Director: Ovidio G. Assonitis
Year: 1977
Country: Italy/US
Alternate Titles: Tentacoli
Genre: Creature Feature
Plot:
After several strange disappearances, a reporter looking for the cause of the incidents discovers that all were involved with radio signals coming from a local digging project that leads to a giant octopus surfacing in the area, and uses a pair of captive-bred killer whales to defeat the octopus.
Review:
This here is actually a really entertaining creature feature. One of its best qualities here is the way it plays up a familiar story as it manages to take the clichéd story of a creature attacking a small town and still be quite fun. This is mainly accomplished by having its subplots come together and merge it's loose ends together in the end. By having the sister's boyfriend issues, the evil corporation hiding their secret operation, and the Orca Whale storylines all come together in pretty quick succession, this manages to keep the movie flowing along pretty smoothly, setting up the different storylines, making this a lot of fun.
Once this gets to the octopus, it comes into play in two big action scenes that are incredibly fun. The attack at sea, where it drags a boat underwater and the witnesses swim to a nearby wrecked vessel where the resulting attack is probably the high point of the movie as the mad cephalopod stalks his prey, the nighttime setting adds to the atmosphere of the scene and it's capped off with the octopus' attack on the ship with a huge geyser of water. The later scene, where it attacks a sailing regatta and manages to snag a large supply of victims and generally plays havoc in the water, is a real sight to see and manages to build up some incredibly enjoyable action here.
Even the octopus manages to not become a disappointment, staying off-screen for the most part and only letting a few parts of its anatomy show up. Its attack patterns here provide this one with some simple and effective tactics that work wonders without giving away the protagonist or showing anything at all. The early scene, where two women chatting in the foreground slowly lose their prominence and shift focus to the middle-ground, calling our attention to a baby. Passing cars block the stroller for a moment or two, we cut back to the women and then return to the stroller in even tighter focus. After several times of this, a school bus drives by, and in the short space of its passing, the stroller disappears. A pop-up corpse, which has been suitably decomposed and rotting, gets a great scare, mainly by being so close to the camera when it happens, and a shock cut comes when its singular eye stares at a potential victim through a large porthole that's quite creepy. Couple all this off with some spectacular underwater photography, and this is a really enjoyable and entertaining film.
There are only a few things wrong with this film. Most of the problems start with its incredibly confusing and weird plotline. The main one is how big a tunnel was being built, if they're using deep-sea seismometers, and their constant mention is quite weird. Also questionable is how an octopus would respond to seismometers using some illegal frequency, which goes against their very nature, as even if it could detect this frequency, its most likely response would be to leave. Octopuses are shy by nature, and since this clearly encroaches on their habitat, they should've relocated somewhere more comfortable. The latter argument that the octopus has been driven insane by the seismometers just brings up even more questions about how that causes the octopus to start killing people. This is quite ludicrous and is really the movie's main fault. Whatever the intention, in execution, the Big Moment leaves a lot to be desired. For some reason, the editing in this sequence goes totally berserk, using still shots and freeze frames during what should be the most active part of the movie. It kills most of the momentum and feels really out of place. Beyond these, though, this is a really fun film.
Overview: ***.5/5
With only a few problems that can be traced back to its plot in general, this is instead one of the better killer creature features of the time. It's cheesy, fun, and quite entertaining, making it a really worthy film a watch for those that like monster movies or just Euro-horror in general, while those that look for more prominent features displayed should heed caution.
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