During my ongoing quest to track down literally every "Jaws" rip-off ever made (strange hobby, I know
), I already encountered numerous of truly horrible yet highly entertaining junk movies, but "Up from the Depths" most certainly makes it into my all-time top five of awfulness! This is your basic and by-the-numbers "Jaws" plot: tourists and divers are mysteriously disappearing nearby a Hawaiian holiday resort, but obviously the neurotic manager continuously keeps claiming everything's fine in order not to upset his guests, especially when a famous fashion model arrives at the resort for a photo shoot. Then, of course, the inevitable beach attack follows
The funniest part about "Up from the Depths" is that you'll spend most of the time figuring out exactly what type of watery critter we're dealing with here. It's not a Great White or any other species of shark. Nor it's a crocodile or any other kind of commonly known sea predator. It's a fish! It's some kind of over-sized and prehistoric turbot with two fins sticking out the water and an insatiable appetite for dumb and stereotypical B-movie characters. Following good old monster-movie traditions, we're gradually being shown a bigger piece of the creature with every attack, yet by the time it fully emerges from the water, you wish they would have left it all up to the imagination .The special effects look so unimaginably cheesy and pitiable! "Up from the Depths" starts off slow and a tad boring, but admittedly shifts into higher gear halfway through the film, when the manager puts a price on the animal's head and thus literally generates a cowboy round-up; There's never any sign of suspense to detect, even in spite of director Charles B. Griffith's attempts to insert a wannabe ominous musical score and hectic POV-underwater photography. Don't expect any gory smörgåsbord massacres or bloody make-up effects, neither. This is basically a comical viewing experience, filled with both intentionally and unintentionally hilarious situations. The screenplay itself contains several running gags (a constantly bickering elderly couple, the bimbo photo model not realizing she's on Hawaii, etc...) and the sheer incompetence of the ensemble production team induces even more chuckles. "Up from the Depths" truly deserves its embarrassing 1.8 out of 10 rating, but still I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to tolerable fans of cheesy bad cinema.
