Jackson Booth-Millard I've heard of many of the classic monster movies from the 1950s, this was one of those, I knew the monster featuring and some of what to expect, I just hoped for a good film. Basically a nuclear submarine captained by Commander Pete Mathews (The Thing from Another World's Kenneth Tobey) is caught by something strange beneath the sea, but it is able to escape and return to Pearl Harbor. Tissue from an unknown sea creature is discovered in the submarine's dive planes, prominent marine scientific biologists Professor Lesley Joyce (Faith Domergue) and Dr. John Carter (Donald Curtis) are brought in to investigate. They conclude that the submarine was attacked by a gigantic radioactive octopus, mutated by bombing tests in the Pacific Ocean, the military authorities dismiss this explanation, but then other ships are being pulled down and sunk by the giant octopus. Navy Command realise there really is a menace in the ocean, so Mathews teams up with Carter and Joyce to find a way to stop the monster, during this time Mathews starts a love affair with Joyce. Soon the monster reappears, coming out of the waters and attacking San Francisco, after the Golden Gate Bridge is abandoned, flame throwers force the creature back into the open water, then a torpedo is fired and detonated, completely destroying the giant cephalopod. Also starring Ian Keith as Admiral Burns, Dean Maddox Jr. as Admiral Adam Norman, Chuck Griffiths as Lieutenant Griff, Harry Lauter as Deputy Bill Nash and Richard W. Peterson as Captain Stacy. It was common in those days to have films about careless atomic testing creating mutant monsters, you ignore any little love story going on in the background, the main focus is the giant tentacles rampaging cities, the octopus effects are the work of the genius stop-motion animator Ray Harryhausen, it is camp and a little silly, but it is a fairly fun classic science-fiction giant monster B-movie. Worth watching!

classicsoncall I can't tell you how many times I tried to catch this flick over a span of years but was always stymied in the attempt. Chalk it up to bad timing, falling asleep or missing it in the cable listings. I might have blown this one too but thanks to DVR, even nodding off would have had a remedy.The first thing I noticed here was that the black and white transfer I viewed on Turner Classics was phenomenally crisp and offered a first rate viewing experience. Ray Harryhausen's monster effects and the film makers' stop motion wizardry really brought a level of sophistication to this otherwise B grade sci-fi/horror film. Granted, the action isn't what modern day viewers would expect given the prevalence of CGI, but for the mid-Fifties, this was pretty cool.But you know, the picture had it's share of goofs too, and it's the kind of stuff I live for with these old pictures. Remember when the airplane pilot spotted the pair of survivors in the rubber dinghy after the sailors abandoned ship during the first attack? When the scene transitions to the naval hospital, there are four men brought in! Then this next scene, I had to wonder whether it was intentional or not because it was just so ironic. In the lab where the scientists and Commander Pete Matthews (Kenneth Tobey) are working, there's a prominently displayed sign that says 'No Smoking', but the commander spends his entire time taking drags on his cigarette.But the one that really doubled me over was when Commander Matthews and Professor Joyce (Faith Domergue) are on the beach investigating the latest missing person headline, and the professor explains to the Admiral that the potential sea monster probably hasn't gone away from the area. Yet she and the commander are out in the ocean swimming!Well if you can take your sci-fi with a grain of sea salt, this is probably one of the better giant mutant due to atomic radiation flicks you're likely to come up with from the era. The octopus attack on the Golden Gate Bridge was a pretty creative affair, and if you're going to make a stand for humanity, you might as well have the movie heroes blow the monster all to hell with an explosive torpedo. It sure does rule out a sequel though.

TheUnknown837-1 A big budget is not one of the things required to produce a successful, entertaining monster picture. Of all the science-fiction spectacles to feature rampaging behemoths—and I've seen quite a few in my time—many of the best were the ones produced on limited budgets. The theories are many, but I personally believe it is because a lesser supply of funds forces the filmmakers to rely on their ingenuity and their art-driven passion. They make the movie they would want to see on the big screen. I have no doubt that Charles H. Schneer, the producer of It Came from Beneath the Sea, was very interested in seeing a movie where a giant octopus tore the Golden Gate Bridge to ribbons. However, his screenwriters and director seemed far less fascinated by the premise than he. As a result, the picture, despite some high moments, is nothing more than a passionless and unremarkable bore.One of the core problems with It Came from Beneath the Sea is a complete lack of dread. Even though the movie's plot revolves around a monstrous octopus using its tentacles to sink ships and tear apart harbors, the storytelling seems to regard this as a remarkably mundane event. The characters seem to have no real interest in contending with this monstrosity. This again returns to the faults of the screenplay: it also devotes much more time to the back-stories of the humans than necessary. How so? Because not one plot element—least of all the obligatory romance—has any spark of passion in it. The actors do what they can, but they never come across with enough energy to really serve a purpose for being on the screen for so long. And when it's all over—the climax, that is—there is no sense of a resolution. No reaction from the actors that would seem suitable considering their close encounter with a creature that had torn San Francisco's famous suspension bridge into pieces just earlier in the film. It's as if the events had faded from their memory.That's very much how It Came from Beneath the Sea fares as a monster picture. It drags, making its whole 79 minutes seem much longer than it is, and then evaporates in the mind just hours later. And the octopus, though well-animated by stop motion maestro Ray Harryhausen, is a rather uninteresting menace. We see very little of the creature and its sparse attacks on civilization are static. Even the film's most famous sequence, with the giant cephalopod wrapping its powerful arms around the Golden Gate Bridge, is inter-cut with too many "elsewhere-in the-city" moments, dragging out any sense of excitement from the sequence. And the big underwater payoff, which consists mostly of the beast just sitting on the ocean floor, is even more of a letdown. The most interesting moments consist of soldiers shooing the octopus's tentacles away with flame-throwers. There are plenty of really good vintage spectacles involving sea monsters; this is not one of them.

Woodyanders A gigantic radioactive octopus makes a bee-line for San Francisco. Meanwhile, rugged Navy Captain Pete Matthews (well played by the always dependable Kenneth Tobey) has to find some way to stop the beast before it's too late. Director Robert Gordon, working from a compact script by George Worthing Yates, relates the engrossing story at a steady pace, maintains a serious tone throughout, and stages the monster attack scenes with aplomb (the sequence with the big creature destroying the Golden Gate Bridge rates as the definite exciting highlight). The solid acting from the competent cast helps a lot: Tobey does well in one of his customary stalwart hero roles, the lovely Faith Domergue holds her own as the feisty Professor Lesley Joyce, and Donald Curtis contributes a sturdy turn as the esteemed Dr. John Carter. Ray Harryhausen's typically fine and fluid stop-motion animation does an ace job of bringing the slimy behemoth to life. Moreover, there's a surprisingly radical and progressive subtext concerning Professor Joyce, there's an earnest quality to this picture that's impossible to dislike, and the inevitable romance between Matthews and Joyce provides a good deal of sweet charm thanks to the strong chemistry between Tobey and Domergue. Both Henry Freulich's stark black and white cinematography and Mischa Bakaleinikoff's robust'n'rousing score are up to snuff. An immensely entertaining giant monster movie.