Sunday, February 16, 2020

Movie review - "It Came from Beneath the Sea" (1955) **1/2

Early collaboration of Ray Harryhausen and producer Charles Schneer. It's not as good as their later works being a bit too 50s Eisenhower Era military for me. There's too much romance between Kenneth Tobey and Faith Domergue - I don't mind romance but this one is unpleasant because Tobey is this lecherous fool who is always putting Domergue down and groping her and making sexist cracks. And he's not even good looking.

Domergue isn't bad - beautiful, smart and spirited - she deserves better than Tobey. She'd be better off with fellow scientist Donald Curtis who swam out to kill the octopus.

Oh, that's right - the story is about an octopus going on a rampage after busting out of the ocean, and winding up wrapping around the Golden Gate bright. It plods along in the first section, then takes off in the second half.

There's some decent-for-the-time Ray Harryhausen effects but something about the atmosphere of this put me off. No doubt it would be different if I'd seen it as a child.

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