Friday, July 31, 2015

TENTACLES/REPTILLICUS: A MONSTEROUS DOUBLE FEATURE



After the success of JAWS low budget studios rushed into production any movie they could think of that would involve some animal that went on the rampage or was bigger than life to take on mankind. American International Pictures (AIP) made the decision to go with an octopus, filmed the movie in Italy to save on money and released TENTACLES to drive-ins across the country.

The plot is simple. On a coastal town a giant octopus goes on the rampage after a mega-corporation begins using high frequency drilling equipment underwater nearby. It doesn’t matter that this doesn’t explain why the octopus is this big, it’s enough to know that it makes him/her hungry for human beings, draining their bone marrow once it catches someone.

The sheriff (Claude Akins) doesn’t know for sure what to do. The town’s main news reporter (John Huston) has an inkling of what is going on. The head of the corporation (Henry Fonda) isn’t happy that his company is responsible for something like this. Huston’s sister (Shelly Winters) is worried about her son when an attack happens. And the oceanographer that Huston has contacted (Bo Hopkins) takes a personal interest in killing this octopus when his wife is killed by it. As you can see, this film had a star studded cast made up of fading or low budget names.

The movie isn’t all that bad with the exception that there is far too much talk and not enough action involved. Worse yet is that most of the talk is unnecessary and could have been handled much easier with filmed sequences instead. Then again the budget spent on the octopus is enough to include a giant eye to look through windows, a few large tentacles and several shots involving a small octopus with obvious models being crawled over.

In the end it’s not a bad film and actually quite fun for a drive-in style flick. That was always one of the joys for movies like this. So if you have a TV projector then by all means nail a sheet to the garage and pop this one in to be played.

The second feature on this Shout/Scream Factory double bill is REPTILLICUS and it makes TENTACLES seem like Oscar material. If the dialogue sequences in the earlier movie seemed long these seem to take forever. To make matters worse, they’re done by some truly poor actors who bring no life to the discussions whatsoever.

Copper miners drilling find that they’ve tapped into some tissues where they’ve been drilling. Sending these off to scientists in Copenhagen it turns out that the tissue isn’t dead yet. As deep as it was it was frozen but when a scientists accidentally leaves the freezer door open it thaws and begins to regenerate itself. Soon the tail has grown into a full dinosaur sized creature that seems intent on eating anyone who gets in its way.

The U.S. Army and Navy are called in to stop this monster but to no effect. And when they realize that if they blow it up each of the pieces will simply regenerate into another one they’re troubled as to how to deal with this creature. Rest assured that a way will be found.

The movie has all sorts of problems. Certain segments of the movie have a flutter problem but I have little doubt as much as possible was done to contain this. The acting from all members is terrible. The dialogue is terrible. A character played for laughs might entertain young children but no one else. And the effects with the monster are so bad as to make them funnier than the previously mentioned character. The monster looks like what it is, a puppet of sort controlled by strings that at times are readily apparent.

This is one of those movies that you probably saw at age 5 or 6 that seemed amazing back in the sixties or perhaps the seventies but that now will make you cringe at the thought that it may have scared you back then. On the other hand it could make for a fun evening of people sitting there watching it tossing out lines of dialogue or jokes ala MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000. For me that would be the only way to make this movie worth watching. A must have for collectors and fans only.

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