IT CAME FROM BENEATH THE SEA (1955)
Director: Robert Gordon
Genre: Natural Horror/Monster on the loose
THE MOVIE
When it comes to bogeymen, there’s nothing like a good “It.” “It” was a terror from beyond space! “It” was alive! Even Stephen King had an “It.” Next to a good “Thing,” there’s nothing like “It” (unless you are an Addams in which case you have regular contact with both.) One day I hope they will make a movie called “It! Vs. Thing!”
Today we will be talking about the particular “It” that came from beneath the sea. This is one of Ray Harryhousen’s most iconic monster movies and tells the story of a giant octopus irradiated by nuclear testing and driven from its home at the ocean depths. The fifties were the golden age of nuclear testing and this was fodder for all kinds of sci-fi and horror shenanigans in the movies. Not to mention the actual real world horrors associated with exploding nuclear bombs in the middle of the Pacific. Let us not forget, the original Godzilla movie was directly inspired not by the actual WWII bombing of Japan but by the US bomb testing in the Pacific in which a Japanese fishing ship was irradiated.
The plot of ICFBTS is almost a template for everything from Jaws to many later kaiju movies. A submarine comes into contact with a mysterious sonar reading. It briefly collides with the object and later inspection of the submarine indicates the flesh of some kind of giant creature. Marine biologists are called in to identify the tissue, which they calculate is some kind of previously unknown giant octopus. Obviously the military doesn't buy it but they have to reconcile the havoc caused by this creature in the Pacific.
The mutated octopus of It Came from Beneath the Sea eventually makes its way to San Francisco and goes on a rampage before being blown up in the harbor. This movie gave Harryhousen the opportunity to work on a different kind of creature from the alien and terrestrial monsters he had already done, this being an aquatic monster composed mainly of tentacles. Even if you haven't seen the movie it's likely you've seen clips from it as it is often used to represent the whole genre and era of 1950's B-movies movies. There is something classic and iconic of the image of the stop-motion black and white tentacle running amok in 1950's America.
This is really a solid entry to the Atomic Monster genre that took off in the 1950's. Gojira was released the year before in Japan and other famous entries include classic creature features like Them!, Harryhousen's The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, Tarantula!, and The Beginning of the End, among many many others In the aftermath of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and at the height of the Cold War, nuclear annihilation was on everyone's mind.
THE MONSTER/EFFECTS
Other than its size, there is nothing particularly monstrous about this octopus (except that it has only six tentacles, but let's say it lost a couple in the initial run in with the sub. Is it then a sixtapus?) The effects are overall very good as you would expect from a Harryhousen movie and the wonderful three-dimensionality that stop motion gives you. There are some sequences that are among the most famous of 1950’s monster movies, such as the creature’s attack on the Golden Gate Bridge.
MONSTERS FEATURED
Just one octopus.
SEQUELS
None.
SEE ALSO
20 Million Miles to Earth 1957, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms 1954
TRIVIA
This is movie is being watched by a security guard in a scene prior to the creature’s initial attack in the American Godzilla (1998).
TRAILER
NEXT UP
A Christmas movie.
Patrick Garone
Chicago-based writer & director. Author of City of the Gods and We Lowly Gods.
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