After watching "Tentacles" last night - and being absolutely miserable as a result of it, there's one fact that's more resoundingly obvious than ever, which is the irrefutable fact that JAWS sure did "inspire" a tidal wave of sea-beast themed movies - and from what I've seen virtually all of them are terrible movies (lame cash-ins). But yet some still manage to be pretty entertaining, however with Tentacles, that's not at all the case......
Firstly lets start with a quick cast run-down: Peter Fonda, John Huston, Shelley Winters and Bo Hopkins, so the casting is actually quite good and it was filmed on location off the beautiful coastlines of southern California, but once it's all said and done who really cares, because when movies are this exquisitely boring there's little in the way of positivity to mention. Tentacles is so completely and utterly lame it's hard to know where to start but here goes, the films all-star cast is used ineffectively (particularly in the second half) and Bo Hopkins delivers a lame and listless performance and just listen to his dialog. Terrible writing, terrible delivery, period. The films plot and basic story-line is poorly thought out and ill-conceived and from a special effects stand-point it's clearly obvious that the film simply didn't have anything near good enough to Stop Hearts or Wet Pants. Nope not all, nothing like what you see in say "20,000 Leagues Under The Sea" - 22 years earlier. No "effects-wizardry" to see here, just some crudely conceived, low-budget, under-water effects that have been spliced together and intercut with some live animal footage (once again taking notes out of JAWS' playbook); and on that note let it be known that simply showing an animal up-close does not, repeat, does not effectively project any grand sense of scale or "giant" size, nor does it fool the audience - not for a second. I think it's "The Night of the Lepus" that best illustrates that fact, which technically speaking is an even worse movie than Tentacles, but yet at the same time it's much more entertaining, if not entirely for the right reasons. Oh yeah, just to mention it, this film has a soundtrack that's utterly generic, sounds like stock film music to me; my guess is that they could hardly afford John Williams, in any case the films music sucks. If there's one aspect that Tentacles isn't completely incompetent in, it would have to be in terms of its cinematography, apart from a few questionable camera angles its photography is solid throughout.
Let me end my rant and review with this warning: For those who were considering wasting their time watching this pathetic garbage-pile of a movie (which is literally nothing more than an ultra-lame cash-in that's playing off of JAWS' record-breaking success), I'd recommend that you watch something else, as Tentacles scores in the bottom 1% of all movies. Lets be brutally honest it offers absolutely nothing that's good.
