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Greetings, and welcome to VIEWING THE CLASSICS. Here you'll find capsule reviews of vintage movies from the early days of cinema through the 1970s, with a special emphasis on sci-fi, horror, and mystery movies. Be sure to check out the Pages links, where you can find a Film Index of all my reviews, links to the reviews organized by cast members, directors, and other contributors, and links to my reviews of the films of talented young director Joshua Kennedy.

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Friday, January 10, 2020

Octaman (1971)

Starring Pier Angeli, Kerwin Mathews, Jeff Morrow, David Essex, Jerome Guardino
Directed by Harry Essex
(actor & director credits courtesy IMDB.com)

A scientist researching atomic fallout in a primitive village discovers a mutated octopus that can walk on land and has savagely been attacking the natives and his assistants.

This is a real oddity.  Harry Essex, who wrote many Hollywood screenplays including Creature From The Black Lagoon, appears to be trying to remake that classic film with a sillier monster and limited production values.  The story features similar characters, and similar situations from Creature, including the beast falling for the woman in the cast, and a sequence where the Octaman traps the expedition party.  It's not a good film, with a lot of too darkly lit sequences, a music score cobbled together from stock compositions, and not much character development in the screenplay.  The Octaman costume really is rather well put together if you can suspend your disbelief, but some of the beast's gory attacks are rather laughable given the limited budget spared to those effects.  Given all that, I believe the film has become something of a cult item with fans over the years, and the Octaman is definitely unique, even if his story isn't.

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