Another Roger Corman flick like last night's horror film, this one turned out not to be as good as I remembered, but I been wanting to re-watch it for some time now. Humanoids from the Deep (released as Monster internationally) was a film I saw way back in the early 80's, back when guys in rubber suits constituted the scariest movie monsters, or at least the cheapest, and I thought there was more going on in this film.
Basically, there's this little town called Noyo, probabbly in the pacific northwest, I would guess. Noyo is a fishing community, but the salmon are starting to become scarce, and there is talk of a cannery being opened in the town. The local indian population is against the cannery, and most of the townspeople are for it. There's also a local salmon festival coming up, and the one-sherriff town is suddenly being plague by dead animals, mostly dogs, and a few disappearances. The sherriff's a bit clueless, so it's up to a locally well-liked fisherman to find out what's going on.
While he's investigating, there's an outbreak of racial violence between the local racists (led by Vic Morrow, who was famously killed on the set of a movie several years after this), and the local indian population, which further confuses the issue and disguises the attacks by the Humanoids from the Deep. I think the entirety of the movie takes place within a span about 24 to 48 hours, so the townspeople are pretty much caught unawares and by the sheer numbers of these things popping up out of the water. And the fisheries biologist from the cannery company knows more than she is letting on...
Men in rubber suits were a staple of monster movies back in the day. Sure, it seems a bit hokey by today's standards in special effects, but Return of the Living Dead, which revolutionized the concept of how quickly zombies could move, was done pretty much the same way, with even less makeup. These rubber suits are fairly well done, and there's a lot of blood and nudity in this film to make up for any shortfalls in the acting or plot.
Interestingly enough, this movie was originally made by a student of Roger Corman's, but Mr. Corman thought the film lacked sufficient blood and gore, and after she finished production on it, he ordered another director to reshoot and add some scenes. The result was a more gory flick with more nudity in it, and the original director apparently never worked with Corman again after this. The end result looks fairly seamless, and when I saw this in my teens it seemed like an awesome movie.
Nowadays I have a few problems with it. Like first of all, why are the creatures' brains exposed to the open air? What sort of evolutionary advantage made them like that? It seems far too easy to bash them in the head with something, knock off some brain matter and have the critters die. in one scene, creatures bust upwards through wooden docks, and you'd think their brains would get squished with a open skull like that, but apparently not. Two, I could have sworn I saw Vic Morrow get killed by a creature at one point, but he seemed to be alive in a scene later on, and we never really find out what happened to him. Also, there's a concerted attack by the creatures, and they are running around killing and raping indiscriminately, and the local fisher-hero is spewing gasoline into the water to try and stop them... when they are already on land? What? Why? I only saw one or two of the beasties die from the fire, and yet there's an indian running around with a rifle shooting them at will and saving people's lives. Why is our fisher-hero being such a dumbass while people are dying?
Still, the movie was pretty decent if you like B monster movies, and if you haven't noticed by now, I do. :-) I would have reviewed Piranha (the old version) tonight, but as it turned out, I didn't have sufficient time to watch both movies. I am SO looking forward to this weekend! Monster movies all weekend long, a Minecraft update coming on halloween, and CANDY on top of everything else! :-D I'm going to be in a chocolate coma by monday...
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