Octaman

OCTAMAN concerns an expedition to "a small Latin American fishing community", to investigate high radiation levels. After the team discovers an almost real-looking, rubber octopus, the "specimen" is tossed in a bucket for safekeeping. This causes the even less realistic, titular terror to lumber forth to seek revenge. Horror, death, and ecological ballyhoo commence.

This infamous piece of ultra-schlock cinema is a cavalcade of sleepy non-actors reciting absurd dialogue, seemingly learned while they were filming. Of course, the real "star" is the 8' tall mound of silicone itself. To be honest, the costume, designed by Rick Baker, would have been far less of an embarrassment had it been used only sparingly, filmed only in the dark, and / or from a great distance. Alas, the pitiful creature is in nearly every scene, its extra arms flapping lifelessly as it staggers about.

Anyone who can recall the old Squiddly Diddly cartoons will notice the uncanny resemblance here.

Still, as ridiculous as it is, this movie is a lot of fun to watch!...

Directed by Harry Essex, co-scriptwriter of '50s Universal classic Creature From The Black Lagoon, '70s drive-in eco-horror Octaman is a lesson in how not to make a monster movie. Within seconds, Essex has revealed his tentacled titular creature in all of its rubbery glory -- a laughable man-in-a-suit creation that walks stiffly whilst flailing its flaccid limbs, it's completely immobile face in a constant look of surprise, as though it's just sat on a cactus (it does live in Mexico, after all!).

Having provided viewers with a good laugh at the expense of its monster, Octaman has little else to give, the remainder of the film consisting of countless encounters between a plucky band of marine biologists and the manky mollusc man, none of which are all that thrilling. In true movie monster fashion, the creature attacks the men, but carries off the film's only female (Pier Angeli), not once but twice, making it a lot like the Creature From the Black Lagoon - in spirit, at least.

With repetitive, dreadfully dull action, terrible performances, and a truly pathetic monster, Octaman is totally inept in almost every way imaginable, BUT it's still essential viewing for avid fans of practical special effects, the film being the first paid gig for future seven-time Oscar winner, make-up legend Rick Baker. Hard to believe that in the short space of one decade he went from A Mutant Octopus in Latin America to An American Werewolf in London.

2/10. Amazingly, this is not Harry Essex's worst film: his next movie, The Cremators, is a steaming 1/10 pile of garbage.

Yawn! There's almost nothing to say about his film except that it's really bad. Imagine if the makers of "Manos" The Hands of Fate remade Creature of the Black Lagoon and you have this movie in a nutshell, only this movie might be even more boring.

Most of the time they film this thing through a filter during the day for night scenes....resulting in many scenes where you can't tell what's going on, and couldn't care less. The monster, Octaman, is very stupid looking, and you can see the strings on his tentacles. There are also lots of scenes of people sitting around...and walking...and driving...and absolutely nothing happening except moments of your life that you can never get back ticking away.

The three stars out of ten is because of the fun I had laughing at this god-awful movie. Absolutely hysterical. Ridiculous monster, a totally unbelievable Kerwin Matthews, and Pier Angeli, who died shortly after this film was completed. I watched the entire movie fascinated by two things, the horrible monster costume, and Pier Angeli, who was once a very promising young actress back in the 1950's. She still looked good, but what a waste for her to act in something like this. Even more sad is that this apparently was her final acting job. Very sad. It is hard to believe that this was the only role that she would be hired for. I had read that she had hoped to act in The Godfather, and also that she had overdosed before finding out that she had been hired for a role on Bonanza. Does anyone know if she accidentally overdosed, or did she commit suicide?

Just got done watching Octaman and I must say this movie is hilarious. Nothing better then seeing a guy dressed in a plastic octopus suit running around killing people. This movie is truly one of those lost gems that fans of horror should see at one point or another.

The storyline is about as obvious as they get. What happens when an octopus is exposed to radiation? Well, we get a half man, half octopus. Put them together and we get all terror! Octaman is running around the Mexican country side killing random people. A group of scientific researchers get involved to try and capture the beast.

Wow this film was great! I was laughing through most of it. I was worried about watching it because I thought it was going to be one of those movies that is filled with nothing but ridiculous dialog but I was proved wrong as Octaman is basically the star of the movie. Most of the time we see him killing people in a most humorous way.

I had a lot of fun with this movie and it held my interest until the end. If you are a fan of modern day horror you probably won't like this, but if you are a fan of grindhouse horror, this is definitely a fun movie. 6/10