Plankton

What can I say for Plankton or known as Creatures from the Abyss I loved it..It reminded me of the good old days of late night cable TV on a Friday/Saturday night.Director Max Cerchi did a fantastic job directing a very cool Horror B film. What I liked about the story a young couple and their friends decide to go for a fun day at the beach take a trip on a small boat then run into trouble out in the middle of the ocean their boat is taking on water things look bad but luckily they come across an abandoned yacht boat, they go on board little do they know the looming is some kind of mutant crustacean danger that lies in their future. It seems that weird biological experiments were being conducted before the crew mysteriously vanished. Soon the horror ignites as the couple and friends begins to truly grasp the terror that awaits them when monstrous killer plankton come calling. I loved the cool special effects which included some interesting stop motion animation.

Creatures from the Abyss" or Plankton has a lot of cool B-movie stuff. Special effects range from fair to outlandishly silly. It did make me laugh a few times.

This actually played for a while about 2 years ago at a theatre here in Tokyo. The English title was CREATURES FROM THE ABYSS and the Japanese title translated as OBJECT X. It was an English language print and watching this late 70's/ early 80's-look trash in a theatre was a nice experience that made me wish I could have experienced 42nd st. in it's heyday. At the time I thought it was a new release and that it copied the British PROTEUS. But if it was made in '94, I guess the opposite is true.

This film has so much in common with things happening in the evil dead, but it's got flying killer fish and a strange boat. This was made in the nineties? No way! Looks like it was made in the early eighties. Now I won't trash this movie to much,(there's enough trash in it already) it's strange, oversexed sick and has some terrible effects (although that may be a work print that I saw, even though it was translated to English). I bought this as a rather dodgily titled 'Piranha 4' Video CD when I was in Malta (where I also managed to catch a documentary on Italian horror movies on the TV, what luck!) I paid my £5 pounds and couldn't wait to get back to England to see it. I stuck it in and got drunk on vodka, I'm not sure if that effected my enjoyment of the film, but it was GREAT! Not in a classic movie way or in an Evil Dead way, but in the way it was just so wacky sick and crazy that you just keep watching! Don't expect anything more than trash and you will be in for a good time, just best watched when drunk I think :) Oh yes and look out for some great fake explosions.

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.

"Creatures from the Abyss" is an insignificant and very nasty Italian romp that 'borrows' elements from every notable underwater SF/horror film made in the past 25 years. It rips off the obvious classics like "Piranha", "the Abyss" and "The Thing", but it also steals ideas from B-movies of which I never assumed they would have inspired anyone to do the same. Like "DeepStar Six", "The Blob"-remake and even Roger Corman's "Humanoids from the Deep". Don't even consider buying this flick if you got any good taste left in you, as this is really bottom of the barrel camp! We're talking atrocious acting, hilariously bad dialogue ("Hey, that fish has an evil expression!") and grotesque gore that somewhat resemblances the artwork of Screaming Mad George. Nonetheless, I loved watching it simply because it's such dumb and brainless entertainment that doesn't require any involvement whatsoever. The plot centers on five stupid teenagers who planned a nice day at the beach with their rubber boat. They're overcome by a storm and seek shelter on an Oceanographic Research yacht (let's ignore for a moment that they supposedly drifted off to the middle of the Atlantic on that ridiculously small motorized raft...). Despite the ominous setting of the abandoned yacht, they throw a little dinner party and have some sex. Until, finally, one of them (who at least has a little brain capacity) discovers that giant amounts toxic waste poisoned the plankton in the ocean. Seeing that this plankton is an essential food source for many ocean organisms, the fish have mutated and eaten the crew. Some sequences rate very high on the repulsive-scale, like a girl vomiting sea-creatures or a dude transforming into a rancid monster during a sex-act. The nauseating gore actually is the only reason to check the film out, since there's not much tension or intrigue. It's an unusual type of gore for an Italian film, I'll give it that, as it doesn't handle about zombies or mad raving cannibals for a change. The English dubbing is downright painful and easily one of the worst I ever beheld...and that has got to mean something.

"Creatures from the Abyss" is an Italian film made in the 90's. The only Italian genre director who still meant something during this decade was Michele Soavi and he sure as hell didn't have anything to do with this production. That should give you a little idea about how "good" this film is. It's sick, ugly and monstrous! You can either take that as a warning or a recommendation.