Monster from the Ocean Floor (1954)

Another Friday means another fifties movie review. This time I went away from my comfort zone to check out a flick that I don’t remember having seen before. I think I would have remembered Monster from the Ocean Floor.

A pretty young lady is visiting Mexico to draw pictures and swim. She meets up with Steve Dunning, Marine Biologist. After some romantic talk about how the human race is doomed because the population is exploding they help look for a missing diver. They only find his suit, but where is the man? This combined with an earlier conversation about the local sea monster sets the girl on a search to prove it exists. Of course, she is just a woman, so the science guys go off to do some more science. Then the locals decide to appease the monster by sacrificing her to it. Luckily, they choose Pablo to kill her and he is really bad at it. Steve Dunning, Marine Biologist, returns just in time to kill the monster and save the girl. End of movie.

This is bad. I can’t think of a good thing to say about the movie at all. I’d say that the pacing is terrible, but that would insinuate that something actually happens to point out how slow parts of the movie are. Really nothing happens in Monster from the Ocean Floor. We get some talking, then swimming, then talking, then more swimming. Nothing happens! There is a bit where the girl “fights” a shark and is scared to the surface by a little octopus because you know women and stuff… This is the longest hour of my cinematic life and I’ve watched Manos Hands of Fate without the MST3K jokes!

Prepare for lots of swimming...

The creature here is hardly on screen at all. That is probably for the best because it looks terrible. Basically, a rubber puppet that is hidden by “underwater” photography. This means they slapped a crappy filter on the camera, so you couldn’t see how bad it looks. Not only do we barely see the creature, but it is quickly dispatched in an anticlimactic ending that takes all of thirty seconds. Steve Dunning, Marine Biologist, rams his pedal sub into its eye killing it. Honestly the only fun that I’m having here and with the movie is saying Steve Dunning, Marine Biologist, and that joke is wearing old already.

Not everything that Roger Corman was involved in, here just as a producer, turned out good. This might be the worst thing associated with him that I’ve watched, and I’ve seen a lot. This has the feel of a movie that he picked up to stick on the end of a triple feature only to be shown when most of the audience was asleep or otherwise engaged. While the main purpose of my fifties review series is to turn people onto some movies that I dig it is also important to steer you away from the turkeys. This is a serious waste of time. Avoid at all costs.

© Copyright 2018 John Shatzer