DVD Review
"Terror Beneath the Sea"
By Marcus Pan
This 1966 Japanese cult classic is about as quiche as you can get. It's downright silly by today's standards, and that makes it that much more enjoyable to watch. Clichéd superheroes, forced-laughing mad scientist villains and amazingly over the top monster costumes make this a collector's must have.
Any fans of original monster horrors - "Creature From the Black Lagoon", "King Kong", and yes of course the "Godzilla" series - would love this sort of thing. The scenery is dazzlingly low budget, the crazy shiny fish-men costumes is cheekily hilarious. This movie is as much a pastiche horror as it is comedic gold. Even the premise of the story has N. W. O. Level entrapments and a Dr. Evil of its own sort; Dr. Moore.
Dr. Moore finds a way to create an army of fish-men, rambling about looking like long lost cousins of the black lagoon creature of old. By applying some medications, and thereafter implanting a set of fish-like lung-gill combinations, he creates these creatures that transform, after the lung transplant, into terrible looking mermen who can only follow such subliminal commands as "fight" and "work." The control panel that keeps these creatures in check, a twist dial that looks like a cross between a child's play desk and a starship bridge, is one of the most hilarious examples of low budget set scenery I've ever seen.
Another that I enjoyed was the small cardboard-looking badges that allowed our intrepid heroes, Ken and Jenny, to escape their glass cell to roam about the complex - a modeled underwater complex more than three thousand feet beneath the ocean. The sound effects are pure gold also, the woosh of the door and the blips of the control panels. The flaming guns are a nice touch. This is B-film, low budget joy.
After battling some of the mermen and eventually vanquishing Dr. Moore himself our heroes, along with their other captured friends, blast from the dome of the underwater complex in a rocket-like contraption that's part Willy Wonka and part NASA just prior to the dome-shaped model's violent explosion.
This movie will remind you why B-movies have cult followings. It's the movie collector's equivalent of a comic book collector's rare find of, say, an old "Spiderman" comic from the 60s. You can't get any more cheeky than this, and you'll rarely have as much fun watching a horror flick ever.
--- Originally published in Legends #154. Minor edits since.
This 1966 Japanese cult classic is about as quiche as you can get. It's downright silly by today's standards, and that makes it that much more enjoyable to watch. Clichéd superheroes, forced-laughing mad scientist villains and amazingly over the top monster costumes make this a collector's must have.
Any fans of original monster horrors - "Creature From the Black Lagoon", "King Kong", and yes of course the "Godzilla" series - would love this sort of thing. The scenery is dazzlingly low budget, the crazy shiny fish-men costumes is cheekily hilarious. This movie is as much a pastiche horror as it is comedic gold. Even the premise of the story has N. W. O. Level entrapments and a Dr. Evil of its own sort; Dr. Moore.
Dr. Moore finds a way to create an army of fish-men, rambling about looking like long lost cousins of the black lagoon creature of old. By applying some medications, and thereafter implanting a set of fish-like lung-gill combinations, he creates these creatures that transform, after the lung transplant, into terrible looking mermen who can only follow such subliminal commands as "fight" and "work." The control panel that keeps these creatures in check, a twist dial that looks like a cross between a child's play desk and a starship bridge, is one of the most hilarious examples of low budget set scenery I've ever seen.
Another that I enjoyed was the small cardboard-looking badges that allowed our intrepid heroes, Ken and Jenny, to escape their glass cell to roam about the complex - a modeled underwater complex more than three thousand feet beneath the ocean. The sound effects are pure gold also, the woosh of the door and the blips of the control panels. The flaming guns are a nice touch. This is B-film, low budget joy.
After battling some of the mermen and eventually vanquishing Dr. Moore himself our heroes, along with their other captured friends, blast from the dome of the underwater complex in a rocket-like contraption that's part Willy Wonka and part NASA just prior to the dome-shaped model's violent explosion.
This movie will remind you why B-movies have cult followings. It's the movie collector's equivalent of a comic book collector's rare find of, say, an old "Spiderman" comic from the 60s. You can't get any more cheeky than this, and you'll rarely have as much fun watching a horror flick ever.
--- Originally published in Legends #154. Minor edits since.