Tweet
Released by: Shout! Factory
Released on: August 3, 2010.
Director: Barbara Peeters
Cast: Doug McClure, Amm Turkel, Vic Morrow, Cindy Weintraub, Anthony Penya, Denise Galik, Lynn Theel
Year: 1980
Purchase From Amazon
The Movie:
When director Barbara Peeters, who had worked for Roger Corman a few times and most notably on Summer School Teachers, submitted her cut of the film to the infamous B-movie producer, he wanted more sex and more blood. Peeters wasn't into that idea, and she would never work for him again but that didn't stop Corman from hiring second unit/assistant director James Sbardellati to go out and get the goods. Was Corman's insistence on upping the sleaze the right thing do to? The proof, as they say, is in the pudding.
Set in a small coastal town (actually Fort Bragg, California), the film begins when a group of white fishermen, lead by Hank Slattery (the late Vic Morrow) rag on the lone Native American guy, Harry Eagle (Anthony Penya). Their racist remarks piss him off, but when their dogs all turn up dead the next day, they falsely accuse him of being the culprit and pay him back in kind. As racial tensions arise in the town, soon to be the home of a new cannery operation sure to bring jobs to the area, strange things start to occur - men are getting killed and woman are getting raped by a race of monsters spawned when some growth hormones get into the local fish population!
Thankfully a local good guy named Jim Hill (Doug McClure) is on hand along with a foxy fish scientist named Dr. Susan Drake (Ann Turkel) to save the day, but will they be able to figure out where these beasts are coming from and how many they are before they launch a full scale attack on the upcoming Salmon Festival?
Fast paced and wicked crazy gory in spots, Humanoids From The Deep is a veritable trash movie masterpiece. While it may have, at one point, had a serious side that delved deep into the effects of small town racial tensions, in its uncut form (as it's presented here, under the international title of Monster with the bonus decapitation footage wholly intact) it's a barrage of gory deaths and sleazy sex - sometimes with some interspecies rape thrown in just to keep things interesting (a tact which Corman used to good effect a year or two earlier in Galaxy Of Terror). The effects work, much of which was created by a young Rob Bottin before he'd go on to work on The Thing and The Howling and fuel many a kids' nightmare in the eighties, is excellent even if it is obviously a bunch of guys in weird rubber suits running around causing all this mayhem. Looking like a cross between The Creature From The Black Lagoon and the alien from This Island Earth, the 'humanoids' are pretty bad ass as they claw, maim and rape their way around town. They're fishy enough, with their webbed hands and gills that they look like something that might crawl out of the ocean at some point, and quite simply they're just cool to look at.
The cast do a fine job with the material. Vic Morrow makes for a great bad guy, showing his true colors by essentially rounding up a posse to exact his unwarranted revenge on Penya's completely sympathetic Harry Eagle. Morrow chews through the scenery like a hungry dog, his bizarre curly afro making him look completely bizarre throughout the film. Turkel is good as the foxy female scientist who spends more time shooting pictures than actually helping anything, and McClure has enough likeable 'nice guy' charm to him that he works in the lead.
The film's big finale is a good one, as the humanoids head into town to wreak havoc and bring everything full circle, but everything that builds up to that moment is good stuff too. The film moves at a very quick pace, throwing in enough ample gore and ample bosoms to appeal to the drive-in crowd to which it was marketed while still managing to tell an enjoyable, if fairly cliché, story at the same time.
Video/Audio/Extras:
The high definition presentation of Humanoids From The Deep sports an excellent new AVC encoded 1080p 1.85.1 anamorphic widescreen transfer that presents the film in its best home video presentation yet and which makes a significant improvement over the standard definition DVD release. Obviously the first thing that you're likely to notice is the improved detail, which is obvious and abundant from the beginning of the film right through to the end, but the improved color reproduction and noticeably stronger black levels are also a plus. Grain is present, as it should be, but the higher throughput on the Blu-ray release makes 'fit' better with the visuals than it ever has before. Some mild print damage is evident and some of the effects work is maybe a little more obviously just that than it was on the DVD, but really, there's very little to complain about here in terms of the visuals.
The only audio option on this release is an English language LPCM 2.0 Mono mix, no alternate language tracks or subtitles are offered. The quality of the track is fine, and it offers a bit more punch and vibrancy than the standard definition release can provide. Dialogue is always clean and clear and there are no problems to note with any hiss or distortion.
While there's no commentary for this release, there is an excellent featurette entitled The Making Of Humanoids From The Deep (22:41) that features all new interviews with Roger Corman, second unit/assistant director James Sbardellati, composer James Horner, actresseses Cindy Weintraub and Linda Shayne, effects guys Ken Myers and Chris Walas, and editor Mark Goldblatt. It's a pretty comprehensive look back at the making of the picture in which Corman astutely notes its female director managed to focus on the graphic deaths of the male characters while showing the rape of its female characters in the shadows. There are some great stories in here about working with the effects and props and about some of the stunt work that was done as well as what it was like composing for the film.
Also included on the disc is Leonard Maltin Interviews Roger Corman On The Making Of The Film (3:27), which was originally seen on the first DVD release from New Concorde a few years back. It's interesting enough but with its brief time obviously doesn't go into nearly as much detail as the other featurette. More interesting is a collection of deleted scenes (7:12 in total) rescued from MGM's vault. A few of them are missing the audio, but it's still very cool to see this material, particularly as one includes some welcome full frontal female nudity and another some topless monster rape action! There's also a cool scene where a little girl discovers a corpse on the beach in addition to some more quick bits with the monsters and a lengthy conversation between some of the male characters that takes place in a bar. This material is in surprisingly good shape and presented in anamorphic widescreen.
Rounding out the extras on the disc are a radio spot, a TV spot, the North American theatrical trailer, the German theatrical trailer, a poster and still gallery, trailers for a few other Shout!/Corman releases, menus and chapter stops. Inside the keepcase (which features reversible cover art with the Humanoids artwork on one side and the Monster artwork on the other) there's a full color booklet of liner notes from Michael Felsher which give a nice history of the film alongside a brief text introduction from Roger Corman.
The Final Word:
One of the greatest monster movies of its time, Humanoids From The Deep has finally received the deluxe treatment it deserves thanks to Shout! Factory's efforts of preserving and expanding on the legacy of Corman's New World Pictures releases. Gory, sexy and most importantly a whole lot of fun, it may not be deep but it sure is entertaining. The 'fun factor' of the film combined with the quality of the presentation and the extras makes this essential for anyone with the slightest appreciation for high quality trashy monster movies and having the film available in a rock solid high definition package such as this is a wonderful thing indeed.