The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

Being a fan of horror for nearly 40 years I have just watched Octaman for the first time, free online. And it turned out pretty much as I expected, some guy pretending to be half man half octopus in a green rubber suit, terrorising and killing people. Throw in some stock footage of wildlife, day for night scenes & a smattering of cheap gore and we have a film that's fun because it's bad, destined by some to be a cult classic though in truth it's pretty rubbish. Rick Baker, the suit designer, obviously went on to do far better things!

Screenwriter Harry Essex, who'd worked on such classics as "It Came from Outer Space" and "The Creature from the Black Lagoon", does his first genre feature as a director in this 1971 schlock favourite that could just as easily have been made in the 1950s. It has that sort of feel to it, and one can believe that this script of his may have been in existence since that decade.It's silly fun with an ecological function as scientists working in an unidentified Latin American country seek to prove the effects of radiation on the animal kingdom. As one can clearly see, Essex still had CftBL very much on his brain with the way this ultimately turns into a beauty and the beast tale.Well meaning Dr. Rick Torres (fantasy star Kerwin Mathews, looking incredibly serious) and his crew soon run into the almighty Octaman, a humanoid octopus thing shambling along in the way that only men in rubber costumes can do.Character actor Read Morgan is the man in the suit, and does what he has to do quite adequately. Co-starring are lovely Pier Angeli (who died during production) as a typical damsel in distress, whose function is to basically scream at the monster and be carried off on more than one occasion, and Jeff Morrow ("This Island Earth", "The Giant Claw") who actually has only one scene as Ricks' associate Dr. John Willard. The supporting cast is mostly made up of unknowns, although Buck Kartalian, as the ill-fated Raul, had a long career in film, doing everything from "Planet of the Apes" to "Please Don't Eat My Mother".Octaman himself, limply flopping tentacles and all, is endearing all the way, and represents an early effort for Rick Baker, who designed the costume with Doug Beswick. Essex makes no attempt to reveal the monster a bit at a time, preferring to showcase it every chance he gets. His movie isn't totally without atmosphere and suspense, but it goes on too long and gets too talky. It tends to get boring whenever the monster isn't doing his thing.However, it has undeniable bad movie charm that makes it impossible to truly dislike. And in the tradition of "Bride of the Monster", it's a hoot to see the victims of Octaman have to basically kill themselves while fumbling with the fake arms. A little bit o' gore here and there is an asset, while in one scene one of the most obvious and unconvincing dummies of all time gets tossed off a cliff. This isn't as much fun as one could want, but lovers of so-bad-it's-good cinema should be moderately entertained.Five out of 10.

A very low budget and barmy monster flick from the 1970's in which a mutant octopus-man terrorizes about 6 people on a jungle expedition. Not widely known or seen, Octaman doesn't really do much with it's central idea, but then again what really is the scope for a film where the threat is one single man in an octopus suit? The story is slim: a wildlife expedition finds a little octopus with big starey eyes on a riverbank and take it back to their tent for study. Later that night a big daddy Octaman with even bigger starey eyes come to reclaim his little-un! Things go on like this for a while, with lots of nighttime scenes showing the rubbery menace stomping around the compound looking for trouble and whacking people to death with his tentacles. Unfortunately it's very easy to see right from the start that Octaman is a guy in a rubber suit with an extra fake tentacle on each arm and an extra fake tentacle on each leg...these don't move much and the effect is sadly mostly unconvincing. The old motto that "less is more" could have worked well here: if the monsters ugly face and flailing limbs were seen a bit less clearly, the audience might find things a bit more intriguing, but after the first 30 minutes, the Octaman has been seen very clearly from every angle multiple times, and I was getting bored of him! Especially as the majority film never leaves the same wretched riverbank for almost an hour, and just shows Octaman coming out of the water to camp, attacking people and then going back in again.Acting is so-so, but acceptable, from the limited cast of 6, and at least the monster is fun to watch. Although I did find two things a bit silly – the POV "Octa-vision" shots show his vision to be faceted into hexagons like a fly-eye view might be, even though he has big round single lens eyes. And his permanently wide open mouth has plenty of angry looking sharp teeth but no throat opening at all – it just looks like a teeth-fringed green saucer! For these reasons and the very underwhelming climax, I can understand why "Octaman" has not become a cult hit..shame really, but it's just not very exciting.

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.