Octaman

I was not expecting much when I watched this film via Amazon Prime and it managed to still be worse than my expectations. Perhaps I thought it would be better due to Rick Baker being part of the team behind this and I know it knows how to do great make up and such, but this one featured a monster that could not open or close its mouth, blink and it only minimally moved its eyes. There are a couple of good kills where I believe Baker had to have a hand in, but otherwise this film is a bit slow. I mean, I watched Slugs the other night and the slugs were faster killers than Octaman!

The story has scientist testing water in a Latin American country and they discover a small octopus with strange eyes and rubber texture. Okay, they didn't mention its rubbery look, I did, as it looks like a toy I once had as a young child. Well they get some guy to back their expedition and they travel on a magical RV where if you look out the window you can see Africa! Seriously, at one point the woman looks out the window and sees a Cheetah. Well, when they arrive they find the person they left behind dead and they begin to search for the large creature and one of them keeps getting hit in the face by it, they capture it and manage to lose it within seconds and they get trapped in a cave that seemed like its only purpose in the movie was to pad out the film!

So we have bad looking monster, a very unlikable cast and very little in the way of gore and no nudity. Sure this film is nice to make fun of, but as they are in that cave you want to yell at the television for that one guy just to call to the others to come on instead of crawling back through the cave to get them. So if I am rooting for someone in this flick it is the monster who keeps blowing its opportunities to kill everyone cause he wants the woman...I don't know why as he has no genitals to speak of.

So, if you want to watch this, be prepared to make a joke or two. I am surprised it was never featured on MST3K back in the day. The monster looks like he was built to battle Godzilla, but Godzilla said he would not work with such a trashy looking opponent so it got regulated to one of those Ultraman ripoff shows instead. Even the creatures in Green Slime looked a hundred times better, as you can literally see the boots on the tentacles it is walking on!

Far-out retread into "Creature from the Black Lagoon" territory, this time with a giant rubber octopus-man emerging from a river to terrorize a hapless film crew--err, scientific expedition. It's no coincidence that the screenplay was done by the same guy who wrote the original "...Black Lagoon", the whole movie is a throwback to 50s sci-fi, when radiation had the strange ability to instantly send ordinary creatures through mutations that would normally take about seventeen generations to accomplish.

"Octaman" is in that same shameless spirit, this time molding the aesthetic into a distinctly 70s-era production. The results are fairly laughable, although that may have been what the filmmakers were intending all along. The "octaman" (and his ordinary-sized cohorts) simply must be seen to be (dis)believed. Of course nobody thought this movie was going to be brilliant when it was made, it was produced in an era when cheapie horror films were readily produced as part of the drive-in/grindhouse circuit. "Octaman" fits that bill quite nicely, and only bogs down in the talky sections of the film. As long as the rubber arms are a-wavin', it's a real hoot.

In reality, It will bore you to death and make you cry!!! A pathetic 50's style rubber monster that appears as if he will fall over at any moment. The acting is bad, the effects are bad (Poor Rick Baker), the photography is terrible (It appears as though some scenes were filmed with the lens cap on!!!) and Harry Essex has got to be the most incompetent director ever!!!!

I loved every minute of it!

"Octaman" is the Holy Grail of grade-Z monster movie trash.There's the Octaman,an aquatic creature out of Oscar winner Rick Baker's closet walking about and waving his monstrous tentacles...You see,Octaman kills many dumb people by slapping his victims to death in combination with some hideous psychic power that forces you to wrap its rubbery tentacles about yourself and beat yourself with them.I don't care about the plot,because I watched this amusing piece of cow dung for Octaman.Repeat...Octaman!The utterly bizarre lust of an icthyoid creature for a female mammal reminded me "The Creature from the Black Lagoon" written by "Octaman" director Harry Essex.The lighting is awful,the acting is as bad as it gets and the script is trashy,but Octaman steals the show.6 out of 10 for this fearsome monster.

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.