Devil Monster (1946) User Reviews

This is the stupidest movie I've ever seen.

[ubik-11 · 1/10 · 19 November 2002]

And I've seen a lot of them. There is more stock footage in this thing than any movie I know except "Jungle Hell" (1956). The only difference is that "Jungle Hell" was all elephants. This one's all sea lions. On and on and on about the stupid sea lions while the stupid crew in their stupid boat looks for stupid Juan Francisco.

Much of the stock footage that isn't sea lions is native women of the South Pacific. I don't know if the editors were blind or what, but whoever was in charge of splicing the stock footage together didn't seem to mind that the women were mongoloid one minute, negroid the next, and caucasoid the next. They change races with surprising speed.

There is another prominent stock footage scene. An octopus in an aquarium (you can see him stick to the glass, and you can see the reflection of lights on the glass) battles a moray eel. The eel is defending all his little fish buddies from the mean old octopus. I'm not making this up. This is presented as if it were happening in the ocean for crying out loud. Who wins? Watch and find out!

Lots of stock footage of men fishing provides for some humor as the overdubbed voices say things like, "Watch out for my face." But it gets tiring after several minutes of the same stupid footage of the same stupid men catching the same stupid fish.

Alas, there is one more big stock footage scene. This one's of the devil monster. It's not a devil, and it's not really a monster. What is it? Let's just say it's not the kind of monster you were hoping for. Juan, who they did find at the end of all those sea lions, battles the "monster". Again, you'll have to watch to find out what happens.

What really surprises me is that the IMDB says this was edited down from a longer, older movie. That tells me that (1) someone thought the original was worth redoing, (2) someone thought this version was better, and (3) the original must've been worse. I can't imagine.

THE W_O_R_S_T Movie ever made!!!

[Fargo_North · 1/10 · 23 February 2008]

This movie is available on a 50 movie DVD collection called "Tales of Terror" but the only real terror here is trying to watch this wretched disaster of a movie. The movie was edited down from an earlier movie with lots of wildlife film and "Jungle exploitation" footage of topless native women thrown in with the usual patronizing narration. The special effects are pathetically awful, an undersea battle between an octopus and various other sea creatures is obviously done in a large aquarium! The battle with the titular monster was done by the double exposure of the hero and a large Manta Ray, you can plainly see the waves of "two" oceans superimposed on each other as well as the hero, Jose. All of this should have made for a hilarious, entertaining grade Z movie but unfortunately it's just boring and dull. This makes "Plan Nine from Outer Space" look like a slick Hollywood blockbuster, no exaggeration! Unbelievably BAD.

An almost complete waste of talent and time

[JohnHowardReid · 3/10 · 28 November 2006]

This amateurish, independent, shoestring "B" may be of interest to Barry Norton fans like me who were impressed by his interpretation of Juan Harker in the Spanish Dracula (1931). Alas, soon after a slow and sluggish start, we are forced to sit through at least twenty minutes of crudely interpolated, ancient stock footage before we get back to the main story. And then, after the not unpleasing island sequence (the whole idea of the shipwrecked sailor not wanting to be rescued is a reasonably appealing one), we have to put up with a mind-numbingly miscalculated twist in the plot when morose Jose suddenly reverses character and turns himself into a daringly enthusiastic Captain Ahab, battling a primitively superimposed stock shot of a giant manta ray. I'm amazed I put up with all this rubbish before reaching for the STOP button, but I kept hoping that Barry Norton would do something to justify his star billing. He doesn't! Not one single thing!

Despite a delayed entrance of at least thirty minutes, the actual lead player is Jack Del Rio. He gets most of the running. And even Bill Lemuels as the native chief has a more colorful part than our Barry Norton, the film's nominal hero. And as for the heroine, lovely Blanche Mehaffey, she fares even worse. If she figures in more than two minutes of footage, I'd be very surprised. Maya Owalee gets far more attention, and even Mary Carr seems to have a bigger part. And it is the talented Miss Owalee who contributes the movie's one successfully pregnant moment when she collapses on the beach after Jose deserts her.

All in all, however, despite Miss Owalee and the film's innate curiosity value, Devil Monster rates as a viewer's nightmare—an almost complete waste of talent and time.

Grade Z Novelty

[noahax · 5/10 · 9 April 1999]

"Plan 9" may be the best-known bad film of all time, but "Devil Monster" is an infinitely worse film. Much of the movie is clearly stock footage taken from a much earlier film. Ludicrous narration tries to tie it all together, but much of this grade-Z shlockfest makes no sense. The big finale fight scene, in which a sailor grapples with the Devil Monster, has the cheapest special effects you have ever seen. A man splashing around in water is superimposed over footage of manta ray. This movie is not for everybody, but lovers of trashy cinema may find it amusing.

The sea turkey

[Chase_Witherspoon · 1/10 · 25 June 2012]

When you discover that two-thirds is stock footage, and the rest re-edited from an earlier 1936 picture entitled "The Sea Fiend", you know not to expect much. And yet still "Devil Monster" manages to over-promise and under-deliver. Essentially it's the tale of a young man (Norton) begged by the mother of a lost seaman to locate her son (Del Rio) on one of his father's regular tuna voyages; the woman he now loves also keen to discover the fate of her former lover - one in the same.

There's a lot of stock footage in between of sea lions frolicking, birds feathering their nests, native girls dancing, and octopus being harangued in an aquarium by an eel and finally, a mass tuna haul. There's also a brief scene in which a manta ray is captured - apparently sufficient enough to warrant the dubious title. Check out the special effects too - the transparent manta ray struggle is my personal favourite.

Some great corny dialogue to match some egregiously bad moments ensures your time is not entirely wasted ("there was an accident, and, he lost an arm"), but even at just sixty minutes, it's still too much to bear.

Sea tale of unspeakable awfulness

[stephander · 1/10 · 15 October 2007]

This action film, made in 1946, or was it 1936?, is a horrible and inept mishmash about tuna fishermen hunting the South Seas for a lost seaman at the behest of his mother and fiancée. They eventually find him on a Polynesian paradise which he is reluctant to leave. They resort to shanghaiing him, not to take him back apparently, but to make him tell them where the good tuna are to be had. But in addition to the tuna they meet up with the Devil Monster, which turns out to be nothing more than a large manta. The story makes no sense and the direction has no continuity. Many of the effects, such as the fight with the manta, are laughably bad. Its only virtue is that the badness of it is unpredictable and that unpredictability is what may or may not hold your interest for a plodding hour. The highlights of the film are the brief shots of bare-breasted native women and a nifty fight between an octopus and an eel shot in an aquarium.

More travelogue than adventure film

[Leofwine_draca · 2/10 · 17 February 2017]

DEVIL MONSTER is a cheap and non-cheerful effort to make a giant monster movie on a non-existent budget. The whole film seems to be more of a travelogue documentary than a real movie, featuring lame actors interacting with various footage of wildlife. At first the viewer is treated to numerous sea birds such as cormorants and the like before the action moves below the waves. We get staged 'treats' such as an octopus attempting to eat a fish and plenty more besides.

The story is virtually non-existent and about the hunt for a shipwrecked man, but the thrust of the tale is in reality a bunch of people vs. a giant manta ray. The aquarium special effects are less than convincing and the film as a whole makes the likes of PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE look like a carefully-construed Oscar contender.

There should be an award

[altair42002 · 1/10 · 12 February 2010]

If there were an award for the most amount of stock footage in a film, this would have to win. The producers probably shot only about 10-15 minutes of extra scenes and spliced them into an hour of stock footage from several different films. Over the stock footage there is a narrator trying to connect the whole mess together. The so called native people shift from white to Asian to black randomly from scene to scene. The special effects (???) are awful and the pop tart, I mean devil monster, only appears long enough to eat some guys arm. The scene where the guy is fighting the monster is clearly superimposed as you can see the water in one part showing right through the other part making the guy in the water look transparent.

Just Bad

[mobbosscheeto · 1/10 · 23 April 2013]

I love a bad movie, but this movie is just bad. It contains more stock footage than any real scripted scenes. The constant white glow through out the whole movie is just unappealing to the eye. The fight scene with the octopus and eel, is clearly in a fish tank when it suppose to be under water. The Use of tribe footage with the Voice over just got boring slow and not even documentary like. The cuts from scene to scene sometimes appears to from different films. The score was so obnoxious, plain, and repeated it self numerous times. The dialogue is terrible, and at times made no sense on what they were talking about. There's almost no effort in this movie that's why it's got a 1-10.

This Film Has a Bad Manta

[BaronBl00d · 2/10 · 20 April 2008]

Except for the oddity of being taken from three previous films and edited together - all much older than the 1946 release date of this film, Devil Monster is one heck of a bad film with bad acting, bad special effects, a terrible script, and virtually nothing going for it. A third is almost nothing but stock footage of seals,dolphins, and various tribes that look nothing alike in different scenes. I was yawning after two minutes of seeing seals wash up on rocks and having inane dialog try and justify its presence. The original films could not have much better though because a couple of these actors - okay, most of these actors are just downright awful from the lead Barry Norton to the excessiveness of Jack Del Rio looking like a psychopath at the ship's steering wheel to the laughable persona of Jack Barty as the captain to the even more ludicrous native chief with a New York accent. Only the fellow playing Tiny the cook held any of my interest - and that really says just how bad this film is if you saw his performance! I really cannot add much more to this then to say that the film is very, very bad and devoid of any merit whatsoever except if you enjoy watching people pour out their hearts only ending in cinematic misery for the viewer built by the foundation of their lack of talent and competence. Sometimes I do. I did laugh several times at how bad - really bad - thing were.

Not as bad as people say ... but still not all that great

[vigilante407-1 · 4/10 · 25 December 2006]

My criteria for a true bad movie is one that is either just plain boring or just plain stupid. Highlander 2 is an example of the latter, while Devil Monster is a pretty good example of one that's just boring.

This cheapie is another movie that's basically ten minutes of story and fifty minutes of travelogue. Too much nature footage detracted from the already-scant story. The story that's there is pretty much just a minor melodrama, probably more at home in a silent movie (in which most of the principal actors would've also more at home). About the only really interesting bit is the fact that the hero doesn't get the girl at the end. Most of what passes for special effects are just crudely done opticals, but they don't really detract from the film as much as one would think.

I'd love to see The Sea Fiend (the movie from which this one was edited) to see if what they took out made things go any more interestingly.

Pretty Dumb on All Levels

[Michael_Elliott · 22 July 2016]

Devil Monster (1946)

1/2 (out of 4)

Robert (Barry Norton) is in love with Louise (Blanche Mehaffey) but she's in love with Jose (Jack Del Rio). The only problem is that he is lost at sea so Robert has to know whether or not he's alive so that Louise might pick him. Soon Robert is at sea battling a large monster (actually a manta ray).

THE SEA FIEND is also known as DEVIL MONSTER but whatever you call it doesn't take away the fact that it has to be one of the laziest and cheapest films ever made. I didn't actually time everything out but this 63-minute movie is probably 90% stock footage. If you thought what Edward D. Wood, Jr. did in GLEN OR GLENDA? was cheap then you haven't seen anything yet.

The amazing thing is that there's so little "new" footage shot. The majority of the film is narration as we get the story told by Robert who is usually just talking about the various stock footage that we're looking at. This stock footage has some pretty unique stuff including various sea life but at the same time you can't really give this film too much credit for that. There are some native women that are shown topless so this here might please some people but I doubt it.

From what I've read, the 1946 version under the title DEVIL MONSTER is a different edit that the 1936 film under THE SEA FIEND. I hope to view that version at some point but this film is pretty pointless.

Seeing Double

[wes-connors · 1/10 · 18 August 2008]

"A ship disappears during an ocean voyage and everyone is presumed lost. When evidence points towards a survivor of the wreck, the sailor's mother organizes an expedition to locate her missing son. When the explorers find the missing man living on n island, they take him against his will in order to return him to his home. The consequences of their actions prove very costly for the explorers, when the sailor sets about their downfall for taking him away from his island paradise," according to the DVD sleeve's synopsis.

This "edited version of a ten-year-old film, 'The Sea Fiend' (1936)" is a curious choice for re-release. Perhaps, its generous footage of topless South Sea island native women was the alluring ingredient. Since they were animalistic "natives", they could be shown bare-chested. Non-native women, similarly displayed, would be considered pornographic. So, you have a big-screen movie turning the pages of the "National Geographic", while attempting to tell an adventure story. And, it's not even the original film.

* Devil Monster (1946) S. Edwin Graham ~ Barry Norton, Jack Del Rio, Terry Grey

The Worst film I ever watched

[ebbettaj · 1/10 · 3 September 2021]

The only reason I gave this stock footage nightmare a one is because I'm not allowed to give it a zero this is the worst film I've ever watched to date do not watch.

My vote for one of the 10 worst films of the 1940s.

[planktonrules · 1/10 · 14 February 2012]

To call "Devil Monster" a film isn't really fair, as it's simply a crappy old film from a decade before that's been chopped to pieces, had narration and new dialog added as well as LOTS of irrelevant and cheap looking stock footage. As such, it's just a cut and paste job with no original content and this really was terrible to foist this pile of bilge on the public. It's a completely cynical attempt to squeeze a dime off unsuspecting people.

The plot is quite scant. A guy disappears and some folks go looking for him in the South Seas years later. They find him and try to force him to return home--and the man exacts his revenge. In the interim, there is lots of footage and stilted dialog--and absolutely none of it is interesting or worth your time. A truly terrible film with not a single redeeming feature. Heck, it's not even unintentionally funny like many bad films--just duller than dishwater.

Just because fish flip on the beach doesn't mean that they're living.

[mark.waltz · 1/10 · 21 May 2021]

Regardless of whether released in 1936 or 1946 doesn't change the fact that this is a wretched film, nearly impossible to get through. The nature scenes added for the film's re-release are as scratchy and boring as the original release footage, with tons of birds and other island sea creatures (various species of seals) photographed as if through an antique home movie camera. These inserted footage do nothing but distract briefly from the fact that the story just isn't interesting, another one of dozens of south sea adventures that were cheaply filmed and disappointing considering the lack of color and more important, any really depth of focus.

Barry Norton is the star and supposed narrator, searching for the missing sailor boyfriend of the woman he loves, and constantly distracted by his mission by the marvels of nature. I can't imagine any interest in seeing this in any big city movie theater so it must have played to the hinderlands where speakers were just added. As the film is mostly narration and only sporatic moments of conversation, this has an awkward flow to it. Even at just an hour, it is painful to get through. An the encyclopedia would be more entertaining than the documentary footage that is supposed to give us knowledge of life at sea and below the depths.

"The More You Know, The Less You Have To Learn!"...

[azathothpwiggins · 9 June 2021]

DEVIL MONSTER opens with dramatic music, followed by explanatory narration. Next, we're introduced to the crew of a tuna boat, who are in search of someone named Jose.

More narration.

Cue the endless nature stock footage. Check out those seals!

Even more narration.

Here come the playful island natives! Enter the topless native dancers!

Still, more narration.

Underwater stock footage. Swimming natives. Shark attack. An octopus battles a moray eel in an aquarium.

The narrator drones on and on. And on.

More half-naked native girls. Jose enters the picture. And on and on.

After 95% of the movie is taken up by pointless swill, the "monster" of the title emerges for the most unsatisfying finale ever filmed.

What the hell is this nonsense?...