"Tentacoli" is a silly botch of a film, a "Jaws" inspired "nature strikes back" thriller minus the thrills, the suspense, and the gravitas. It's pretty bad, but it's bad in a quirky, mildly amusing way, with some decidedly odd touches here and there, not to mention some curious casting choices.
Written by Jerome Max, Tito Carpi, and Steven W. Carabatsos, and directed by Ovidio G. Assonitis ("Beyond the Door", "There Was a Little Girl"), it spins a yarn of a bigger than usual octopus that has been provoked into going after human prey. This is possibly the result of your standard issue shady corporation, an outfit named Trojan, that may be doing unethical things while it builds an underwater tunnel. Now all the citizens of a colourful coastal California town are fair game for the monster.
A genial John Huston, whose presence is welcome in anything, stars as an aggressive journalist working the story. In a weird, unlikely piece of casting, Shelley Winters plays his sister, who enters her young son in a sailing race. Claude Akins is the local sheriff, the always amusing Bo Hopkins a marine expert, lovely Delia Boccardo the marine experts' wife, Cesare Danova a weaselly Trojan employee, and a very pained looking (can you blame him?) Henry Fonda as Danovas' boss.
"Tentacoli" has its moments, although not many of them. The oddest sequence has an entertainer telling really bad jokes to a crowd while a frantic Winters tries to get in touch with her son and his friend via walkie-talkie. To show that they're not fooling around, the filmmakers make the bold move of making an infant the first victim. There's also a memorable kill just past the halfway point. The music score by Stelvio Cipriani is positively ridiculous (with a recurring harpsichord motif). The widescreen cinematography by Roberto D'Ettorre Piazzoli is gorgeous. The movie alternates between real animal footage and some very bad effects.
However, you haven't lived until you've heard Hopkins give his heartfelt pep talk to his killer whale friends.
Five out of 10.
Written by Jerome Max, Tito Carpi, and Steven W. Carabatsos, and directed by Ovidio G. Assonitis ("Beyond the Door", "There Was a Little Girl"), it spins a yarn of a bigger than usual octopus that has been provoked into going after human prey. This is possibly the result of your standard issue shady corporation, an outfit named Trojan, that may be doing unethical things while it builds an underwater tunnel. Now all the citizens of a colourful coastal California town are fair game for the monster.
A genial John Huston, whose presence is welcome in anything, stars as an aggressive journalist working the story. In a weird, unlikely piece of casting, Shelley Winters plays his sister, who enters her young son in a sailing race. Claude Akins is the local sheriff, the always amusing Bo Hopkins a marine expert, lovely Delia Boccardo the marine experts' wife, Cesare Danova a weaselly Trojan employee, and a very pained looking (can you blame him?) Henry Fonda as Danovas' boss.
"Tentacoli" has its moments, although not many of them. The oddest sequence has an entertainer telling really bad jokes to a crowd while a frantic Winters tries to get in touch with her son and his friend via walkie-talkie. To show that they're not fooling around, the filmmakers make the bold move of making an infant the first victim. There's also a memorable kill just past the halfway point. The music score by Stelvio Cipriani is positively ridiculous (with a recurring harpsichord motif). The widescreen cinematography by Roberto D'Ettorre Piazzoli is gorgeous. The movie alternates between real animal footage and some very bad effects.
However, you haven't lived until you've heard Hopkins give his heartfelt pep talk to his killer whale friends.
Five out of 10.