Octaman

Over at the right is what I believe was the box art for Octaman when it appeared on video in the eighties. Don’t hold me to that; it just seems familiar, as if I passed it by a few times while looking for other fare. It suggests a level of horror few movies could have hoped to aspire to.

Like most posters, it lies about the contents of the movie. Oh, the monster wants his woman, that much is a gimme. But, as we’ve seen, this dream doesn’t match cold reality. No matter how much we might want something as interesting, as potentially disturbing, as that image promises, what we have isn’t nearly as good.

Wanting. As good as anyway to begin this part of the review.

You think I captured a lot of Octaman images? Well how do you know he wasn’t in every frame, huh? Cause brother, sometimes if felt like that.

When compared to The Creature From the Black Lagoon, Octaman comes up wanting. Which should shock no one whose familiar with Monster Movies. Creature is, without a doubt, a classic. Directed by Jack Arnold, one of the Science Fiction directors of the period. It’s hard not to shower it with superlatives.

However, it’s not a shock that Henry Essex would want to try and recapture that spark. Nor is he the first director to do so. Howard Hawks made at the very least two westerns with the same plot. Director Eugène Lourié took the bucket to the well three times (The Beast from 20, 000 Fathoms; The Giant Behemoth; and Gorgo) to varying degrees of success. Alfred Hitchcock literally remade one of his own pictures. It happens.

Fact of the matter is, Octaman comes quite close to being a good movie. Perhaps that’s going too far – perhaps I really should have said mediocre movie – but it’s true. While there are plenty of “what the hell!” moments (The ring of fire scene and the last RV battle are but two of a lengthy series) it largely follows a clear narrative path.

In other words, I’ve seen worse movies.

That’s almost a motto of Bad Movie fans. I’ve seen worse. I could give you a litany of titles, such as but we’ll roll a couple here on site. The Nightmare Never Ends. The Black Cat (1986). The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave. Oh God, The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave.  That isn’t even the tip of the iceberg, or even the tip’s tip.

But the three examples above all share one narrative truth: they make no damn sense. None. Events follow events for no better reason that to fill up the run time. If copying Creature From the Black Lagoon has one benefit, it’s a strong plot.

Yeah, that looks nothing like Octaman. At all.

Now bear in mind I’m not excusing the flaws. The padding is excessive. The monster attacks with their flaying, slap happy monster are redamndiculous. Then there’s the day-night mishmash. For instance, the first attack has the victim in broad daylight while the approaching Octaman in darkness. Stuff like that.

With that in mind, though, I have seen worse. Have seen, will see worse.  I know this.  It’s almost written in stone.

Making this even more difficult, I remember liking this movie as a kid. I couldn’t have told you what it was about to save my life, even, I think, what its title was. But elements of the film remained, and among these elements was a sense that I liked the movie.

And such a kid’s movie it is. Ignore the occasional gore (which really wasn’t much by the Seventies standards), what we have is a monster romp. Octaman comes out early and often. He does what a monster is supposed to do, which is raise havoc. Then, at the end of the film, the Good Guys kill him, like Good Guys should. Rewatching this, a thought kept coming to me: this is why I liked it. The monster bits.

So a part of me, perhaps the kid part that remains in me, wants to be charitable. If I can set a crown of points on something as fundamentally silly as a Godzilla movie, I could spare a few for a film that tried hard, right? Not a good rating, that would be silly. A mediocre rating perhaps. Or perhaps, keeping its faults in mind, a mere bad, with caveat. That would be fair, right? That would be just.

I want to do it.

Maybe I should. After all, I have seen worse.

Only I can’t. I literally can not do it.

Because Octaman is awful. Awful to the core.

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5