Nayan Gough
A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.
Marva-nova
Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.
jinsilver
Although Octaman DOES have a few hilarious moments at the very beginning and very end, the hour in between drags on so long that I'm almost certain that all of those who reviewed it highly must have fast-forwarded. Not one bit makes any damn sense, but everyone is too serious to give it the parody treatment it desperately needs. Despite being directed by the same director as The Blue Lagoon, there are no homage to anything, it's just a flat-out insulting schlock put forward to make a few bucks with no effort or upfront cost; it feels like a cheap attempt to rip off a prior success and certainly was advertised that way. To be successful, a Z-movie has to be full of sneaky references to all kinds of things and never play too serious - see any Troma movie for a period example - neither of which exist here.The laughable accents and the cheap rubber are definitely hilarious... for ten minutes; the casting of the Italian FOB for the Mexican was just cruel all around. One of us fell asleep a half hour in. The actors are wooden, the dialog is painful and uses a first-grader's environmentalist agenda as drapery for its paper-thin plot. There is one and only one glimmer of brilliance, after everyone climbs out of the cave, but it's quickly drowned in a generic ending.If I had to sum up the movie, that would be how: Generic. Paint by the numbers. Retread.Submission into the worst movies ever made would be a shoo-in, which is probably the main reason it still gets occasional play. The jaded, hipsterish horror nerds live to claim to love this kind of retro garbage, so it's no surprise it has a bunch of over-5 reviews, despite having nothing that any other movie lacks.It's no wonder the actress gave herself a cocaine OD after making this.
ajb60-1
The three stars out of ten is because of the fun I had laughing at this god-awful movie. Absolutely hysterical. Ridiculous monster, a totally unbelievable Kerwin Matthews, and Pier Angeli, who died shortly after this film was completed. I watched the entire movie fascinated by two things, the horrible monster costume, and Pier Angeli, who was once a very promising young actress back in the 1950's. She still looked good, but what a waste for her to act in something like this. Even more sad is that this apparently was her final acting job. Very sad. It is hard to believe that this was the only role that she would be hired for. I had read that she had hoped to act in The Godfather, and also that she had overdosed before finding out that she had been hired for a role on Bonanza. Does anyone know if she accidentally overdosed, or did she commit suicide?
Paul Andrews
The film opens with stock footage and a monologue. The narrator informs us of a scientist (Kerwin Mathews) who is aware that man is rapidly destroying himself and all our natural resources through the advent of underwater nuclear testing and pollution, and is involved in a series of experiments in rural areas of Latin America. The narrator then goes on to tell us about Octaman, he describes him as "the hideous fruit of atomic radiation, in the form of a bizarre legend wrapped in terror and written in blood!". While conducting experiments at a lake Mathews and an assistant capture a strange looking octopus. Something about it's eyes. Anyway, Mathews takes it to a nearby University to try and convince his boss to give them more funds. His boss isn't impressed and in fact denies any more funding for the project. Back at the camp Mathews assistant has found another mutant octopus and decides to preform a dissection. Bad move, within seconds Octaman has burst into his tent and slapped him to death with his arms, OK I'll be generous and call them tentacles. Octaman then picks his octopus buddy up and retreats back to the lake. Unable to get funding to continue his experiments Mathews asks a wealthy ranch owner to finance his activities, sensing an attraction for his circus he agrees. The group of scientists and ranch owners friends and a local guy who claims to know where Octaman lives then set out to capture the half man, half octopus mutation! However Octaman doesn't like people messing around with him and his mutant octopus friends and starts to attack them, killing them one by one. Directed by Harry Essex I sort of liked this film. I think it has a goofy silly charm about it. I felt a bit sorry for Octaman at the end, he has a lot more personality than any of the human cast. Octaman himself, created by Rick Baker, looks kind of stupid for the most part. His face is totally motionless throughout the film, his eyes move though, a bit. His tentacles don't have much movement to them either, the lower two being connected to the upper two which have the actors arms in them, they simply do exactly the same as the upper ones. There's a touch of blood here and there when Octaman kills someone, but nothing to worry about. Poorly made, with not much continuity, sometimes it cuts between night and day during the same scene. The script really tries to push the ecology theme, with little success. For all it's faults I sort of liked it, a lot like a 50's monster movie. Fun if your in the right mood and can find a copy, which probably isn't easy.
irvingc
When I was seven or eight years old I dug an old VHS tape out of the back of my father's video collection. VHS was becoming mainstream back then and my father was a fanatic for building recording as much as he could. One tape in particular was labeled "Octaman Halloween movie," and I couldn't resist to pop it in the flip top VCR.I was little, and like all kids scared easily. This movie didn't scare me as much as it amused me. It must have been envisioned by a child, then written and produced by his second grade buddies. Nevertheless, I watched "Octaman" all the way through and still have the tape. The movie itself is ridiculous in plot, hopelessly acted and shoddily realized. Had Tod Browning or James Whale directed this mess I'd still be uncertain it could have been anything but what it is... the epitome of a B movie crap. But it's entertaining crap for the simplest reasons. We know that these characters: the goofy scientist, the heroic and handsome group leader, the gun toting marlboro man, and of course the obligatory "red crew member" guy will come face with this thing and probably, hopefully die.This is schlocky entertainment at its worst and seems to break just about every law of nature I've come to understand. Would atomic energy really make such a gross deformity of a single creature of a species that doesn't exist in the everglades, or southwest, or wherever they filmed this? If so, why does this thing walk on land? Why is it apparently carnivorous and so hostile? Is this some kind of genetic experiment gone wrong, a la Doctor Moreau? Movies like this never make any real attempt to answer these questions, and that's what earns them a B status.Still, I have a small nook of appreciation for "Octaman" as terrible as it is (and so terrible it's not even funny) because I found it amusing when I was just a little kid searching through my father's VHS collection wondering what makes a movie good, and what makes a movie bad. I found the latter, and have come to understand the difference.
