Since the beginning of time (in stock footage), men have roamed the Earth and dared the elements in search of an adventure, but today there is a new breed of adventurer – the movie nerd (raise your soiled Dune popcorn buckets proudly)! Throughout history, these dorks have dared the elements to heed lofty dreams of someday eyeing a great film. From the cemented grounds of Mann’s Chinese Theatre to the sticky floors of the New Amsterdam on 42nd Street (talk about being wrapped in terror and written in blood) brave cinephiles have endured such monstrosities of Hollyweird gold it is hard to break their spirited endurance. Still, like the mighty oak that falls from rotting on the inside, films like Octaman can ravish the soul and eat away man’s need for greater accomplishments, or to better put it – a movie about an atomic octopus/man/mother/thingy-ma-jig can truly suck(tion)! It is stated the octopus is the smartest invertebrate on Earth, though unsure if there is truth to it, the scientific fact is after watching this science fiction cult monster the investors certainly were not intelligent with their trust funds!
Made for a mere $250,000 (though not sure where this resides on screen) and shot in Mexico, this cinematic barnacle is mostly remembered for two things – one, for being the movie shown by the vampiric horror host in Joe Dante’s seminal Gremlins 2: The New Batch (called Attack of the Octopus People for unknown reasons), and two, for being one of the first make-up effects designed by future (and first ever) make-up effects academy award winner Rick Baker. Starting off cooking plastic masks in his parent’s kitchen stove, after dog paddling around in films like The Incredible Melting Man and Schlock!, Baker would eventually graduate to classics like Star Wars, An American Werewolf in London, and Men in Black. Seven Academy Awards later, it would be easy for Mr. Baker to forget his (seaweed) roots; however, in a recent interview, Baker was happy to regale stories of the chaos on the set of his first professional gig (including one infamous day when the suit ripped and chaos ensued by using real logs and the director refusing to rehearse). Though he didn’t design the creature, Baker created the suit for the film and the other effects like blood and the baby fry. Baker would also speak of how he learned a lot from this film (like how not to sign up for such films) on how the industry works, how to properly budget, and how not to trust a Hollyweird producer when they tell you the monster will only be shot in the shadows for most of the film (upon viewing you’ll notice most of the monster attacks take place in broad daylight)!
Mankind has been up to the usual “killing the environment” routine we have perfected so well (boy, is it getting hot in here?), including contaminating a local fishing compound in Mexico with radiation. Lucky for us doomsday conspiracy theorists (can you get a degree in this?) Dr. Rick Torres (Kerwin Matthews from The 7th Voyage of Sinbad) and Susan Lowry (played perfectly by Pier Angeli) are on the case, finding a baby octopus that appears to stare at them like a human being would. Without realizing they are committing a felony kidnapping, they take the baby squid with them without looking across the pond at the angry radioactive Octaman (or is it an Octawoman?) seeing them take its paralarvae! Their scientific camp includes hunters, guides, and student teachers all wondering how rich they will become with their Darwining discovery so they can pay off the gas bill for their Winnebago, their only safe refuge from the bog creatures. Then… well, it is hard to say, as not much else happens except a constant circle of life (
Nants ingonyama bagithi baba) of them killing its infant calamari and the Octamama making the scientists feel its wrath of tentacled justice (best served cold and with melted butter sauce)!
Squirting ink at a beakish seventy-six minutes, and directed by Harry Essex (who wrote the original Creature from the Black Lagoon and It Came From Outer Space, which Baker claims this film is just a murky jet-streamed mixture of the two), this would be the final film for the lovely Golden Globe winner Angeli who passed away soon after production was completed. You can snorkel this swampy classic almost everywhere due to it swimming in the muddy channels of Public Domain, but be sure to get all eight of your hands on the 40th-anniversary version in hi-def to see the crystal clear coloring of the blood that looks like a crayon! So the next time you want to dive deep into the murky waters of movie marvels, try something old but fresh for a change, and don’t be such an Octa(man/mama)pussy!
