Humanoids from the Deep
Humanoids from the Deep DVD (Barbara Peters, MGM 1980)
All is not well in the sleepy Californian fishing village of Noyo. Salmon stocks are inexplicably falling, a new cannery plant is flooding the coastline with pollution and local girls are going missing. As the film opens, tragedy strikes when an accident causes a small fishing boat to explode just after it catches something huge in its nets. When all of the fishermen’s dogs are slaughtered in a single night, town bigot Vic Morrow blames the local Indians for the trouble, but nice guy Doug McClure suspects that something else may be responsible. Teaming up with scientist Anne Turkel, he starts poking around the misty coves and dark caves of the surrounding coast, and discovers that the pollution and the cannery’s genetic tinkering have combined to trigger a bizarre evolution in the local wildlife which has created (gasp!) fish-human hybrids. But their discovery comes too late, and as the town prepares to celebrate its annual sea festival, something nasty surfaces in the bay… the humanoids are here! Originally shot under the supposedly classier title of ‘Beneath The Darkness’, this bad boy of 80s exploitation is everything you would expect from a Roger Corman flick of the era – lots of cheap violence, lots of cheap gore, and lots ‘n’ lots of cheap T&A. But it transcends its low-rent origins to become a movie that, once seen, always seems to lurk somewhere at the back of your mind. Originally released in Europe and the UK in truncated form under the title ‘Monster’, this lurid ‘50s throwback gained a fair amount of notoriety for the way it reworks the central premise of ‘The Creature From The Black Lagoon’ and takes it to its logical conclusion. In other words, the gill-men of this mean little flick don’t just grab the local girls and carry them off, they actually go whole hog and rape them, too. They also do away with any potential rival males in excessively gory fashion. A lot of the more exploitative footage was inserted by Corman after director Peters turned in a sexless/goreless cut of the film, but there is no denying that it is pretty effective – no small thanks are due in this respect to the fledgling efforts of a young sfx technician called Rob Bottin, just a couple of years before he made his name with the likes of ‘The Howling’ and ‘The Thing’. Another major plus is the atmospheric score by a young James Horner, here cutting his chops with some very familiar signature sounds. Standout sequences include the ominous fishing boat explosion which starts all the mayhem, a girl’s horror at discovering that her boyfriend has had half of his face clawed off in the surf, the humanoids’ climactic assault on the town and a shocking mutant birth sequence that has been ripped straight out of ‘Alien’ (and was replicated in the original 80s version of TV series, ‘V’). This uncut print also includes an infamous snippet of additional gore footage where a man’s head is torn from his shoulders, originally only available on the hard-to-find Japanese release of the film. ‘Humanoids from the Deep’ is loads of fun and a timely reminder of just how great these films used to be back in the day. It may be cinematic junk, but this is junk of the very highest quality, and comes highly recommended. Liam Ronan
