Up from the Depths

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.

The price we paid for the success of "Jaws" was a heavy one, with so many other aquatic killer animal features released in the subsequent years. The "Jaws" spoof "Piranha" is one of the better ones, by far. This is one of the lesser ones. It's a crude, ineffective, even boring "thriller" about a prehistoric monster fish released from imprisonment in the sea after an underwater earthquake. It proceeds to feast upon locals and visitors in the area, including patrons of a resort. Ultimately, many expeditions are launched to find and destroy the fishy menace.

It's hard to care much about this trite story, especially when the presentation, and characters, are so lacking in interesting features. Granted, it does get a shade more amusing once the frequency of fish attacks increases. Special effects are as crude as you could imagine - the more you see of the predator, the more unconvincing and laughable it looks. Attack scenes feature a lot of fake blood in the water, and splashing, but choppy editing where you really don't see very much. Voyeurs will appreciate the amount of female flesh displayed.

Fortunately, the atmosphere and flavor of the location (although set in Hawaii, it was shot in the Philippines) help to make it tolerable. Unfortunately, a lot of the acting is incredibly amateurish. Susanne Reed ('Code R') is a gorgeous, sexy leading lady, but the less said about her performance, the better. However, she's not the worst offender. That dishonor belongs to Kedric Wolfe ("Forbidden Zone"), who's utterly annoying as the high strung resort manager. Familiar faces Sam Bottoms ("Apocalypse Now"), as the young hero, and Virgil Frye ("Revenge of the Ninja"), as his scruffy, surly uncle, do what they can; Frye tends to steal the show.

Only recommended to people who just CAN'T get enough of this genre.

Four out of 10.

Rubber fish, horrible script, jumbled plot and terrible acting aside this movie was quite enjoyable just for the laugh factor. Meant to be a Jaws type movie, this was just plain bad. Not worth seeing unless you are a fan of B-Movies. If you are a fan though, this movie won't disappoint, all you've come to expect from terrible B-Movies is to be found in large quantities in this one!

I played the photographer in this torpid screecher. One reason the dialog is so stilted, is that somehow the sound track and the written script were lost. Weeks after we'd finished shooting, some of us "actors" assembled in a theater to watch silent clips, try to remember what we'd said, and dub that in. It's ad libbed, and the reason some people sound like others is that we dubbed for more than ourselves. The underwater scenes (I was shooting a topless babe named "Iris Lee" when the monster ate her, then ate me) were filmed in about 25' of water over a South China Sea reef, but the budget did not provide breathing apparatus for me. They gave me a mask and the 2nd stage of a SCUBA regulator with a red garden hose taped to it, told me to "act like I was breathing." At -15', with the most horrendous hangover I ever had. Then, the underwater camera not having been tested, the cinematographer shot everything off frame. When that was discovered, they inserted the red dye in an aquarium "death scene" from "Pirhana" and made do. There are shots of the ominous fin cruising cross-scene; you can see the wake of the outrigger canoe pulling it. There was a guy sitting inside the "fish" guiding it with a joystick; one afternoon he hit the reef, fell out the open side, and put his arm on a lionfish. VERY bad thing, the arm swelled to the size of his thighs and turned black but the Batangas Provincial hospital saved his life. Next day they moved him to a cheaper hospital! There was a lot more stuff, as you'd expect from a movie that opens with a pig intestine draped over someone's shoulders. I rated it 10 because as terrible movies go, it excels. It is so bad I think it deserves to be right down there with the Bush presidency. Chuck Griffiths and most of the actors in the film were great people. Chuck is far more talented than this movie allows him to show, and I'd like to visit with Suzanne Reed and Kedric Wolfe again some day, see how they've gotten along. Joe Cantrell

Griffith, Corman's muse on masterpieces like "Little Shop of Horrors" and "Bucket of Blood", tries his hand at directing for a change at the behest of Cirio "Vampie Hookers" Santiago. Guess what, it's a Jaws ripoff, and it's set in Hawaii. Instead of Roy Scheider we get one rather gorgeous woman romping around and clashing with, not the corrupt mayor, but the fershlugginer resort manager, a mind-boggling, thrashing and mincing performance by some guy (Virgil Frye?) Every once in a while there are incomprehensible quick-cut sequences of crap happening underwater including this inflatable fish with Dorito teeth. The climax involves blowing the fish up by completing a circuit by reaching into the giant fish's mouth and connecting two wires. Just like in real life! Don't ask for an explanation. Stupid, yes, and amusing as such, but also kind of aggravating.