It Came From Beneath The Sea

Depth Collector

It Came From
Beneath The Sea
USA 1955 Directed by Robert Gordon
Columbia/Indicator Blu Ray Zone B

“The mind of man had thought of everything... except that which was beyond his comprehension...”
From opening monologue from It Came From Beneath The Sea

It Came From Beneath The Sea is the first movie presented in Indicator’s excellent, three movie Blu Ray set, The Wonderful Worlds Of Ray Harryhausen Volume One: 1955 - 1960. I’m pretty sure, like the next film also presented in this set, that I’ve never seen this one... so I’m grateful to the people at Indicator (aka Powerhouse Films) releasing this bundle. That being said, I think this is going to be one of my shorter reviews because, having just watched it, I wasn’t too much taken with it, to be honest. It didn’t help matters when I came to the menu screen after I hit play and it gave me an option to watch a ‘colourised’ version if I wanted. Okay folks... people who try and colour up old films which are lit for and therefore meant to be watched in black and white... are evil. That kind of dumb attitude is a crime against filmanity and this way of watching really shouldn’t be encouraged. I wasn’t happy to see this option on the disc... and when I say wasn’t happy I mean horrified/disturbed/foaming at the mouth in anger. For the record, I watched this in its proper monotone format, thank you very much.

However, I was very interested in it. Let me get the very simple plot out of the way first. Kenneth Tobey, from The Thing From Another World (reviewed here) and The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms (reviewed here) plays ‘atom powered submarine’ captain, Pete Mathews. He and his crew encounter something which grabs a hold of their submarine and, after lots of wobbling of the camera and actors appearing to stumble around, they get free but with a huge piece of organic matter in their propellors. The Navy call in top notch Marine biologists Dr. John Carter (played by Donald Curtis) and Dr. Lesley Joyce (played by Faith Domergue). After over a week of study, which sees Joyce falling for the charms of both men (before settling on rugged hero Captain Mathews), they realise they are dealing with a radiation emitting giant octopus which is moving nearer and nearer to its food source (culminating in it wrecking the Golden Gate bridge). It’s up to the three, aided by the military, to kill the creature via its new jet propelled missile Joyce has invented, which burrows into the skin and can then be detonated later when it reaches the brain. And that’s enough of the plot... I’m sure you can work out what happens from here.

It’s actually an important film in some ways... because it brought together stop-motion-giant-in-the-making Ray Harryhausen with producer Charles H. Schneer. It’s a partnership which would stick and see each man working together for film after film until their joint last movie together, Clash Of The Titans in the 1980s. Harryhausen’s animation is pretty good here on the titular giant octopus, managing to hide the budgetary problems of only being able to afford six legs for the octopus but, I have to say, there aren’t that many minutes of the creature in this film. It’s mostly a dry film apart from when Kenneth Tobey and Faith Domergue get together for the romantic scenes... Domergue is smoking hot as a somewhat ‘atypical of the time’, temptress of a scientist. Of course, only one month before the release of this movie, Domergue played in the role she will be forever remembered for in the hearts and minds of science fiction afficionados everywhere... as Dr. Ruth Adams in the sci-fi classic This Island Earth (review coming, relatively soon). The tension in that film as she awakes and is released from a suspended animation tube a few minutes before the others, then chased around the alien craft by an iconic Metalunan Mutant, is something I’m sure nobody forgets.

And, being as this is a Harryhausen movie... I can’t help but assume that the name of the other doctor in this film, Dr. John Carter, is a deliberate homage (in name only) to Edgar Rice Burroughs’ much loved Barsoomian explorer of the early 20th century. Another homage, perhaps, is that the titular creature has been swimming down from Japan after being hit by H bombs so, yeah, perhaps a little sly reference to Toho studios successful kaiju eiga from the previous year, Godzilla (reviewed here)?

All in all though... it’s not a great film. There’s a constant voice over narrative filling in between the main scenes and I can only assume it was intended to add a documentary feel to the whole proceedings because, frankly, it’s pretty unnecessary and could, perhaps, have been done in better ways within the main storyline. There are some odd choices in the movie too... with a jeep going around a sign in the middle of the road with a quick swerve but, once it’s speeding away from the giant octopus, instead of doing exactly the same thing, it opts to go through the sign instead... for no apparent reason, as far as I could see.

And that’s me done already with It Came From Beneath The Sea, I think. A nice one to see lumped in with a load of similar movies in a marathon screening event, perhaps but, as a stand alone watch I mostly found it cold... although the chemistry between Tobey and Domergue is definitely warming up the scenes they share together, for sure. I’m glad I saw it though and will end by quoting William Hurt’s character when watching this exact same film on a television in the great movie The Big Chill... “Sometimes you have to let art wash over you.”