Monster of the Day #47

Ah, the Quintipus.  Harryhausen’s beast cost $10,000 a tentacle, and they only gave him $50,000, so there you go.  Still, one of the few really decent sea monster movies (a Harryhausen specialty), and man, I loves me the giant octopi.  It’s a mark of how good Harryhausen’s work is that the movie is as fun as it is, since it really drags whenever the monster is offscreen, despite typically good acting by Kenneth Tobey.  Even so, the character stuff in this film is highly lame.

  • Ericb

    He looks like he’s been spending some time in the weight room.

  • Yeah, I was never as big a fan of this film as I thought I should be.

  • Ericb

    It has one of the most passionless love triangles in film history. In fact there is so little sexual tension between the male and female scientists that I often think that it’s the male and female scientist who are competing for the affections of the Kenneth Toby character rather than the two males competing for the female scientist.

  • TongoRad

    Wikipedia (yeah…I know…) says that the monster is actually a Hexapus, not a Quintipus, fwiw.

    I guess I’ll have to check out the movie just to see for myself…

  • Gamera

    Yeah, it was only after reading Ken’s review that I noticed that the male scientist had any interest in Faith’s character.

    Personally I think Gojira ripped off his other tentacles in an unseen fight before this movie. Or maybe it was Aquaman. Yeah, that’s it Aquaman!

  • Rock Baker

    Classic stuff. It Came From Beneath the Sea was yet another of these films to have such a strong impact on my youth. Isn’t it about time we had another big screen giant octopus movie? (However, if lame DTV CGI giant octopus movies are any indication, we’re better off without them until Hollywood wakes up to how detrimental poor computer effects and template plotting are to genre entertainment)

  • maybe in Hollywood’s remake-an-oldie craze someone will be nuts enough to remake Ssh! The Octopus. That would rule.

  • Rock Baker

    And replace Hugh Herbert and Allen Jenkins with Jack Black and Michael Richards? Ugh!!