Octopus - La piovra

7 out of 10

And yes, I realize my one-line summary is damning with faint praise. But seriously, however silly this movie may be, it accomplishes what it sets out to do, and that's to deliver as much wet and slimy action-packed fun as it can in 100 minutes. And no matter what negative things one may say about it, you've got to give it credit for choosing Crimson Tide (and more than a dash of Deep Rising) for inspiration rather than Jaws, which every other movie would have done.

The plot? An inexperienced CIA agent (Jay Harrington) has been assigned to escort a deadly terrorist by submarine. Heading the sub is Captain Shaw (David Beecroft) and along for the ride is a pretty oceanographer (Carolyn Lowery). Anyway, things get bumpy when they encounter a gargantuan octopus (which is actually even larger than the sub) that's been mutated by toxic material from a sunken Cold War Russian submarine.

Straight-to-video creature features are always going to be silly movies; the question is whether or not you can make it into a silly movie that's fun for the right reasons, and Octopus certainly succeeds. In fact, if a few of the submarine sets were cleaned up and made just a tad more elaborate, I could have seen this as a theatrical release (though, don't get me wrong, some of the sub sets, especially the flooded corridors, also look really good). It's about as much fun as Deep Rising, a movie which it borrows liberally from.

Octopus moves at quite a non-stop pace. The opening ten minutes features both a sinking sub AND a present-day chase/shootout sequence that's highlighted by huge explosions and even flipping cars. Director John Eyres continuously mounts the excitement factor once the monster goes on its rampage, concluding things nicely on an oceanliner in a climax that had me grinning. Surprisingly enough, we get competent acting from the likes of Jay Harrington, David Beecroft, and Carolyn Lowery, who make for a likeable and believable trio. Most of the special effects are obviously CGI, but considering the obvious budget limitations, the visuals are really quite good, much like the rest of this silly, but fun flick.

Ok, now I'm convinced that Hollywood producers get together and dare each other to make movies with randomly selected plot elements. This one would have been:

"Make a movie that combines Turbulence, The Hunt for Red October, Leviathan, Sphere, Speed 2, and Deep Rising."

At least, those were the movies I thought of when I was trying to figure out what this movie was. Add in Down Periscope for some "lone woman on a submarine full of horny guys" humor, and you've already seen this movie.

After a reasonably well executed pre-credits sequence, set during the Cuban missile crisis, in which a Russian submarine carrying a toxic cargo is torpedoed by the US, Octopus takes a steep nose dive into the deep waters of ridiculousness from which it never surfaces.

Jay Harrington plays Roy Turner, an inexperienced CIA agent sent on a mission to escort dangerous international terrorist Casper (Ravil Isyanov) to America via nuclear powered submarine. Of course, the trip doesn't exactly go as planned: Casper frequently slips from his bonds, hoping to somehow escape the sub and rendezvous with his evil pals (who have infiltrated the staff of a nearby ocean liner); and a massive tentacled sea monster, the result of the toxic spill 32 years earlier, seems intent on making a meal out of the sub's crew!

From the moment crazy killer Casper (unconvincingly dressed as an old woman selling pastries) carries out his daring attack on an embassy that has a 'come-and-go-as-you-like' approach to security, this daft film becomes the epitome of clichéd B-movie garbage, offering a raft of stereotypical characters, endless predictable action, and totally nonsensical plot development which will have most sane viewers reaching for the off switch, but which should prove to be reasonably enjoyable fare for fans of low-budget, bottom-shelf, STV dreck!

Bolstered by brilliantly unrestrained performances from a dedicated cast seemingly unfazed by the sheer awfulness of the script, and digital special effects scraped from the very bottom of the barrel, Octopus manages to entertain by being unbelievably dumb: before the inevitable climactic showdown between Roy and the sea creature, viewers are treated to several unconvincing punch-ups, an outstanding(ly bad) display of emotional range from Ricco Ross as brave second-in-command Brickman, sexy Caroline Lowery as a feisty female oceanographer (who looks fab in her scanties!), and the unforgettable sight of a giant octopus tentacle piercing the bad guy and pulling his helicopter into the sea!

Starts off with a Soviet sub being lost in 1962 while on its way to Cuba. Cut to four decades later.

There's confusing hi-jinks, political intrigue, and traitors aboard an American sub that find the old sub. There's also a giant Octopus wandering around that makes periodic (and oddly timely) attacks, whenever it serves to thicken the plot. A spy is aboard the sub, and endeavors to uhhh, umm, do something bad I guess. The script doesn't make it clear, and the novice acting by the cast doesn't help, either.

Then the sub meets up with a cruise ship (!) What? Oh, and more spies show up too. The script darts around so much you'll get dizzy trying to follow it.

The final scene is about the only part that has anything of interest happen, as the Octopus makes his finest appearance. He's pretty nasty looking, as the director loves to take CGI shots into his mouth, as he attacks. Most of what you see is sloppy CGI, but at least you get to see something happen after waiting through the entire movie.

A goofy, bargain basement movie, good for sporadic moments of chaos and comedy.

Okay, this is just as bad as it gets. Let me hit the high points:

1) The main character. This guy has all the courage and charisma of Pee Wee Herman (no offense to Pee Wee). He's a CIA agent, and after seeing a terrorist blow up the embassy he works at, killing all his co-workers, and then killing his best friend, this guy still can't bring himself to shoot the terrorist. He does stand there pointing his gun forever though. Finally he saves the terrorist.

2) The first scene on the submarine. This is a nuclear attack submarine, yet we find the crew, on the bridge, playing strip poker while rap music blares in the background. The captain walks in and - this is what will leave a person speechless - doesn't seem to find this to be out of the ordinary. This also serves to introduce us to the main female character, and makes her seem like a bar whore. Someone addresses her as "Doctor", while at the same time her panties are on a guy's head. A Hooters Girl doing a beer bong would be more convincing as a Ph.D. than this woman. And a lot classier too. I mean, is there actually anyone out there who thinks that nuclear attack subs are run like college frat houses? And is it possible that this same person is allowed to write screenplays? And let's not even get into the fact that the captain of this boat previously had captained another sub, which he ran aground. To penalize him for this, the military gives him the job of...captaining a nuclear attack sub.

3) The idea that terrorists could hijack a cruise ship and then somehow use it to chase a submarine. Are the film makers aware that submarines travel UNDER the water, and can't be detected by any equipment available on a cruise ship? I mean, it's just impossible to fathom the level of stupidity these people have put into this movie.

Overall, I love cheesy B movies, and a few major plot holes don't bother me much. But this thing...what can one even say? You've got an unbelievably, unwatchably horrible male lead, a scummy whore female lead, a bunch of action sequences that are so incomprehensible in their stupidity that it makes a person become nauseous and disoriented, and finally a giant octopus that does all the work of killing the terrorists that the CIA agent was too much of a cowardly putz to accomplish. Hooray for the octopus. Pity the audience.

How in the world do screenplays like this actually get made into movies? I would think this stuff would be passed around from studio to studio and laughed at until the writers left the state in shame, or maybe even left the country. I mean, there are movies made for $100, 000 in Bulgaria that put this thing utterly to shame.