Plankton

I watched this film in amazement as it was absolutely bizarre. All through this thing I thought it was a film from the 80's, then I look it up and it is from 1994. So the effects look very dated for 1994 as John Carpenter's The Thing boosts way superior effects and it was made 10 years prior to this thing. I am probably being generous giving it a four as it has such horrible editing that even I noticed the editing was bad! It also boosts five of the most annoying and stupid characters ever put to film! Three of them were at least easy on the eyes I guess. Not sure why they went with Plankton rather than Creatures of the Abyss, that one makes it sound so much more ominous while this one just sounds like it should have been a nature documentary...

The story, well, five people who are super excited and talking over each other in what seems to be a cocaine induced frenzy get a raft and put it in the water, a rather small raft I might add. Hilarious hi jinks ensue as one of them gets caught in a net! Okay, it wasn't that funny, but the characters sure thought it was! Well, they get stranded as their tiny boat ran out of gas, good news as storms don't happen in the summer one of the characters said and then they get caught in a storm. Thankfully, they find a yacht, unfortunately, it is filled to the brim with fish monstrosities that are horny...still not sure how are why this plot point was needed or what was going on throughout most of the film.

So, most of the film was filler as the fish attacks are few and far between. For reasons that still baffle me there is a bathroom with like a sexy hostess or something that tells you how to shower and none of the characters are stunned by this...apparently, they've been in a shower like this previously? There is also a wall clock that says stupid things and also rarely tells time and this too is not questioned. Very strange movie that seemed to be trying to go in a sexy horror direction, but it is just too gross in sections to pull this off successfully.

So, the film was edited poorly and you really do not understand what the heck the cast is saying until they get on the yacht. Still, it was so crazy that you could not look away and the effects had a certain charm. Though, the film would have been more impressive had it been made in the 80's, because it sure did have that vibe to it.

This is actually a surprisingly nihilistic little modern day B monster movie shot on DV, with a premise so stupid that no matter how idiotic the execution it still worked. A group of teenage dingbats stage their own private party on a deserted excursion yacht found floating aimlessly in the middle of a raging storm. The reason the yacht is deserted is because mutant fish monsters have evolved in about two days from a radioactive toxic waste spill and first mutated with the crew, and now they are ready to breed.

The slimy prospects of the lustful monster fishies is indeed realized during a hilariously over the top transformation scene that stands as the film's centerpiece: While attempting to score with one of the chicks, one of the guys (who has been exposed to the mutating waste) suddenly starts growing tendrils & spines and heaving out gobs of muck. What makes it funny is that the girl starts to like it, and the animated stop motion & prosthetic effects do not pause to consider how fake they look and instead concentrate on getting a few laughs plus gross out factor. The film has a reckless abandon to it crossed with a perverse sense of humor, nudity, and gross out gags.

In other words this is a party movie, not SCHINDLER'S LIST, and should be consumed only in the company of friends at social settings where alcohol is served and consumed in what might be deemed as an irresponsible manner. You'll need it for most of the warm up portion of the film -- after a nice frenetic Lost In The Storm sequence the movie settles down into cliché mid 1990's teen party footage for a while, but once the kids start disappearing and the monsters (interestingly depicted as first by only a fish-eye view of their own perspective as they stalk the idiots) start trying to glom onto them it starts to be actual fun. The "bad" or dated or low budget effects make it all the more enjoyable, including a downright nihilistic conclusion for this sort of fare.

Colorful, slimy, and over quickly -- try adding beer for optimal effect.

6/10 for this kind of stuff.

Mike (Clay Rogers), Bobby (Michael Bon), Margareth (Sharon Marino), Dorothy (Laura di Palma), and Julie (Ann Wolf) are as insipid a bunch of horror movie characters as you'll ever see. With Mike representing the only working brain they have among them, they end up taking a motorized raft out into the ocean. However, their gas was left behind, and they are soon stranded out there, while a storm rages. Then they encounter a vast yacht which is part pleasure ship, but mostly a biological laboratory. The air headed group is ultimately terrorized by the marine life on the vessel.

"Creatures from the Abyss" is crude in pretty much every department, including script, acting, and effects. The dialogue is lousy, yet sometimes very funny in its lousiness; one of the gals comments that the fish on display "have an evil expression". You won't care about the characters, and will thus likely enjoy seeing them subjected to a variety of comeuppances. All of that said, this 1990s Italian product does often get by on sheer outrageousness. It's rough going for a while - VERY rough going - but the viewer eventually gets rewarded with some priceless, over the top creature effects gags. Best of all is a classic case of coitus interruptus when one of the two participants begins mutating. The effects may be crude, but they ARE plentiful, and they're frequently fun.

All of this nonsense is set to a silly electronic score credited to Elikonia Group. Production design and lighting are adequate for a production budgeted at roughly $250,000. Among the young actors, Rogers comes off the best, but this is basically because his egghead character isn't as annoying as the others. And, for those who are interested, Wolf does bare her breasts.

The capper is that the automated systems on the ship are given electronic voices, which chatter away in the most inane way possible.

Overall, this is worth at least one look if you're enticed by the prospect of unearthing obscure cheese.

Five out of 10.

I was expecting this movie to be entertaining, I was let down big time. There was not one entertaining scene in the whole movie. Even the acting was bad. Avoid at all costs, resist the temptation.

Don't think I'll ever eat fish again after seeing this movie.

Five teenagers go motorboating one night, and suddenly find themselves in a rainstorm. Bikini-clad, they board an abandoned ship adrift at sea and end up fighting off .... something or other, on board the yacht. It's too dark and badly photographed to tell for certain. A circle of some sort was placed over the lens to simulate the creature's point-of-view, for scenes of it stalking these soon-to-be-fish-food fools.

Dead, mutated piranha in the freezer don't deter these nitwits from further inspecting the contents of this abandoned ship. Hell, they even cook them up and eat them for dinner. After poking his girl's ass with a dead fish, a guy finds some unidentifiable goo on a shelf, puts it to his mouth and tastes it! Yes, these characters will live a long a healthy life.

Thawed, mutated piranhas from hell go on a rampage, chowing down on these braindead cyphers for most of the rest of the film's run time, which was probably 15 minutes too long, incidentally.

There's a bit of nudity (which distracts from the gore) and gooey, vomiting effects and gore (which distracts from the nudity) in this badly dubbed grade Z-flick, which looks like it was filmed several years earlier and sat unreleased for quite a while, from the looks of the awful looking mullets, and the guy in the white speedo. But there are a few unintentional laughs, the girls look good and wear as little as possible, so it might be fun for fans of zero budget sleaze to watch this in the right frame of mind.