It Came from Beneath the Sea

Friday at 8 PM EDT we have It Came From Beneath the Sea on TCM.

Here's a brief review.

It Came From Beneath the Sea

1955

78 minutes

Columbia

Produced by Charles H. Schneer

Directed by Robert Gordon

This is another good sci-fi picture from Sam Katzman and Columbia with the added benefit of Ray Harryhausen’s marvelous effects.

Cmdr. Matthews (Kenneth Tobey) is captain of the US Navy’s newest atomic submarine, out on its shakedown cruise, when something strange appears on sonar. A giant object chases the sub and then stops the sub for several minutes; radiation detectors onboard go wild—reactor room reports no radiation leak inside the boat—the radiation is coming from outside. The sub escapes and surfaces; divers find a strange substance on the bow planes. The substance is taken back to base in Hawaii.

*

Katzman made some wonderful pictures for Columbia, along with a few turkeys (The Giant Claw, for example); this falls in the former category, thanks to the effects by Ray Harryhausen.

*

Kenneth Tobey and Faith Domergue are excellent as usual, even though the script (by George Wothing Yates and Hal Smith) is a bit clunky with their potential romance. As my wife correctly noted, why are they going swimming in waters off a beach on which people have disappeared, in waters with no fish? The reason, of course, is to get Domergue in a bathing suit—not that I’m complaining.

If memory serves me, Ray Harryhausen once said that he’d only animated six tentacles on the octopus because of budget constraints. I noticed on the face of the DVD that the critter has ten tentacles. I wondered if it was really a sextopus or a decapus or just a Hollywoodapus.

*

Proceed only if you’ve seen the picture.

Dr. John Carter (Donald Curtis) and Dr. Leslie Joyce (Faith Domergue) are brought in to study the substance. It takes ten days but they finally determine what it is—a small part of an obviously giant octopus.

The government official’s initial skepticism quickly fades after survivors of a sunken tanker describe the creature (in a long scene that displays Domergue’s sultry charms).

Matthews and Joyce go to the Oregon coast, where a family disappeared, to investigate. It’s here that we have our first on-screen victim, a sheriff’s deputy named Bill—and the story kicks into high gear.

We finally get to the attack on San Francisco, a marvelous Harryhausen sequence.

*

The picture generally has good usage of stock footage, although the selection of a B-47 as the plane to carry Cmdr. Matthews and Dr. Leslie Joyce to Oregon seems a bit off unless our characters were riding in the bomb bay; that plane was strictly three seats—pilot, navigator and bombardier.

*

This a fun movie--enjoy.