Monster From The Ocean Floor – A great 1950s sea creature movie

 

--

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.

Tula convinces Pablo that in order for the sea creature to leave the villagers alone, a human sacrifice to the creature is necessary. She suggests that Blair be the next sacrifice to the creature. Pablo fails twice to offer Blair as a sacrifice to the creature. He first drips some of his own blood into the ocean to attract the creature as Blair is under water swimming. He fails a second time by draining oxygen out of Blair's scuba tank.

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

The Crawling Eye – It’s looking for you!

By Steve D. Stones

Guilty pleasures don’t get much better than The Crawling Eye (1958). The film was originally entitled The Trollenberg Terror, and is based on a popular six part television series.  The success of the film owes a great deal to the popularity of the Quatermass series in the U.K.  Some film critics suggest The Crawling Eye emulates the Quatermass films of the 1950s.

Two young women – Sarah and Ann Pilgrim - are traveling to Geneva, Switzerland aboard a train when Ann suddenly gets the urge to stop at the town of Trollenberg near the Swiss Alps. Ann is a psychic who is immediately drawn to the mountains. She is able to see into the past by mentioning the death of a climber who was found decapitated on the mountain.

Sarah and Ann check into a local hotel and are accompanied by Alan Brooks - an American United Nations science investigator – played by veteran actor Forrest Tucker. The Hotel Europa is normally booked full this time of year, but the guests cleared out after the death of the climber. His death has made many of the local villagers nervous and superstitious.

Two villagers decide to make a climb up the mountain, despite the recent accident. One of the climbers is attacked inside a mountain shack by an unknown, unseen presence. The other climber is thought to be lost on the mountain. He later shows up at the hotel and tries to attack Ann. Brooks kills him with a gun.

A search crew heads up the mountain to find the two missing climbers – led by Brooks.  When they arrive at the shack, they find the decapitated body of one of the climbers lying on the floor under a bed. The entire shack is frozen. The men are puzzled to see that the door and windows were barred from the inside.

Brooks later meets a science research team working at the top of the Swiss Alps in a giant observatory. The research team has been monitoring a radioactive cloud on the mountain that occasionally moves, but mostly remains static. One scientist suggests that the cloud is controlled by some alien force from outer space.

The cloud eventually moves up the mountain to the observatory. It first moves to the hotel and unleashes giant eye creatures with tentacles. The hotel guests take a cable car up to the observatory to be protected from the eye creatures.  Brooks orders military planes to bomb the creatures, which destroys them.

The special effects of The Crawling Eye are outdated and laughable, but this just adds to the enjoyable charm of the film. The giant, slimy eye creatures with long tentacles are high camp at its very best.  Actor Forrest Tucker once mentioned that The Crawling Eye and another British feature he starred in – The Cosmic Monsters (1958) were both made for peanuts.  The two films make a great double-feature to see together. Happy viewing!

The Crawling Eye: Attack of The Giant One-Eyed Creatures

 By Steve D. Stones Released in 1958, The Crawling Eye was also entitled The Trollenberg Terror in many European markets. The film was a companion feature with another British film – The Cosmic Monsters. Both films cast American actor Forrest Tucker in the leading role. While traveling on a train in route to Mt. Tollenberg in the Swiss Alps, Tucker meets two young sisters who are part of a clairvoyant stage act. One of the sisters, played by Janet Munroe, has ESP and insists on getting off the train at the Trollenberg Station. She senses strange activities happening on the mountain. Tucker accompanies the two sisters to their hotel and later travels up to the mountaintop to meet a scientist friend who is conducting experiments in a bomb proof laboratory. Scientists in the laboratory conclude that a strange radioactive force is causing clouds to move in unnatural ways around the mountaintop. Meanwhile, climbers on the Trollenberg Mountain are turning up missing and some are found decapitated. Munro is able to see their fate before it happens. The climax of the film shows the radioactive clouds covering the hotel at the bottom of the mountain, and then the clouds quickly travel up the mountain to the laboratory. The hotel occupants and scientists hide out in the laboratory as giant one-eyed creatures with long tentacles attack them. Tucker radios in jet fighters with bombs to destroy the creatures. Although this film is a much more technically superior film than the Cosmic Monsters, I recommend viewing The Crawling Eye with its companion film - The Cosmic Monsters. Tucker also starred in another great monster movie that same year in 1958 – The Abominable Snowman of The Himalayas, which was produced by Hammer Studios of England. This time Tucker teams up with the great British actor Peter Cushing. The punk rock band The Misfits recorded a song in 1999 inspired by The Crawling Eye. Watch out for those Crawling Eye creatures!