Highly Overrated But Still Good

Boring

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

Once again, radiation creates/awakes/mutates/irritates a huge monster, this time an octopus from the abyssal depths who, having become radioactive, is shunned by its normal prey and therefore starts to prowl the ocean surface for tasty humans. The navy is alerted when there is a run in between a submarine and the colossal cephalopod (a great segment) and two scientists are brought in to figure out what's happening (a not so great segment). Anyone familiar with the genre will not be surprised that one scientist is a gorgeous female professor who tries, but eventually fails, to hide her womanly emotions and frailties behind a mask of academic iciness. The prof, played by former Howard Hughes squeeze Faith Domergue, is fetching eye-candy but, even by creature-feature standards, not much of a thespian (the heroic male leads who bookend her (Kenneth Tobey and Donald Curtis) are not much better). The real star is Ray Harryhausen's stop-motion octopus, as it pulls down ships, wrecks the oft-destroyed Golden Gate Bridge, threatens the Ferry Building, and grapples with the pride of the Navy's submarine service. Like most of these films, the 'romantic' subplot is painfully dated and much of the carefully explained backstory is ridiculous pseudoscience; nevertheless, as '50's monster movies go, this is one of the best and still an entertaining use of 90 minutes.

It Came from Beneath The Sea its probably the first giant octopus film, later well get many other films involving these animals, films like Tentacles (1977) or Sharktopus (2010) and Monster Shark (1984) to an extent.The best part about the film are special effects created by the great Ray Harryhausen, the octopus looks really good, every effect by Ray Harryhausen looks fake, but like any other special effect it lives in its own world.I cant help but to think of a previous Ray Harryhausen film: The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, they are both very similar, both monsters are awakened by nuclear explosions, both have basically the same plot, even the characters are similar, they even use some footage from The Beast Of 20,000 Fathoms.Overall, I think its decent enough, the best parts are the scenes with the monster, the rest its not that engaging, recommended for those who like Harryhausen works.

1950s sci-fi monster movie about a giant octopus attacking ships and submarines. The Navy doesn't like it one bit. Slow-going with the monster octopus not fully showing up until three-quarters into the picture. Far too much focus in the first half on the nauseating romantic drama involving Kenneth Tobey's sub commander and scientists Faith Domergue and Donald Curtis. There is some fun to be had with the clichéd characters and some of their corny lines ("When you're driving that atomic submarine of yours, do you have time for romance?"). All of the octopus scenes are fun and the last quarter of the movie is the most interesting, due to the stop-motion effects from the legendary Ray Harryhausen. I normally love movies like this and would rate it higher, but it's just so talky and the romance makes me want to puke.

A US atomic submarine has an underwater encounter with a giant octopus. Commander Mathews manages to get the boat back to Pearl Harbor. Marine biologists Lesley Joyce and John Carter are called in. They propose the creature is radioactive and driven out of its home by the underwater nuclear testing. Ships are attacked and the scientists investigate. The creature then attacks the Oregon coast and approaches San Francisco.This is strictly a B-horror movie. The acting is stiff. The most interesting thing is the stop-motion animated octopus by Ray Harryhausen. It's the only worthwhile thing in the whole movie but even there, the studio limits Harryhausen to six tentacles. The movie is only 79 minutes and I would still cut out most of the non-creature scenes. Those are excruciating. The creature feature part is cool but the tentacles move too slowly. Harryhausen does a good job to give the tentacles power but it needs more speed. Overall this is a movie only for Harryhausen fans.