- AKA “Monster”
- Directed by Barbara Peeters, Jimmy T. Murakami
- Written by Frank Arnold, Martin B. Cohen, William Martin
- Stars Doug McClure, Ann Turkel, Vic Morrow
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 20 Minutes
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enKt54W9P7I
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
This is a decent monster movie with a high body count, abundant gore, quite a bit of nudity, and a surprising number of explosions and fires. It’s nothing serious, but it makes for an entertaining movie overall that holds up pretty well.
Synopsis
We open on a shot of underwater plants as the credits roll.
Jim and Tommy Hill drive up to the dock and talk to the fishermen there. They all whine about the fishery that might open next year.
Later, a couple of the fishermen get something big, but their winch runs out of gas. We see the claw of the monster in the net, but they can’t get it up. Through a comedy of misadventures, the boat explodes in a rather excessive way. Jim and Tommy watch from a distance through binoculars.
The sheriff talks to Jim. He thinks the explosion may have been foul play. The monster outside kills Jim’s dog. The next morning, they eventually find every dog in town, dead. All except for the one belonging to the town’s Indian, and the fishermen think that’s suspicious.
The mayor calls a town meeting for the big festival. The executives from the cannery are all visiting. He’s brought in a scientist, Dr. Susan Drake, and her claim is to be able to grow salmon bigger, stronger, and more plentiful than ever before.
Johnny Eagle comes into the meeting, and someone finally killed his dog too– it was Slattery, who’s been pushing for the cannery. It all soon devolves into a fistfight.
The next morning, Slattery goes off into the woods and spies on the Indians, who are planning a legal case to stop the cannery. He then goes back to town and tells his goons that they need to solve their own problems.
Elsewhere, people are making out on the beach, and Jim and Dr. Susan are on his boat. They almost catch something big, but it gets away. Susan does get some undeveloped photos of it. Down the beach, something rips Jerry’s face off and then drags away Linda, his girlfriend. We see the horrible green monster pull off her clothes and maybe rape her.
Another couple is attacked that night; the man is killed and the girl is taken.
Tommy and his girlfriend go to Johnny Eagle’s place for dinner, but Slattery and his guys arrive outside in the dark. They firebomb the place which explodes dramatically. As Tommy shoots at the baddies, the monster comes out of the water and grabs him. Johnny shoots the thing, but Tommy’s in really bad shape.
The next morning, all the men talk about what happened last night. Johnny brings in Tommy’s body, and the sheriff says he’s got some explaining to do. Susan listens to Tommy’s story, and she believes him. Jim stands up for Johnny and he, along with Susan, go off looking for the creatures while everyone else in town searches for all the missing teenagers.
Susan thinks they’re nocturnal predators, so it’s probably safe in the daytime. They start looking into all the little caves along the beach and they find one of the creatures. They find Peggy, but she’s not completely dead.
They take some of the monster’s bodies to the lab for examination, but the cannery people are clearly trying to cover it up. They think Susan’s theories are incorrect, but the proof is right in front of them. She tells about DNA5, which speeds up evolution and growth. It accelerates the growth of salmon, but some experimental subjects escaped into the ocean. Eating those salmon may have accelerated the evolution of whatever ate those salmon.
The big salmon festival is underway. The DJ keeps pronouncing it “sall-man.” Most of the town is at the night-time celebration. The mayor isn’t really excited by any of this, but it’s all needed for the town.
Jim returns with one of the creatures’ bodies. Suddenly, several live ones break right through the boardwalk. It’s a mess, and lots of people die. Jim and Susan spray the whole harbor with gasoline and ignite it. Slattery is attacked by one of the creatures, but is saved by Johnny Eagle.
Meanwhile, we see the monsters are stalking outside Jim and Carols’ house. We also see that she has the most excessively effective door locks ever. That doesn’t stop them from coming in through the windows. Carol goes full “Psycho” on the thing.
The sun comes up, and the town is a disaster. The sheriff’s in a daze, and he says Dr. Susan went back to her lab.
Back at the lab, the survivor Peggy is giving birth. Dr. Susan is delivering the baby, which turns out to be an exact copy of the chest-burster scene from “Alien.”
Commentary
They kill a kid and a dog in the first ten minutes, so you know you’re in for something special. Things blow up really spectacularly and easily in this town. What was the point of igniting the water in the harbor when the monsters were killing everyone on land?
Most of the actors thought they were doing a serious science-fiction film with some basis in reality. By the time Producer Roger Corman got finished, they were all embarrassed by the excessive nudity, and the director even asked to have her name removed from the credits. It is, however, one of the first films to work with the idea of genetic modifications.
The creatures are obviously men in rubber suits, but they’re really good rubber suits and are surprisingly effective here. There’s a lot of gore and carnage, and we do get to see a lot of the creatures.
It’s basically a creature feature with a sci-fi premise, but it’s surprisingly good for as old as it is.