jlthornb51 Visionary director John Eyeres brings Boaz Davidson's classic, imaginative story to the screen with skill and stunning originality. Michael D. Weiss' script is taut and exciting, demonstrating superb understanding of U.S. Navy submarines, their crews, and the conditions they live in. This tense film has a crew fighting for their sub and their own survival as a giant mutated octopus attacks from the dark depths. The special effects are excellent in this tightly budgeted production but nowhere does the lack of funds show in the incredible production values. This is a film that has its share of horror and thrills but also takes some time to develop characters who we grow to deeply care about. These are flesh and blood human beings in uniform, desperately doing battle with an unholy creature, each of them flawed and none of them superhuman. The director never lets the audience forget the humanity involved in this struggle and that is what truly makes this horror/science fiction film unique.

gpeltz I'm talking about Octopus (2000) Directed by John Eyres and Written by Bose Davidson, and Michael Weiss. Spoiler Alert ahead. The movie is a blend of various types of genera: It starts off as a Government agents fighting terrorists, goes on to become a Submarine drama, and turns into a underwater monster, that carries the title of the movie. The terrorist element is re inserted toward the end, as the bad guys plan to blow up a cruise ship,Jay Harrington plays the agent Roy Turner a field statistician put in harms way, as he is to accommodate the ruthless assassin Casper, played by Ravil Isyanov. They are to be transported by submarine, commanded by the brave Captain Shaw, played by David Beecroft, and his disposable crew. Notably the sexy Karen Lowery as Dr Lisa Finch. and Ricco Ross as Brickman the brave first mate.The movie is very watchable, with satisfactory production values, It is filmed in the style of a TV series. Episodic in general. The movie was at it's best, aside from the outdoor terrorist sequences that open the show, when it played the dynamics between the moral agent, and the ruthless killer.The monster takes the starring role, and that's too bad. The creature effects crew, could not figure out how to get it right, The digital effects in this movie failed to achieve what stop motion pictures like, "It came from Beneath the Sea" (1955) achieved, a believable and coherent giant octopus. The big climatic final shots, failed to impress. By the time all the plot elements pulled together at the finale, the movie had stopped being fun. Four out of Ten, bring your popcorn Stars.

TheLittleSongbird While expecting little from Octopus I was preparing to be mildly entertained. In all honesty I was more entertained by Spiders and Frankenfish of the one word creature features, but Octopus is better than Crocodile. It is not a complete disaster, I did think the cast did a better than average job considering what they had to work with, and the ending was exciting and intense with the Octopus, who was otherwise not very scary and was under-utilised, making its best appearance. However, the effects are very artificial-looking and don't move very convincingly, and the hackneyed editing doesn't help either. The script is cheesy and muddled, the story is mostly dull and predictable with any scenes meaning to be scary undermined by a real lack of tension and like I said with Crocodile I wouldn't have minded whether the characters were clichéd if they weren't so poorly developed and shallow. Overall, the ending is good but the movie overall is pretty bad. 3/10 Bethany Cox

Michael_Elliott Octopus (2000) ** (out of 4) A government man is able to catch a terrorist but only after his partner is killed. To get him back to the U.S. they decide to load him on a submarine but on the journey the sub comes under attack by a large octopus. It turns out that during the Cuban Missile Crisis a Russian sub had toxic chemicals on board when it was struck by a torpedo and this is what has caused the octopus to mutate. This "nature amuck" film is yet another from the fine folks at Nu Image Films and like the others they're dealing with a low budget but the film is in good nature and one certainly shouldn't take it too serious. I think this is going to appeal to those who enjoy the low-budget style of someone like Cannon. This film here certainly has a lot of horror elements but they also go for some rather cheap but fun action including the opening sequence when the submarine is struck and eventually sinks. I must give the set designer credit because even with the low budget we still get some good looking sets that makes you feel as if you're on a real sub. Jay Harrington plays the government guy and his performance is pretty good but at the same time you can't help hate him because he's such a wimp. He watches this terrorist kill his partner and he does nothing. He watches this terrorist kill people on the sub and he does nothing. He's even given a third chance at redemption and does nothing. He's certainly not the type of "action hero" you want to see in a film like this. Ravil Isyanov isn't too bad as the science expert and David Beecroft does fine work chewing up the scenery. The octopus looks incredibly cheap, as you'd expect but that doesn't take away from the fun. When it's fighting the sub you can tell it's not nearly as big but later in the film it fights a cruise ship, which is much larger than the sub yet now the octopus is nearly double the size. The biggest thing working against the film is its 100-minute running time, which is just way too long for a picture like this. Thankfully the majority of the film contains nothing but action but there are still a few too many dialogue scenes that really go no where and I'm still not sold on the fact that the entire terrorist plot couldn't have been thrown out. Again, this is certain "B" movie material but if you're a fan of these types of films then this one here isn't too bad.