Cheap It Came from Beneath the Sea (DVD) (Kenneth Tobey, Faith Domergue) (Robert Gordon) Price

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Customer Reviews of It Came from Beneath the Sea

Good Film But More Bland Than Most Harryhausen Films
I had never seen the film until this past week when I picked it up at a local Borders store for $15. To tell you the truth, I had some high hopes for the films, but like most monster films of the era, the monster's time was limited and short. So I wasn't expecting too much.
The film starts out pretty slow with Ken Tobey and his sub crew trying to figure out what they got themselves caught up in (the octopus).
The human parts of the film are like any other monster film where a man falls in love with a beautiful woman and they love each other in the end. The acting is pretty decent but seems to drag on for FAR too long! Plus the monster scenes were much shorter in this one compared to other Harryhausen films which was disappointing.
Overall, the film does deliver and is an enjoyment. But the overdone human drama and very few scenes of the octopus make this movie somewhat dull. A good film, but not one of Harryhausen's best as far as entertainment value.

Great effects from Harryhausen in a rather bland film.
"It Came from beneath the Sea" marks the second time special effects wizard Ray Harryhausen would head up the effects on a feature film. (He made his solo debut on "The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms and had previously worked with Willis O'Brien on "Mighty Joe Young.") It also marked Harryhausen's first collaboration with producer Charles H. Schneer, with whom he would form a long-lasting partnership through many classic fantasy and adventure films such as "The 7th Voyage of Sinbad" and "Clash of the Titans." Schneer conceived the idea for this film: a giant octopus attacks San Francisco. He thought that the image of a huge mollusk tearing down parts of the Golden Gate Bridge would thrill audiences, and Harryhausen told him he could pull it off.

And he did! Harryhausen's capabilities got better with each film, and in this 1950s rampaging radioactive monster flick, he managed some stunning effects sequences with his stop-motion octopus. Actually, the octopus only has six arms (a 'sextopus' I guess), a budget-saving move Harryhausen incorporated so there would be less action to animate. It's almost impossible to notice this slight-of-hand because the monster is usual half-submerged, and the constantly moving tentacles are partially hidden behind its body. It works fantastically; the tentacles seem independent creatures as they break through concrete, rip apart towers, and slither after and crush fleeing tourists on the Embarcadero. The shots of the semi-octopus towering over the wharf are still stunning even today; Harryhausen's optical work is fantastic. The attack on the Golden Gate Bridge is justly famous, and was done without the city fathers' permission! (The crew had to sneak shots out of truck driving back and forth over the bridge to get the required background plates for the special effects.) Harryhausen developed a special screw device that unfurled the tentacles and pushed them up through the simulated concrete on the model of the bridge. The final result still has magic.

But perhaps the best effects sequence in the film is the thrilling battle between the army soldiers armed with flame-throwers trying to push the octopus's flailing tentacles off the streets and back into the water. The reality of the scene is amazing: you really will suspend disbelief and enjoy watching the army battle street to street with the groping tentacles.

All this great effects work aside, "It Came from beneath the Sea" is a lesser film in the Harryhausen/Schneer body of work. Away from Harryhausen's magic, the film is remarkably flat, wooden, and shows too obviously its tight budget. The stars, Kenneth Tobey and Faith Domergue, are nearly stick-figures with little in the way of character or energy, and the romance between them is so boring you'll be praying for the octopus to show up and smash something. Director-for-hire Robert Gordon does little with the human scenes aside from letting them play out in front of a static camera, and most of the dialogue scenes are loaded with stodgy clichés no different than any other science fiction film of the period. The dull documentary narrator explaining the many shots of stock footage doesn't help much either. With their next two films, "Earth vs. the Flying Saucers" and "20 Million Miles to Earth," Harryhausen and Schneer would find more interesting actors and more creative directors to give the story some help.

"It Came from beneath the Sea" is a must-have for Harryhausen fans of course, and anyone with a love for the handmade visual effects of the good old days (before computers) will enjoy immensely the creative work that Harryhausen pulled off here. It might be a bit rough for non-Harryhausen veterans to make it through the human scenes, however. I would advise them to start with "The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms" or "20 Million Miles to Earth" before beholding the destruction of San Francisco by a six armed Octopus.

The DVD comes with the full documentary "The Harryhausen Chronicles," which can be found on most of Columbia's Ray Harryhausen collection discs. The DVD also preserves the film in its original widescreen format (most people probably had no idea it was show in widescreen!).