Tentacles (1977)

It's Wednesday, and you know what that means. Yup, for some reason Wednesday's are starting to cement themselves as my movie night and I fancied getting stuck in to a monster movie this evening, and after browsing around I stumbled on Tentacles; a 1977 film about a giant octopus and I decided to dive right in (get it?).

Ned Turner (John Huston), a Reporter, is tasked with investigating a handful of mysterious deaths after several bodies are pulled from the ocean. Locals are quick to make the connection between the deaths and the operations of Trojan Tunnels Inc. - an underwater excavation company. Trojan boss; Mr Whitehead (Henry Fonda) enlists the help of local Oceanographer legend and Killer Whale enthusiast; Will Gleason (Bo Hopkins) to investigate further who, after taking a dive and witnessing a sea floor littered with ripped up debris and dead fish, concludes that it has to be a giant octopus causing all the trouble. Meanwhile as more and more supporting cast members go missing on the high seas, nobody thinks to maybe postpone the Solana Beach Junior Yacht Race... until it's far too late and all the towns children nearly end up as fish food for the giant octopus. Deciding that he has to take action, Will, with his pal Mike (Alan Boyd), leads his pet killer whales out to where they believe the octopus lair to be and sets them free asking for their help in killing the octopus (yes, really). Eventually attracting the attention of it they both dive underwater, but emerging from it's lair, the octopus traps the divers and they can only watch on struggling to escape as the killer whales attack and eventually kill the octopus. Sailing away from the scene Will begins to plan his new life, musing he might go on safari when the whales reappear to say their goodbye much to the amusement of Will and Mike. 

This had B-Movie written through it like a stick of rock. It was a really odd little movie. The pacing just felt way off as it flitted from scene to scene of boats getting snatched, and people getting pulled underwater, whilst it semi-built the sub-plot of the junior yacht race and Ned's investigation. There was virtually zero character development as it went along. I struggled to keep up with who some of the Actors actually were! Mike, the diver with Will at the end could have been in the movie earlier? That might have been the first time we ever got to meet him, I genuinely couldn't tell you. There was virtually no fleshing out of each character. I'm not even entirely sure if Ned worked for a paper? He seemed to spend most of his time with the Town Sheriff, he could have been an Undercover Detective? It's never really elaborated on. I found it difficult to empathize with the characters as the carnivorous cephalopod picked them off and the death scenes were never really played up as dramatic events anyway...

It was also filmed really unprofessionally; lot's of off centre shots, lot's of camera movement (and not just on the boat scenes) and I don't know if it was my version or what, but the audio mix was terrible. I could just barely hear some of the scenes of dialogue; particularly ones shot outside. But then in almost completely the opposite the underwater scenes were actually shot really well; the immersion of the camera and the clarity of the picture together with the sound mixing (which was purely just the sounds of underwater vibrations that an underwater microphone might pick up) was actually really good and gave a genuine feeling of actually being underwater with the divers.

And another positive, or at least a half positive, was the soundtrack. There were certain parts with a genuinely sinister and unsettling music score which reminded me of the old first Resident Evil game on Playstation that really helped to develop the atmosphere of the scene but then equally there were parts that just felt totally off? The scene with the octopus attacking the kids during the yacht race had this really positive, uptempo song played over the top of it, like the octopus is a hero for defending it's territory? It felt a bit like a Quentin Tarantino scene... and the end song whilst the whales chow down on the octopus's tentacles had some dramatic orchestral music playing over the top that would have been better fitted to the far prior scene of the divers getting ready to go kill the octopus? They were both just really unusual choices? And there was this guitar picking riff used as a kind of musical bridge, and it was used alot. Not on the same level as the really irritating guitar tune used in Hercules in New York but a similar copying and pasting of style.

Aside from those points, other parts of the movie are difficult to comment on. Straight off the bat this has 'Jaws' knock off painted all over it, and is practically the same movie, but it fails to capture the same dramatic tension and impending dread that Jaws so successfully utilized. The actors, at least those in major roles, for the most part, put in passable performances, Bo Hopkins as Will seemed to be struggling with his character and I found him really hard to figure out. Not sure if that's just a constraint of the script or if he just genuinely poorly delivered in this role. And on the subject of the script it's all over the place; focusing on Ned and his investigation to pivot away from that to Will and his revenge mission to kill the cephalopod.

It feels like, to me, that very little heart and soul went into this movie, and even allowing for the fact it was likely shot low budget, it feels painfully obvious that it serves as nothing more than a net to snare hysterical fans caught up in the Jaws hype and snatch you up in it's tentacles, ironic for a film about a giant killer octopus, but aside from the partially interesting, partially bizarre orchestral score and some impressive underwater videography it really fails to deliver in practically every other department and even as somebody who is a fan of slightly fishy, dodgy b-movies it didn't really do anything for me. 1 out of 5.