Monster of the Day #649

I know I’m a bit of a crank on CGI, but crap, man, look at that!! A full sized prop octopus! That’s the stuff, I’m telling you. (I’m not sure I’ve mentioned this, but I’m sort of partial to giant octopi in my movies.) Can you imagine how unwieldy that thing must have been? Bless those guys.

Oddly, there aren’t a lot of stills of this thing on the Web, at least from the movie. Here’s a mix of screen grabs and some sweeeeet publicity stills, however.

  • Ericb

    That is gorgeous. It should be in a museum somewhere. I hope it wasn’t destroyed after they were done with it.

  • Flangepart

    Sweet!
    “Alright, enough Henti jokes. You humans are PERVES!”

  • bgbear_rogerh

    I bet it has all 8 arms too.

  • Actually, the first and second images are of a large-scale miniature. They mixed it with the full-size head (body?) and tentacles for shots that required human interaction. There are subtle differences in the shape of the ‘face’ of the props which give this away. What makes this such a thing of beauty is that the miniatures used in this film are just crackerjack! Some of the best miniature work (involving water, no less!) I’ve seen in my life of being a videonaut!

  • Note how the size of the tentacles in the last two shots aren’t consistent. In fact, I’d be tempted to say the black and white shot shows the tentacles from the miniature octopus being used with the full-sized octopus prop, no doubt they were less cumbersome for publicity shots like these.

  • Flangepart

    Okay…gotta know. What’s the flick?

  • I hate to say it but I suspect that the prop’s rubber coating deteriorated into nothingness years ago, leaving behind only the mechanical parts.

  • WARLORDS OF ATLANTIS (1978)

  • The Rev.

    That is magnificent. I like the young lady, too.

    I swear, each day this week just intensified my desire to see this. I cannot believe this has passed me by all these years.

  • And last but certainly not least, the octopus! Although never mentioned in the movie (I gleaned this tidbit from the very excellent novelization), it is apparently called the Sentinel and is the guardian of the entrance to the undersea cave leading to Atlantis.