Tweet
Released by: Dark Sky Films
Released on: 10/25/2005
Director: Hajime Sato
Cast: Sonny Chiba, Peggy Neal, Erik Nielson
Year: 1966
Purchase From Amazon
The Movie:
Before Hajime Sato directed Sonny Chiba (The Streetfighter, The Executioner) in wacky Golden Bat, and before he made Japanese cult movie history with Goke - The Bodysnatcher From Hell, he shot the bad man from Japan at the tender age of twenty seven in Terror Beneath The Sea!
This 1966 Toei Studios co-production casts Chiba as a reporter named Ken, who teams up with a pretty American reporter named Jenny (Peggy Neal of The X From Outer Space - the best giant chicken monster movie ever!) to cover the launch of some new military technology by the US Navy. The hit up the press conference and watch the navy guys show off their fancy new torpedo system but things go horribly wrong and soon, when a torpedo misfires, they see a humanoid creature flash by outside the confines of their secure undersea viewing room.
Peggy and Ken aren't convinced it was a trick of the mind or a big fish, despite what the navy would like them to think and soon the two go skin diving to look for evidence. Once they're underwater, Peggy snaps a picture of a monster that looks fairly similar to The Creature From The Black Lagoon, but drops the camera when he gets too close to her and she gets scared. Shortly after this, our intrepid heroes are captured by the creature and his pals, and when they awaken, they find themselves deep below the ocean, prisoners in a mad scientists secret under water laboratory.
Why is there a secret laboratory three thousand miles below the ocean? So that he can start building a master race of cyborg fishmen who will do his biding and set him on his path to world domination, that's why. This maniac isn't creating his cyborg fishmen from scrap metal, though… he's using humans as guinea pigs to build his creations and he wants Peggy and Ken to be his next test subjects! Once the mad doctor injects Peggy and Ken with the serum that turns them into his mindless slaves, they know the race is on. Will they be able to stop him from destroying life as we know it or will they turn into his aqualunged goons and spend eternity as brainless pawns in his sinister game?
This movie rules.
It's not a good film - the acting is pretty bad, the dubbing for most of the actors is completely off, and the effects are horrible - but it's got that crazed innocent charm that so many Japanese monster movies of the sixties have that for whatever reason is so captivating. You wanna see Chiba hit some gillmen with a karate chop or two? This is the movie for you. What about men in rubber suits trying to move like fishmen cyborgs are supposed to move but failing miserably? That's here too. What about a good doctor and some bumbling navy guys? Yep. Check. The novelty of seeing Chiba in his younger days, before he became the skull crushing ball ripping Killing Machine we all know and love goes a long way towards the appeal but there's also the monsters, the miniature effects, all the underwater scenes, and a pretty female lead who doesn't do much other than just stand there and look cute, throwing in the occasional scream now and then.
Video/Audio/Extras:
A recording I have from a television broadcast of this film is fullframe, this DVD is 1.85.1 anamorphic widescreen. Unfortunately, a quick comparison proves that this transfer, as good as it looks, is cropped on the top and the bottom and some of the compositions are too tight because of this. The credits sequence serves as further proof of this as there are a couple of times where the bottom of the text is chopped off.
Aside from that, the image quality on this release is great. The colors look excellent, there's only a mild hint of print damage here and there, and there aren't any problems at all with mpeg compression artifacts. Some mild line shimmering is present but there's a nice revelatory amount of fine detail present in the foreground and the background of the image. It's just too bad this is cropped…
The film is presented in a decent Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono soundtrack, dubbed into English. Quality is alright, but it's nothing spectacular either as there is some hiss in a few scenes and the occasional pop or two that creeps into the mix. For the most part though, the dialogue is clean and clear and things are fine.
Optional English subtitles are also included.
Aside from scene selection, nada. Zero. Zip. Barebones, baby. I do dig the cover art though…
The Final Word:
Matting issues aside, this is a very nice presentation of a fun sixties monster mash. Chiba's amusing in the lead and the fishmen-cyborg creatures of Terror Beneath The Sea are amazingly bad and oh-so-cool because of it.