Devil Monster

"A ship disappears during an ocean voyage and everyone is presumed lost. When evidence points towards a survivor of the wreck, the sailor's mother organizes an expedition to locate her missing son. When the explorers find the missing man living on n island, they take him against his will in order to return him to his home. The consequences of their actions prove very costly for the explorers, when the sailor sets about their downfall for taking him away from his island paradise," according to the DVD sleeve's synopsis.

This "edited version of a ten-year-old film, 'The Sea Fiend' (1936)" is a curious choice for re-release. Perhaps, its generous footage of topless South Sea island native women was the alluring ingredient. Since they were animalistic "natives", they could be shown bare-chested. Non-native women, similarly displayed, would be considered pornographic. So, you have a big-screen movie turning the pages of the "National Geographic", while attempting to tell an adventure story. And, it's not even the original film.

* Devil Monster (1946) S. Edwin Graham ~ Barry Norton, Jack Del Rio, Terry Grey

If there were an award for the most amount of stock footage in a film, this would have to win. The producers probably shot only about 10-15 minutes of extra scenes and spliced them into an hour of stock footage from several different films. Over the stock footage there is a narrator trying to connect the whole mess together. The so called native people shift from white to Asian to black randomly from scene to scene. The special effects (???) are awful and the pop tart, I mean devil monster, only appears long enough to eat some guys arm. The scene where the guy is fighting the monster is clearly superimposed as you can see the water in one part showing right through the other part making the guy in the water look transparent.

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?...

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.

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.