Devil Monster

DEVIL MONSTER opens with dramatic music, followed by explanatory narration. Next, we're introduced to the crew of a tuna boat, who are in search of someone named Jose.

More narration.

Cue the endless nature stock footage. Check out those seals!

Even more narration.

Here come the playful island natives! Enter the topless native dancers!

Still, more narration.

Underwater stock footage. Swimming natives. Shark attack. An octopus battles a moray eel in an aquarium.

The narrator drones on and on. And on.

More half-naked native girls. Jose enters the picture. And on and on.

After 95% of the movie is taken up by pointless swill, the "monster" of the title emerges for the most unsatisfying finale ever filmed.

What the hell is this nonsense?...

"Plan 9" may be the best-known bad film of all time, but "Devil Monster" is an infinitely worse film. Much of the movie is clearly stock footage taken from a much earlier film. Ludicrous narration tries to tie it all together, but much of this grade-Z shlockfest makes no sense. The big finale fight scene, in which a sailor grapples with the Devil Monster, has the cheapest special effects you have ever seen. A man splashing around in water is superimposed over footage of manta ray. This movie is not for everybody, but lovers of trashy cinema may find it amusing.

Devil Monster (1946)

1/2 (out of 4)

Robert (Barry Norton) is in love with Louise (Blanche Mehaffey) but she's in love with Jose (Jack Del Rio). The only problem is that he is lost at sea so Robert has to know whether or not he's alive so that Louise might pick him. Soon Robert is at sea battling a large monster (actually a manta ray).

THE SEA FIEND is also known as DEVIL MONSTER but whatever you call it doesn't take away the fact that it has to be one of the laziest and cheapest films ever made. I didn't actually time everything out but this 63-minute movie is probably 90% stock footage. If you thought what Edward D. Wood, Jr. did in GLEN OR GLENDA? was cheap then you haven't seen anything yet.

The amazing thing is that there's so little "new" footage shot. The majority of the film is narration as we get the story told by Robert who is usually just talking about the various stock footage that we're looking at. This stock footage has some pretty unique stuff including various sea life but at the same time you can't really give this film too much credit for that. There are some native women that are shown topless so this here might please some people but I doubt it.

From what I've read, the 1946 version under the title DEVIL MONSTER is a different edit that the 1936 film under THE SEA FIEND. I hope to view that version at some point but this film is pretty pointless.

When you discover that two-thirds is stock footage, and the rest re-edited from an earlier 1936 picture entitled "The Sea Fiend", you know not to expect much. And yet still "Devil Monster" manages to over-promise and under-deliver. Essentially it's the tale of a young man (Norton) begged by the mother of a lost seaman to locate her son (Del Rio) on one of his father's regular tuna voyages; the woman he now loves also keen to discover the fate of her former lover - one in the same.

There's a lot of stock footage in between of sea lions frolicking, birds feathering their nests, native girls dancing, and octopus being harangued in an aquarium by an eel and finally, a mass tuna haul. There's also a brief scene in which a manta ray is captured - apparently sufficient enough to warrant the dubious title. Check out the special effects too - the transparent manta ray struggle is my personal favourite.

Some great corny dialogue to match some egregiously bad moments ensures your time is not entirely wasted ("there was an accident, and, he lost an arm"), but even at just sixty minutes, it's still too much to bear.

Except for the oddity of being taken from three previous films and edited together - all much older than the 1946 release date of this film, Devil Monster is one heck of a bad film with bad acting, bad special effects, a terrible script, and virtually nothing going for it. A third is almost nothing but stock footage of seals,dolphins, and various tribes that look nothing alike in different scenes. I was yawning after two minutes of seeing seals wash up on rocks and having inane dialog try and justify its presence. The original films could not have much better though because a couple of these actors - okay, most of these actors are just downright awful from the lead Barry Norton to the excessiveness of Jack Del Rio looking like a psychopath at the ship's steering wheel to the laughable persona of Jack Barty as the captain to the even more ludicrous native chief with a New York accent. Only the fellow playing Tiny the cook held any of my interest - and that really says just how bad this film is if you saw his performance! I really cannot add much more to this then to say that the film is very, very bad and devoid of any merit whatsoever except if you enjoy watching people pour out their hearts only ending in cinematic misery for the viewer built by the foundation of their lack of talent and competence. Sometimes I do. I did laugh several times at how bad - really bad - thing were.