inspectors71 If you enter into an intellectual and emotional contract with something like It Came from Beneath the Sea, don't whine about being disappointed--it's a 1950s giant critter flick, and that's all! I'm not whining.This was a very stupid movie, and infuriating, to boot. The concept itself--giant octopus attacks--gets a great treatment at the start of the 80 very long minutes. We never see the thing as it tries to get up close and personal with the first nuclear-powered submarine. We just see the officers and men trying to stay alive. For about 10 minutes it appears that the movie-makers know what they're doing. When the Nautilus escapes the critter, and she puts into Pearl Harbor for repairs, all competence flies home to the mainland, and we're left with what seems like days of REM-sleep-inducing boredom.Since I was a kid I've enjoyed Ray Harryhausen's work. The octopus--and most everything else--shows what happens when a good story is sacrificed at the altar of SFX. Harryhausen was so clearly not up to the task here--8 years away from the wonderfully scary Jason and the Argonauts and 26 years before Clash of the Titans. If there had been less SFX and more tension, this thing would have been forever a classic. What we got instead was a big, inky suckfest.

Claudio Carvalho The state-of-art atomic submarine under the command of Commander Pete Mathews (Kenneth Tobey) is hold back by something weird in the sea. Pete reports to the Admiral and contacts the prominent scientists Prof. Lesley Joyce (Faith Domergue) and Dr. John Carter (Donald Curtis) to investigate. They conclude that the submarine was attacked by a giant radioactive octopus developed from bombing tests in the Pacific Ocean that would threaten the oceans. The Navy Command does not accept the explanation, but when a ship is sunk by the octopus, they realize the menace. Cmdr. Mathews teams-up with Carter and Joyce and has a love affair with her. But soon the monster attacks San Francisco and the trio is the only chance to stop the creature."It Came from Beneath the Sea" is a weak sci-fi about an abyssal octopus, fruit of bomb tests in the ocean. I am a big fan of Sci-Fi's from the 50 's, but this one is too dated, military and lame. The story takes place after WWII and during the Cold War in a period when the military people were in the summit of their careers; but there are many others good movies from this period. The greatest problem is the lack of action, with the romance without any chemistry between Pete and Joyce with John Carter with them all the time in a total waste of time. The period of research is also too long. The stop-motion effects are OK for a 1955 film. The good point is Prof. Lesley Joyce, a woman ahead of time with her independence and not fainting or screaming like most of the heroins from the 50's and 60's movies. My vote is four.Title (Brazil): "O Monstro do Mar Revolto" ("The Monster from the Choppy Sea")

TheUnknown837-1 A big budget is not one of the things required to produce a successful, entertaining monster picture. Of all the science-fiction spectacles to feature rampaging behemoths—and I've seen quite a few in my time—many of the best were the ones produced on limited budgets. The theories are many, but I personally believe it is because a lesser supply of funds forces the filmmakers to rely on their ingenuity and their art-driven passion. They make the movie they would want to see on the big screen. I have no doubt that Charles H. Schneer, the producer of It Came from Beneath the Sea, was very interested in seeing a movie where a giant octopus tore the Golden Gate Bridge to ribbons. However, his screenwriters and director seemed far less fascinated by the premise than he. As a result, the picture, despite some high moments, is nothing more than a passionless and unremarkable bore.One of the core problems with It Came from Beneath the Sea is a complete lack of dread. Even though the movie's plot revolves around a monstrous octopus using its tentacles to sink ships and tear apart harbors, the storytelling seems to regard this as a remarkably mundane event. The characters seem to have no real interest in contending with this monstrosity. This again returns to the faults of the screenplay: it also devotes much more time to the back-stories of the humans than necessary. How so? Because not one plot element—least of all the obligatory romance—has any spark of passion in it. The actors do what they can, but they never come across with enough energy to really serve a purpose for being on the screen for so long. And when it's all over—the climax, that is—there is no sense of a resolution. No reaction from the actors that would seem suitable considering their close encounter with a creature that had torn San Francisco's famous suspension bridge into pieces just earlier in the film. It's as if the events had faded from their memory.That's very much how It Came from Beneath the Sea fares as a monster picture. It drags, making its whole 79 minutes seem much longer than it is, and then evaporates in the mind just hours later. And the octopus, though well-animated by stop motion maestro Ray Harryhausen, is a rather uninteresting menace. We see very little of the creature and its sparse attacks on civilization are static. Even the film's most famous sequence, with the giant cephalopod wrapping its powerful arms around the Golden Gate Bridge, is inter-cut with too many "elsewhere-in the-city" moments, dragging out any sense of excitement from the sequence. And the big underwater payoff, which consists mostly of the beast just sitting on the ocean floor, is even more of a letdown. The most interesting moments consist of soldiers shooing the octopus's tentacles away with flame-throwers. There are plenty of really good vintage spectacles involving sea monsters; this is not one of them.

Scott LeBrun "It Came from Beneath the Sea" may get overshadowed by movies like "Them!" and "Tarantula" when it comes to the giant monster movies of the Atomic Age, but it's a good and enjoyable example of the genre.The "It" of the title is an enormous octopus that has become radioactive thanks to A Bomb testing and, because its prey can now be alerted to its presence, it's been forced to move out of its natural habitat and look for sustenance elsewhere. Among the people figuring out how to track down the beast and destroy it are intrepid submarine commander Pete Matthews (Kenneth Tobey) and scientists Lesley Joyce (Faith Domergue) and John Carter (Donald Curtis).The movie is typical of its kind in the way that an ever present narrator provides us with a generous amount of exposition. It is admittedly somewhat slow and dialogue heavy much of the time, and truthfully doesn't feature a whole lot of good octopus action, but in a way this does help in the appreciation of all of those moments when the monster makes its presence known.This was the first collaboration between producer Charles H. Schneer and legendary stop motion expert Ray Harryhausen, and Harryhausen's effects are as always quite fun to watch. Even if budget constraints necessitated the octopus possess six tentacles rather than eight, the effects still work incredibly well. Robert Gordon's direction is efficient right down the line, up to the big finish which is equal parts exciting and suspenseful. Of course, with an engaging Tobey in the lead, this is highly watchable on that merit alone, as he'd proved himself a reliable hero in this and the other 50's science fiction efforts "The Thing from Another World" and "The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms". The beautiful Domergue is good, with her character in the mold of other leading ladies from the era: intelligent and capable, and more than eye candy. Curtis is solid in a no-nonsense role and the three main characters also figure in a love triangle that takes up a little too much of the running time. A fine supporting cast also includes Ian Keith, Dean Maddox Jr., Chuck Griffiths, Harry Lauter, Richard W. Peterson, and Del Courtney. Anybody who enjoys the genre, Harryhausen's work, or the actors is sure to have a good time with "It Came from Beneath the Sea".Seven out of 10.