Monster of the Day #644 (Updated)

As I’ve noted about this movie before, it’s pretty much EXACTLY the kind of thing you surfed around the UHF and VHF channels on a Saturday afternoon hoping to come across. A cool monster covers a multitude of sins, and this one is pretty damn sweet. One of the only successful Fish Man monsters to completely break away almost entirely from the Creature design.

UPDATE: Here’s my previously posted review for those who are interested.

  • Ericb

    One great thing about this is that there is no indication from the title that there would be a monster in the movie. I remember when I first saw this as a kid and was ecstatic when this kinda dull underwater story turned into a monster movie!

  • Gamera977

    Charlie the Tuna’s bad side!

    I’m gonna take those fish sticks and shove em’ BLEEP BLEEP BLEEP……….

  • Ken_Begg

    Those were the best. You’d find some movie midstream and have no idea what it was, and watch it hoping a monster would show up, and sometimes it would!

  • bgbear_rogerh

    oh, I thought it was Zaat at first. Must be something better.

  • Ken_Begg

    Oh, yeah. I mean, it ain’t the greatest thing ever, but it’s significantly better than that snoozefest.

  • Flangepart

    YES!
    Ah-hahaha…Space ship, gill monsters, and they hatch from eggs that looks like Kilbasa in an ice cube.
    Whats not to love?

  • sandra

    What is this ? War Gods of the Deep ?

  • Gamera977

    Yeah, Zaat is more like zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz………..

    Though I like the catfishman’s big board where he posted his handwritten plans for world domination.

  • DESTINATION: INNER SPACE (1966). Just a great, great movie for anyone into 50’s/60’s monster movies and aquatic adventure stuff. In a sense, it’s formula closely resembles that of THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD (1951) underwater, and in fact would make a pretty good double feature with THE NAVY VS THE NIGHT MONSTERS (1965), which plays out the formula on a Pacific Island. What a great period for drive-in movies with impressive casts! INNER-SPACE even features a seemingly rare chance allowing us to see the face of Mike Road, ol’ Race Bannon himself!

  • Rodford Smith

    Isn’t that Admiral Nelson’s cabin from _Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea_? ;-)

  • SteveWD

    I live where Zaat was filmed. It’s a bit of a local legend (at least for people who love really bad movies). My niece recently was married in a park along the St. Johns River that served as some locations in the movie. It looks almost exactly the same now. She didn’t have a clue what Zaat was so I had to educate her.

  • Ericb

    Does the St. John’s River really have coral reefs?

  • SteveWD

    Nope, but it does have some really big catfish. It’s fun to watch a homegrown movie like this and recognize all the locations, especially when some of them still look the same after almost 40 years. Oh look, that’s Spring Park in Green Cove Springs, that looks like the intersection of county road 220 and highway 17, that’s Marineland before most of it was demolished, that’s stock footage of a coral reef, wow, this movie is really, really, bad, etc……