Who ordered the Calamari with cheese?

   

 

Octaman

                                                          Director: Harry Essex 1971

In a little Mexican village radiation is poisoning the water and American scientist Dr. Torres is there trying to solve the mysteries of the deep, or at least the lake.  Mysteries like why does his voice not match his lips, why is it so dark all the time and why does a plastic octopus have human eyes?  

This plastic octopus gets Torres excited but when he whips back over the border to get more funding he finds the scientific community want nothing to do with him so he’s forced to accept the backing of a carnival owner who is hoping to bag himself a freak for the carny. Carny brings his buddy Bert Reynolds Jr along for the ride too. By the time they get back over the border to Mexico all the doc finds though is his friend’s corpse and an empty bucket.  The plastic octopus is gone!  A couple of leftover Spaghetti Western actors then wander on set and tell the tale of Octaman, a many armed, tentacle legged half man/half beast who, after the doc shares a brief dialogue about pollution, turns up to take out a couple of the locals. No more western movies for those guys. Luckily the good looking one survives so he can continue to help the gringos out. Good thing too cos it turns out Octaman has his eye(s) on the doctor’s gal and attacks the camp while the doc, the carny and Bert are out on the lake looking for him. (now there’s an episode of River monsters I’d like to see!) Occy gets the gal but the doc and Bert discombobulate him with lights (too many eyes you see) and then form a ring of fire to burn up the oxygen around him!  An ankle high ring of fire it must be pointed out but it seems that Occy isn’t smart enough to lift those tentacles over the flames so he collapses and is netted and tranquilised by a very happy Carny crew.  

did you want the Calamari well done?

But nature has a way of fighting back and when it rains, the water revives our many tentacled rubber skinned fiend who is less than happy at his surroundings and once again escapes.  When our intrepid heroes decide to get outta town they discover that though Occy isn’t smart enough to step over the flames he is smart enough to topple trees on the road and trap them.  Our Mexican friend then tracks Occy down to a cave and invites the rest to follow.  Of course they get trapped down there too since nighttime isn’t dark enough in a shitty, low budget way, a dank dark cave is perfect for making sure you can’t see shit.  In the end they find their way out to sunlight where Occy starts the party with a great rendition of Devo’s Whip It Good.  I won’t give away anymore cos hell, I fell asleep so I don’t know what happened. (actually that’s a lie, I stayed awake for the whole thing but the end was so dull I’ve erased it from my memory). 

look, there's our agent!  let's kill the bastard!!

This movie is bad beyond description, not helped by the “digital remastering” that seems to just mean it was dubbed straight from VHS to CDR – there are times when you seriously cannot see a thing but then again that just may be a blessing.  Featuring very early FX work by Rick Baker, the Octaman is actually pretty cool for a zipper wearing, rubber suited whatever he is but in the end you get what you paid for, so don’t pay too much.  An eco- disaster movie where disaster has more than one meaning, Octaman promises so much more than it delivers but then come on, what else did you really expect?

You want fries with that?