hyped garbage

Great Film overall

Good concept, poorly executed.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

Devil Monster (1946) 1/2 (out of 4) Robert (Barry Norton) is in love with Louise (Blanche Mehaffey) but she's in love with Jose (Jack Del Rio). The only problem is that he is lost at sea so Robert has to know whether or not he's alive so that Louise might pick him. Soon Robert is at sea battling a large monster (actually a manta ray).THE SEA FIEND is also known as DEVIL MONSTER but whatever you call it doesn't take away the fact that it has to be one of the laziest and cheapest films ever made. I didn't actually time everything out but this 63-minute movie is probably 90% stock footage. If you thought what Edward D. Wood, Jr. did in GLEN OR GLENDA? was cheap then you haven't seen anything yet.The amazing thing is that there's so little "new" footage shot. The majority of the film is narration as we get the story told by Robert who is usually just talking about the various stock footage that we're looking at. This stock footage has some pretty unique stuff including various sea life but at the same time you can't really give this film too much credit for that. There are some native women that are shown topless so this here might please some people but I doubt it.From what I've read, the 1946 version under the title DEVIL MONSTER is a different edit that the 1936 film under THE SEA FIEND. I hope to view that version at some point but this film is pretty pointless.

When you discover that two-thirds is stock footage, and the rest re-edited from an earlier 1936 picture entitled "The Sea Fiend", you know not to expect much. And yet still "Devil Monster" manages to over-promise and under-deliver. Essentially it's the tale of a young man (Norton) begged by the mother of a lost seaman to locate her son (Del Rio) on one of his father's regular tuna voyages; the woman he now loves also keen to discover the fate of her former lover - one in the same.There's a lot of stock footage in between of sea lions frolicking, birds feathering their nests, native girls dancing, and octopus being harangued in an aquarium by an eel and finally, a mass tuna haul. There's also a brief scene in which a manta ray is captured - apparently sufficient enough to warrant the dubious title. Check out the special effects too - the transparent manta ray struggle is my personal favourite.Some great corny dialogue to match some egregiously bad moments ensures your time is not entirely wasted ("there was an accident, and, he lost an arm"), but even at just sixty minutes, it's still too much to bear.

"A ship disappears during an ocean voyage and everyone is presumed lost. When evidence points towards a survivor of the wreck, the sailor's mother organizes an expedition to locate her missing son. When the explorers find the missing man living on n island, they take him against his will in order to return him to his home. The consequences of their actions prove very costly for the explorers, when the sailor sets about their downfall for taking him away from his island paradise," according to the DVD sleeve's synopsis.This "edited version of a ten-year-old film, 'The Sea Fiend' (1936)" is a curious choice for re-release. Perhaps, its generous footage of topless South Sea island native women was the alluring ingredient. Since they were animalistic "natives", they could be shown bare-chested. Non-native women, similarly displayed, would be considered pornographic. So, you have a big-screen movie turning the pages of the "National Geographic", while attempting to tell an adventure story. And, it's not even the original film.* Devil Monster (1946) S. Edwin Graham ~ Barry Norton, Jack Del Rio, Terry Grey

This action film, made in 1946, or was it 1936?, is a horrible and inept mishmash about tuna fishermen hunting the South Seas for a lost seaman at the behest of his mother and fiancée. They eventually find him on a Polynesian paradise which he is reluctant to leave. They resort to shanghaiing him, not to take him back apparently, but to make him tell them where the good tuna are to be had. But in addition to the tuna they meet up with the Devil Monster, which turns out to be nothing more than a large manta. The story makes no sense and the direction has no continuity. Many of the effects, such as the fight with the manta, are laughably bad. Its only virtue is that the badness of it is unpredictable and that unpredictability is what may or may not hold your interest for a plodding hour. The highlights of the film are the brief shots of bare-breasted native women and a nifty fight between an octopus and an eel shot in an aquarium.