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Roger Corman's first produced film,
Monster From The Ocean Floor (1954), is a tightly directed and entertainingly
low-budget creature feature. The man behind the camera, director Wyott Ordung,
is also responsible for writing the 1953 monster classic – Robot Monster.
Ordung also plays the role of Pablo, a Mexican native to a small coastal town
whose citizens believe in a sea creature who emerges from the depths of the
ocean to murder some of the villagers.
Julie Blair, played by shapely blonde
beauty Anne Kimbell, is enjoying some rest and relaxation at the ocean when she
encounters a Mexican boy who tells a story of his father being abducted by a
sea creature near an ocean cove. Blair dismisses the boy's story as a wild
imagination. Blair also encounters a handsome marine biologist named Steve
Dunning (Stuart Wade) who invites her on board his boat to discuss his work in
marine biology. Dunning navigates the ocean in his small self-propelled mini
submarine. Blair hitches a ride on top of the submarine to get to Dunning's
boat.
Blair soon
becomes intrigued by accounts of local villagers claiming to witness a sea
monster. She goes to Pablo (Wyott Ordung) to hear his account of the sea
creature. Pablo says the sea creature first appeared around 1946, about the same
time that nuclear tests were being conducted in the ocean. A villager named
Tula (Inaz Palange) claims the sea creature abducted her beloved dog Alfredo,
leaving the dog's collar behind on the beach.
The underwater
sequences in this film are quite well done for a low-budget film and appear to
not employ stand-in actors or stock footage to replace the main actors. We see
a number of scenes of actress Anne Kimbell swimming with her scuba gear in the
ocean, and it is obvious that it's her and not a stand-in actor. Actor Stuart
Wade also appears to be doing his swimming sequences at the end of the film,
instead of a stand-in actor.
Animated
sequences of the sea creature in the ocean seem to match quite well with the
footage of divers in the water. The sea creature looks a bit similar to the eye
creatures in The Crawling Eye (1958, aka The Trollenberg Terror), with his
outstretched tentacles and cyclops appearance. Dunning steers his mini
submarine directly into the eye of the creature. Blair manages to hook a chunk
of the sea creature onto her boat anchor and uses it as proof to Dunning that
the creature exists.
Every time I
watch Monster From The Ocean Floor, I can't help but think of the 1975 classic
– Jaws, directed by Steven Spielberg. Although Jaws is a much bigger budgeted film and is listed as one of the best films of all time, Jaws borrows some of
its plot from a film like Monster From The Ocean Floor. Writer Peter Benchley
may have been thinking of low budget films such as Monster From The Ocean Floor
when he wrote Jaws in 1974. Bigger-budget Hollywood films often borrow many
elements from low-budget science fiction and horror films.
Jonathon Haze,
an actor who would go on to star in a number of Roger Corman films, plays the
role of Joe – a Mexican fisherman whose friend is the first victim of the sea
creature in the film. Haze is best known for his hilarious role of a florist –
Seymour Krelborn in Little Shop of Horrors (1960).
Monster From The
Ocean Floor played on a double bill in drive-in movie theaters with the 1952
film – The Queen of Sheba. Although the film was not well received by many
critics, Monster From The Ocean Floor is significant because it was the start
of Roger Corman's career as a low-budget auteur and launched him into the realm
of directing. Happy viewing.
Steve D. Stones
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