't whine about being disappointed--it's a 1950s giant critter flick, and that's all!
I'm not whining.
This was a very stupid movie, and infuriating, to boot. The concept itself--giant octopus attacks--gets a great treatment at the start of the 80 very long minutes. We never see the thing as it tries to get up close and personal with the first nuclear-powered submarine. We just see the officers and men trying to stay alive. For about 10 minutes it appears that the movie-makers know what they're doing. When the Nautilus escapes the critter, and she puts into Pearl Harbor for repairs, all competence flies home to the mainland, and we're left with what seems like days of REM-sleep-inducing boredom.
Since I was a kid I've enjoyed Ray Harryhausen's work. The octopus--and most everything else--shows what happens when a good story is sacrificed at the altar of SFX. Harryhausen was so clearly not up to the task here--8 years away from the wonderfully scary Jason and the Argonauts and 26 years before Clash of the Titans.
If there had been less SFX and more tension, this thing would have been forever a classic.
What we got instead was a big, inky suckfest.
I'm not whining.
This was a very stupid movie, and infuriating, to boot. The concept itself--giant octopus attacks--gets a great treatment at the start of the 80 very long minutes. We never see the thing as it tries to get up close and personal with the first nuclear-powered submarine. We just see the officers and men trying to stay alive. For about 10 minutes it appears that the movie-makers know what they're doing. When the Nautilus escapes the critter, and she puts into Pearl Harbor for repairs, all competence flies home to the mainland, and we're left with what seems like days of REM-sleep-inducing boredom.
Since I was a kid I've enjoyed Ray Harryhausen's work. The octopus--and most everything else--shows what happens when a good story is sacrificed at the altar of SFX. Harryhausen was so clearly not up to the task here--8 years away from the wonderfully scary Jason and the Argonauts and 26 years before Clash of the Titans.
If there had been less SFX and more tension, this thing would have been forever a classic.
What we got instead was a big, inky suckfest.