Movies That Suck: Tentacles (1977)

It Came from Beneath the Sea may not be among the best monster movies ever made, but it's infinitely better than this rotten piece of fish-bait. I'm pretty sure I first learned of this thanks to The Horror Movie Survival Guide, likely among the myriad of movies it mentioned in its sections (presumably, the one on "Beasts,"), but the first really concrete memory I have of it was when I stumbled across the MGM Midnight Movies DVD with it and Empire of the Ants on Amazon. I didn't buy it at the time, although I was interested, being a real sucker for monster movies, even the really shitty ones, and also because the movie featured big-name actors like John Huston and Henry Fonda. However, I wouldn't see it until 2016, when I picked up the Scream Factory double-feature Blu-Ray with it and Reptilicus. I mainly got it for the latter, as I hadn't seen it in a long time and wanted to give it another shot. And as much of a turkey as Reptilicus did turn out to be, I would probably much rather watch it than Tentacles. While it does boast a noteworthy cast that also includes Shelley Winters and Claude Akins, some fairly skillful instances of direction and cinematography, some lovely underwater work, and a memorable music score, this movie really is a piece of crap. The pros do what they can but they're given some truly awful dialogue and little else to work with, the effects are hardly awe-inspiring, and the whole thing truly is a rehash of Jaws in many more ways than you might expect. But more than anything else, it's just boring. Not only is it slow, but there are a number of scenes that feel needlessly padded out, causing the movie to clock in at an excruciating 101 minutes (average movie length, yes, but this is one of those instances where it feels like three hours), and the climax is unsatisfying, to say the least.

At the seaside tourist resort of Solana Beach, California, a baby in his carriage at a coastal park disappears while his mother is distracted, and not long afterward, a man named Bill Sullivan seemingly falls to his death in the water while cleaning his boat in the marina. His body is later found by a couple of teenagers, almost reduced to a skeleton. Though the local sheriff, Robards, is at a loss for what could be behind it, newspaper reporter Ned Turner suspects there may be a connection with the ongoing construction of an underwater tunnel by the Trojan Company, especially when he hears they've been using some new equipment. Will Gleason, a marine expert and killer whale trainer, sends two of his men down to Solana to monitor the effects of the construction, despite the project manager, John Corey, attempting to bribe them not to. During their dive, they're attacked and killed by an enormous octopus, with one of the divers almost making it to the surface in a diving bell. Upon learning of this, Gleason himself comes down to investigate, accompanied by his wife, Vicky. The next day, Gleason and his assistant, Mike, dive down at the site and find the ocean floor littered with dead fish and the construction equipment torn up. Gleason deduces that the Trojan Company have been using high-pitched frequency beyond the legal limit and have badly damaged the ecosystem down there. He also believes that the culprit may be a giant octopus enraged by the high frequency. At the same time, Vicky's sister, Judy, her husband, Chuck, and their friend, Don, go out on a sea cruise, but get lost and call in the Coast Guard. While waiting, all three of them fall prey to the octopus and the boat is ripped in half. That night, Vicky and two men go searching for them, but while they find the boat, they're immediately killed by the octopus as well. Now, Gleason is grief-stricken and out for revenge, while Turner and Robards realize that a nearby junior regatta may be in danger; moreover, Turner's nephew, Tommy, and his friend, Jamie, are among those participating.

Tentacles was the second film as director for Ovidio G. Assonitis, who's well-known for his role in many Italian B-level horror and science fiction films, mostly as a producer. After producing the giallo Who Saw Her Die?, Umberto Lenzi's cannibal film, Man from the Deep River, and The Last Snows of Spring, Assonitis' first foray into directing was the well-known Italian Exorcist cash-in, Beyond the Door (which I've always been interested in seeing, but if Tentacles is any hint at that movie's quality, then I'm not so sure I want to), which proved to be a substantial hit, especially in the United States. Even though it didn't deserve to, Tentacles, which, make no mistake, was made to cash in on the success of Jaws, was also fairly successful, given its low budget, but Assonitis' next film as director, 1981's Madhouse, didn't fare as well. Assonitis is probably most well-known, or infamous, depending on how you look at it, for his role in the production of Piranha II: The Spawning, having much more control over the movie than director James Cameron (and that movie also sucks, so it's another testament to Assonitis being a major hack). He didn't direct again until 1992, with Out of Control, which few people saw and even fewer remember.

Like most monster and kaiju films, Tentacles doesn't have one specific character who can be identified as the protagonist; in fact, none of the really major actors take part in the climax, and are gone from the movie before it even begins. Although he's top-billed, John Huston's function in his role of reporter Ned Turner is along the lines of Raymond Burr in Godzilla, King of the Monsters, in that nothing he does drives the plot forward. Granted, unlike Burr's character of Steve Martin, Turner does do some actual investigating into the strange deaths that start happening around Solana Beach, and begins to suspect there may be a connection between them and the Trojan Company's construction project. However, he's stymied by the project manager, John Corey's, refusal to speak with him, and the head of the company, Mr. Whitehead, chews him out for publishing an article making his accusations, though he tells Whitehead personally that he's not going to stop. But, when I think about it, the only significant thing he does is hit upon the fact that what all of the deaths had a common factor of a radio being present, alluding to how the giant octopus' attacks are provoked by high frequencies, and even that means little in the grand scheme of things. The only reason why Huston is here is so he can bring some sort of gravitas to this flick, and I'll admit that he does have an old-style charisma and charm about him, especially in his scene early on with Shelley Winters as his sister, Tillie, where they have a nice back and forth. When she attempts to suggest he get together with someone's sister, Turner retorts, "Frank's got two sisters. One's uglier than the other." And before that, when she admonishes him for working all night, saying their mother said it was bad for his eyes, he says, "And she told you to stay away from candy." He's also really cool in a scene between him and Corey in a bar, asking, "You nervous about something?... I come in here a lot. It's the first I've seen of you." Corey tries to bluff him off but Turner isn't having it, saying, "This place is too small for you to keep backing away from me," and pays for the drink he just ordered himself. But even a veteran like Huston can't save lines like, "If you want my opinion, we're in for a nightmare," and, "I've, uh, read that the suckers on a tentacle are like the claws on a tiger."

Shelley Winters has even less importance in the film as Tillie Turner, although she does, like Huston, bring some much needed charm to the movie, as well as humor, especially in that early scene between the siblings. When Turner makes that candy remark, she retorts, "What do you mean candy, little brother?," then looks at herself and adds, "This isn't candy. It's passion." She goes on to talk about how she managed to seduce a young, handsome bartender, and when her brother asks if she's ever going to slow down, she comments, "Never. Or maybe when my hair has turned to silver, like yours." This momentarily gives her pause, but she then says, "But that could never happen." On top of their friendly jabs, there's a real tenderness between them, with Tillie saying that their long-dead parents would be happy given how, despite everything the two of them have been through, they still take care of each other and have remained a family. Tillie also dotes on her young son, Tommy, and enters both him and his friend, Jamie, in the upcoming junior regatta. Speaking of which, there's some nice back and forth between her and the boys, like when she's out having lunch with them and Jamie has to go to the bathroom, which he's apparently already done many times. Tillie calls him a champion pisser and asks Tommy why Jamie has to "wee-wee" so much. She and Tommy then have this exchange: "I'm a very good sailor. If I went in that boat with you, you would certainly win." "Then we'd need a tornado to move the boat!" "Don't be so smart!" "Mommy, you're plump. There's more to love." "Oh, sweet-talk me like your father." Jamie comes back and she comments, "Everything come out all right? Oh, one more boy like you and the Los Angeles river will overflow." Winters does also get to do some emotional acting during the scene where the octopus attacks the regatta and she, not knowing exactly what's going on, desperately tries to reach Tommy on his walkie-talkie when she loses contact with him. But, like Huston, she leaves the movie soon afterward.

I've read that Ovidio Assonitis' initial choice for the role of Ned Turner was actually John Wayne, but even though Wayne did accept, Assonitis realized he was far too ill and instead, went with Henry Fonda. But then, right before filming, Fonda had a heart attack and was fitted with a pacemaker, forcing Assonitis to instead give him the smaller and less strenuous role of Mr. Whitehead, the head of the Trojan Company. He has three scenes throughout the movie, they all take place at his mansion, and consist of him either talking on the phone or chewing out John Corey for getting him and his company in hot water with how overzealous he's been in his use of the high-frequency equipment in digging the tunnel. Like John Huston and Shelley Winters, Fonda does what he can with the small role, and his dialogue isn't as full of clunkers as theirs, but since neither he nor anyone else at his company are punished for what they've done, his presence is completely pointless.

Claude Akins also has little to do in his role of Sheriff Robards, other than investigate the mysterious deaths at the beginning and plead with Ned Turner not to get too sensational with his articles, as he doesn't want to cause a panic. Like with Turner, the only truly significant thing he does is hit upon the notion that radios are the common factors among the deaths, and later, when the two of them remember the junior regatta, they attempt to call it off, although they're both too late to keep the kids from getting attacked. In his last scene, Robards has to break it to Jamie's mother that her son was killed by the octopus but, like Turner and Tillie, he takes no part in the climax. Even though it's not personal for him, you'd still think, like Chief Brody in Jaws, he'd want to have a hand in killing the thing that's been devouring people in his jurisdiction.

The closest the movie has to a protagonist is Will Gleason (Bo Hopkins), a marine expert whose interest in what's going on becomes personal when the octopus kills two of his men when they inspect the site where the tunnel is being constructed. Even though he recently had a bad case of the bends and is still recovering from it, he comes down to Solana Beach with his wife, Vicky, and assistant, Mike, in order to investigate the site himself. When he and Mike dive down at the site and see all of the dead fish littering the ocean floor, Will theorizes it's a result of Trojan using high-frequency beyond the legal limit. He also, very randomly, names a giant octopus as the culprit behind the recent spate of deaths and the damage they saw down there; he is right, naturally, but that was still out of nowhere. Things become even more personal for him when the octopus kills his wife and he decides to hunt him down and kill him, making Will a combination of both Matt Hooper and Quint from Jaws. Moreover, he and Mike bring the two killer whales he's trained, Summer and Winter, out to the spot where the octopus lurks so they can help. That's where things become just moronic, as it suddenly goes into Will's relationship with the whales, with him not only talking about how they understand each other but also making a long speech to them about the octopus and why he wants him dead. Fortunately for Will and Mike, he's right about their bond, as when the two of get attacked by the octopus and Will gets trapped beneath some rubble, the whales attack the cephalopod, giving Mike the opportunity to rescue Will and escape with him. And at the end of the movie, after the octopus has been killed and the whales have apparently escaped out into the open ocean, Will seems to have forgotten about his late wife and friends, talking about going on a safari in Africa, and he and Mike even joke about whether they should ask Turner if he wants to come. The movie ends with the whales showing back up and following them home, with Will playfully shouting, "Come on! When are you gonna get out of my life!"

What especially kills me is how John Corey (Cesare Danova), the one directly responsible for the octopus' rampage, never gets any sort of comeuppance. After telling Whitehead that he never told him about Ned Turner's questions regarding their operation and denying that there's any truth to the claims he makes in his articles, attempting to bribe Will Gleason's divers to keep them from inspecting the site, and ducking Turner himself, Corey eventually has to admit to his boss that he did push their high-frequency equipment beyond their legal limits, making the excuse that he figured it would save them time and money. All he gets is a stern talking-to from Whitehead and is ordered to go back to conducting the tests within the legal limit. He's also told that the only reason he's not fired is because Whitehead doesn't have the time to do so. After that, neither of them are seen again, making it all meaningless.

Everyone else worth talking about is just octopus food. Will's wife, Vicky (Delia Boccardo), has one significant scene where the two of them are in their hotel room after arriving in Solana Beach and she expresses concern about him diving down at the construction site, given the bad case of the bends he experienced recently and tries to talk him out of it. However, because it's personal for Will, he refuses, although he promises to only go down for three minutes and no deeper than 120 feet. That's

not enough to settle Vicky's nerves. The next day, her sister, Judy (Sherry Buchanan), invites her to join her, her husband, and friend on a little cruise, but Vicky's too worried about Will. Although Judy proves to be really shallow, advising Vicky to pay more attention to herself in order to get Will's attention, her husband, Chuck (Franco Diogene), and their rich friend, Don (Marc Fiorini), are fairly memorable when they're later stranded out on the ocean. Don constantly annoys Chuck, both when

he's on the boat and when Vicky encourages him to go swimming to try to lose some weight, to which Chuck retorts, "Eh, no one likes a fat man." As you can guess, both of them are devoured by the octopus, and Judy then falls prey when he attacks her while she's sunbathing on the boat. Later, Vicky and a pair of men go out to search for them, only to get attacked and killed themselves. While the men are killed immediately, Vicky attempts to swim for it but, naturally, doesn't get far before the octopus hunts her down.

Make no mistake, Tentacles is a good-looking movie, well-shot by cinematographer Roberto D'Ettore Piazzoli, and brings out the beauty of the locations, both along the seaside and way out in the ocean, especially in the scenes set at dusk, and the underwater photography is quite well-done, too. Amazingly, for a movie this low budget, the nighttime shots actually take place at night, rather than being shot day-for-night, and there are a number of very high-angle shots that not only show off how far the place spans but also create a sense

of isolation when you see nothing but ocean around the boats. Going back to the locations, only the underwater scenes were shot in Italy; everything else was shot in various spots in California, including Oceanside, Pismo Beach, and San Diego, with one of the most memorable locations being Shelter Island, which serves as the location for the octopus' lair and where a number of the deaths occur. The scenes with Will Gleason and the killer whales at his research facility were shot at Marineland of the Pacific in Rancho Palos Verdes, and I'm also amazed that they not only were able to film actual killer whales there but that there's also stuff involving them out in the open ocean.

While no one, least of all me, would ever call Ovidio Assonitis a master filmmaker, I have to admit that his direction and camerawork do have moments of inspiration. For instance, even though Ned Turner and Sheriff Robards hit upon the common factor among the deaths being radios later on, the film sets it up from the beginning, starting with a long opening sequence inside a taxi cab, as the driver repeatedly gets calls on his radio, before he lets out his passenger near where the octopus claims its first victim, the baby in the stroller. After

that's happened, the film cuts to Bill Sullivan radioing the Coast Guard, right before the octopus grabs him offscreen. And right after Turner and Robards have their revelation, the film cuts to Tommy and Jamie playing around with walkie-talkies, which Tillie later uses to talk with them during the regatta, leading the octopus to attack them. Going back to the opening, Assonitis immediately shows a penchant for long shots with no cuts, as this one from inside the taxi, looking out the window, glancing down at the radio, and

then back out, goes on for over two full minutes. Similarly, after Bill Sullivan is shown talking to the Coast Guard, it stays on this really tight close-up of the back of his head as he stands up and walks onto his boat's deck, revealing he has a peg-leg, and then follows his feet as he walks over to drop a bucket into the water. Turner is introduced in a similar fashion, as the shot starts on a woman sitting in shock, then follows his feet as he walks by her and over to Bill's body, as Robards and his

deputy are discussing what could've happened, then stopping on Robards as he's crouched down and panning up to his face. However, Assonitis trumps all of this nearly an hour in with an almost three-minute long shot of people at the harbor watching the fishing boats return, pulling back over the crowd, panning over to the left, and slowly moving in on a close-up of Will as he's sitting by himself at a table, realizing his wife is likely dead. 

Even though it copies a well-known moment from Jaws, I also have to give credit to Assonitis' use of cinematography and blocking for the scene where the baby is taken by the octopus. When his mother walks over to talk to a friend, the camera stays behind the friend's parked truck, with a view of the baby back in his stroller, and it slowly pushes in to focus on him, with people and vehicles going by and obstructing our view of him. It also cuts back and forth between that and an over-the-shoulder shot of the mother as she talks with her friend, and

after a school bus passes by, we then see that both the baby and his stroller are gone. Bill Sullivan's death is done much simpler, with his shipmate hearing an offscreen splash, then running back to the boat to find him gone, catching a quick glimpse of a bucket being dragged across the water. Obviously, they did this because they didn't have the budget to actually show the attacks onscreen (unlike in Jaws, where they simply couldn't get the mechanical shark to cooperate), but regardless,

these are effective instances of less is more. There are also some well-done POV shots of the octopus looking up from the edge of the water, making his way up the side of the ridge where the baby's carriage is parked, and watching his victims swimming and floating on the surface. And after Bill is introduced, you see a shot from beside his boat looking straight up at him as he grabs the bucket, suggesting the octopus' presence without completely alluding to him.

But all of this technical competence doesn't change the fact that this movie is awful. Worse, it's not even a bad movie that's enjoyable to watch. As I've already touched on, the writing is just atrocious, and not even the veteran actors can save the dialogue they're given. Remember Ned Turner's comment about the suckers on the octopus' tentacles being akin to, "The claws on a tiger,"?  Will Gleason's response is, "Compared to suckers on a tentacle, claws are nothin', Mr. Turner. Nothin'." Near the beginning of the movie, Turner

comments, "There must be something... monstrous out there. Monstrous. Infernal." After Will and Mike investigate the construction site, Mike has this gem: "Maybe Turner was right. There is somethin' monstrous going on down there." But nothing compares to the dialogue Will has regarding both the octopus and his killer whales during the third act. As he and Mike sit down in the boat's hold, waiting for the octopus to appear, they have this exchange: "Will, I have a feeling the octopus won't come back to his lair any more."

"He'll be there." "But all octopi, large or small, have a sense of foresight. He won't come back." "This one's very special. This one has tasted blood. This one thinks he's stronger." "It's an animal. Disturbed by man's stupidity." Then, the whales are heard squeaking over the boat's loudspeaker. Will identifies the first one hears as Summer, telling Mike, "Listen to her. Listen to the way she talks to me." Then, when Winter chimes in, Will says, "See, when I first started training two years go,

well, it sounded like a... a squeal. Hmm? And then a... a whistle. And then last year... it... it sounded more like a murmur or a groan. I understand them, they understand me. Sometimes, they're a little unpredictable." Mike then asks how the whales can tell him that the octopus is nearby and he answers, "You remember I told you, a long time ago, that a killer whale had a brain about as large as a human being? And they're in contact with two different worlds. One, the air that they breathe. Two, the sea from where they came. From where they feed. From where the enemy is at. And now... my enemy."

Finally, there's the speech that Will gives the whales in their portable tank before the climax: "I guess you know now... why I brought you here. I wanted to tell ya more about it. But... there've been many people that died. I've lost a loved one. I need your help... more now than ever. I remember the times... when I was training ya... people used to... call you killers. They used ta call me that on the streets. Doesn't mean nothin'. You have more... more love... in your heart... more affection than any human being I ever met. But now, I... I can't ask

anybody else. So I'm askin' you to help me kill this octopus. I hope you understand that. I know I'm in your environment. I don't want it this way... but if I release ya, and you go away, I want ya to know that I'll understand. All right, enough said. I gotta go now. If you feel anything, you talk to me. Make some noises. I know people... think we're crazy. Maybe we are... Maybe we are." Throughout this scene, they keep cutting back and forth from the present to flashbacks of him training the whales, trying to make it more emotional and establish their bond (which was never a significant plot-point until now) but it comes off as corny and needlessly sappy, and is made even worse by the final scene.

It also doesn't help that there are moments where they can't keep their own story straight. Even though the baby at the beginning is a boy, as his mother calls him Billy, and both she and her friend make it clear that he is, indeed, a boy, Turner and Sheriff Robards later refer to him as a girl. Turner also mistakenly calls the octopus a squid when he and Robards are talking with Will about it; Chuck actually calls Don by his name several times; and Tillie, while trying to contact the boys during the regatta, acts as though Jamie is her son instead of

Tommy. And even though there are signs that advertise the regatta as taking place at Solana Beach itself, when Tillie is registering the boys for it, it's now taking place in Oceanside, a completely different city, albeit still in the same county. They also make Oceanside out as being far away from Solana, with Turner worrying if the Coast Guard warning's reach of thirty miles will be enough to encompass where the race is being held, when in reality, Oceanside and Solana are only half an hour away. Maybe I don't know what I'm talking about, seeing as how I've never been to California (I just looked up the distance between Solana Beach and Oceanside), but this comes off as so confusing.

While a lot of the movies like Tentacles are Jaws ripoffs mostly in that they revolve around people being preyed upon by some marauding animal, aquatic or even land-based, like in Grizzly, Tentacles, in particular, copies a number of elements from the Steven Spielberg classic. The basic plot is the same: a deadly sea-animal is killing people around a resort town and the finale involves some characters going out on a boat, attempting to hunt it down. The first act involves the remains of one of the initial victims being

examined; one of the first victims is a child; the lead-up to his death is done in a manner similar to when Brody's view of the beach is continuously obscured by passersby; the monster is initially kept offscreen, although his presence is alluded to by plenty shots from his POV as he watches his intended prey; and the character of Will Gleason is not only a combination of Matt Hooper and Quint but there's also a bit of Brody in him, given how he's motivated to kill the octopus after he kills his wife, similar to how Brody joins Hooper and Quint

after the shark nearly kills his son. The long scene between Will and Mike down in the boat's hold is akin to the one between the guys after their first encounter with the shark. They even rip off the jump-scare with Ben Gardner's head, as shortly after he disappears, Bill Sullivan's corpse suddenly pops up out of the water and freaks out these teenagers. And like Gardner, Sullivan is clearly an experienced man of the sea. (I also have to wonder if the Jaws producers took some inspiration from

Tentacles when they made Jaws 2, as the octopus attacking the regatta makes me think of the shark attacking the teenagers on the sailboats in that film.) And although it's not as prevalent or significant, the famous subplot with the local government being responsible for the deaths is sort of here, since the Trojan Company's tunnel construction is the reason why the octopus is so riled up, and like Mayor Vaughn, Mr. Whitehead and John Corey go unpunished.

Unlike the shark in Jaws, who was simply doing what comes natural, there's a motivation behind the octopus' attacks, as he's become disturbed and enraged by the high-pitched frequencies the Trojan Company have been using in their construction. As a result, the frequency of any nearby radio equipment only serves to rile him up further and cause him to attack. Like most octopi, he's quite intelligent, as well as intent on killing anyone within reach, given how he reaches up and takes the baby when he's in his stroller on a short cliff overlooking the sea, drags Bill Sullivan into the water when nobody's around to witness it, and destroys the boats Judy and Vicky are on, as well as kills their male companions, before going for them specifically. He also proves persistent in how he first kills one of Will's divers and follows the other back to the diving bell, and chases after the kids during the regatta, singling out Tommy and Jamie because of their walkie-talkie. And like Will says, despite their presence near his lair, the octopus does return and brazenly attacks their boat, as well as attempts to kill the whales by destroying their portable tank. Size-wise, he's clearly not as gigantic as the octopus in It Came from Beneath the Sea (although I've read that they were originally planning to rip off that movie and have him attack the Golden Gate Bridge), but he's still big enough to sink small boats and, unlike that monster, actually feeds on human victims, devouring their bone marrow and cartilage.

As you might expect, the filmmakers had neither the time nor money (nor the talent) to create their giant octopus through stop-motion or an animatronic. Most of the time, the octopus is visualized using footage of a real one, but they also had a rubber model they used in shots like when you see his head on the surface, most notably when he's chasing the sailboats, when you see him below a boat in order to show just how big he is, and in full underwater shots. There's one shot of the octopus' eye looking at one of the divers through

the diving bell window that's actually genuinely creepy. However, they ended up losing the model and, thereafter, had to make due with one tentacle being waved around from offscreen. And during the climax, where the killer whales attack and kill the octopus, they made use of a real, albeit dead, one that they bought from a market and actually ripped it up. As for the other effects, there's an okay-looking dummy of Bill Sullivan's desiccated body when it bobs up out of the water (for all you

gorehounds, that's the most you're going to get) and some puppets of the killer whales when they're attacking the octopus, which they mostly use in quick cuts but it's still obvious what they are. Finally, there's some miniature work for the scenes where the octopus attacks boats, some horrendous-looking dummies when the two fishermen aiding Vicky get blown out of their boat by a big gush of water, and some instances of either blue screen or rear-projection for shots of Vicky seeing the flurry of water coming right at them and when the octopus emerges from the water behind her.

The biggest reason why Tentacles is an awful movie is that it's terribly boring. Like I said in the intro, while it may not be all that long, the pacing is painfully slow, and it feels padded out, with a number of sequences going on much, much longer than necessary. Besides the stuff in the third act with Will Gleason and the whales, you have the underwater diving scenes (lovely, yes, but still overlong), the scene between Will and Vicky in their hotel room, and worst of all, the opening to the regatta and the race itself. The sequence where

you see everybody arriving for the race, unloading their boats, getting them down to the water, and then embarking upon the race goes on for almost three full minutes, and most of the time, it's played to nothing but the music score. (I have a feeling this is meant to be another callback to Jaws, specifically the scene where the unsuspecting tourists arrive after Mayor Vaughn refuses to close the beaches, but like everything else, it was done so much better there.) But that's nothing compared to the regatta itself and the octopus' attack, which

should be suspenseful and thrilling, but instead, feels endlessly dull. This sequence goes on for over five minutes, cutting back and forth between the race in progress and the crowd onshore being entertained, as Tillie finds she can't contact the boys over their walkie-talkie. It doesn't help that Ovidio Assonitis decided to get all artsy here, with constant freeze-frames on the action, which then starts up again, and the same piece of music playing on a constant loop, which, again, is all you

hear for most of it. They're clearly trying to make it impactful when the octopus attacks Tommy and Jamie, and try to add to it in the aftermath, when everyone goes to the docks to collect their kids from the Coast Guard, only for Jamie's mother to realize her son didn't make it, but it's just more needless padding. And before the climax, the buildup to the octopus attacking Will and Mike's boat is another overlong attempt at suspense that's just boring. All this slowness makes even those long, unbroken shots that I was kind of praising earlier grow tiresome, as you wish the movie would stop meandering and get on with it.

The octopus attack scenes, the very thing you'd come to the movie for, are nothing to write home about, either. While the first couple that happen offscreen are competently executed, those that you get to see, even if partially, are not exciting whatsoever. For instance, after Will Gleason's divers explore the Trojan Company's construction site, they're startled by an underwater rock-slide near some crags. When they go to investigate, one of them spots the octopus, then gets blasted by his

ink and dragged into the opening in the rocks where he's hiding. The other diver quickly swims back to the diving bell and frantically contacts those on the surface to pull him up. As they do, he tries to tell them what happened, when the bell suddenly begins struggling, then stops dead, and water starts leaking in. It goes black inside the bell, and we then see that shot of the octopus looking in through the window, before on the surface, those on the platform see the cable snap. Later, when

Judy, Chuck, and Don are stranded out at sea, waiting for the Coast Guard, the two guys go swimming, while Judy sunbathes on the boat's deck. After Chuck dives in (wearing his watch and with his shoes on, no less) and swims out a little bit, there are a couple of false scares where he clearly feels uncomfortable, only for Don to pop up and scare him (the second time, he tells him, "Shark's gonna kill ya!"). But then, as Chuck floats on the surface after sending Don away the second time, we see the octopus moving in down below.

Chuck then, suddenly, becomes concerned about how he doesn't see Don anywhere, and that's when the octopus drags him below the surface. It cuts back to Judy, who feels the boat rock back and forth. Standing up, believing it's Don fooling around (she expects him to be able to literally rock that boat), Judy then sees his legs suddenly stick straight up out of the water, then get pulled along, a visual that's more funny than horrific. After the legs go under, the octopus moves in underneath the boat and grabs its stern, breaking it off. Judy falls in, is ensnared by the tentacles, and is dragged under before she can climb back on.

That night, when Vicky goes out with two fishermen to find her sister, they come across what's left of the boat. There's another false scare when one of the men goes down to investigate, takes longer than necessary to come up, and doesn't answer his friend's calls, only to then reappear and confirm that he didn't find anyone. They head back to port, only for the octopus to come at them in a massive flurry of water, swamping the boat, blasting the two men out the back of the cabin, and

sending Vicky into the water. When she surfaces, she sees the boat being dragged down by the octopus, and futilely tries to swim to the other wreckage for safety. She grabs onto a buoy-like marker the fishermen left at the site, then goes to climb onto the still floating bow, when she hears the octopus hiss and sees his tentacles slithering across the bow. In a panic, she swims back to the marker, and the octopus submerges, only to explode out of the water behind her and grab her, as she screams helplessly. As I've already

described, the sequence where the octopus attacks the junior regatta is anything but thrilling, and this is where the rubber prop they used is seen in all of its fake glory (that said, the moment where the octopus comes up beneath Tommy and Jamie's sailboat and then drags it down doesn't look that bad). Later, before the climax begins, the octopus attacks Will and Mike's boat, flinging them around in the hold and, when they get on deck, they see he completely destroyed the killer whales' holding tank. Mournfully frustrated at first, Will is relieved when he sees that the whales made it out okay.

By the time we get to the climax, you're likely ready for the damn movie to be over, and if you thought, if nothing else, it might go out on a high note, you're wrong there, as well. Will and Mike go down to hunt the octopus, when he causes another rock-slide that traps Will and causes him to lose his oxygen line. The octopus descends on top of him, but before he can devour him, the killer whales come in and attack. Their attack pulls the octopus away, and Mike is able to swim in and save Will,

sharing his oxygen with him, clearing away the debris, and then swimming with him to the surface. The sequence cuts back and forth between this and the whales attacking the octopus, attempting to drag him out of the fissure in the rocks in which he takes cover, and it's shot in such extreme close-up and cut so rapidly that it's disorienting rather than exciting. The music that plays during this sequence is, admittedly, pretty good, but it only works so much. Eventually, Will and Mike make it to the surface and the whales, after ripping off tentacles and chunks of flesh, fatally injure the octopus and his carcass drifts down to the ocean floor.

The music score by Stelvio Cipriani, who went on to score similar movies like The Great Alligator and Piranha II: The Spawning, is far better than this film deserves. It has some very noteworthy themes and motifs about it, with some of the music recycled from Cipriani's score for 1973's The Great Kidnapping. Among the most memorable is this quick little bit which sounds like it's played on an electronic instrument and pops up throughout the score, either by itself or leading into a frantic theme during some of the chase and attack sequences. One of the overall themes that sticks in my head the most is this energetic chase theme that you hear most notably when the octopus attacks the regatta, as well as the big, almost operatic piece, complete with vocalizing, for the climax with the whales. The long, unbroken shot at the harbor, where Will realizes his wife is dead, is played to a surreal, electronic theme which, although I don't love it, I can't help but find interesting. Make no mistake, though, there are parts of the score that I don't like at all, mainly the music for the more "emotional" moments (save for when Jamie's mother realizes that he died, which is effective enough), especially between Will and his whales. And the music that closes out the movie (which they played over the Blu-Ray's main menu), is another bizarre bit that, this time, comes off as irritating rather than intriguing.

I'm sure Tentacles has fans but I can't see anyone except the most hardcore bad movie aficionados actually enjoying it. Yes, it has an impressive cast, beautiful cinematography and location work, some lovely underwater photography, okay special effects, a memorable music score, and even some inspired instances of filmmaking, but it's still a poorly-written, overlong, boring piece of Italian cinema trash that shamelessly rips off an infinitely better movie, and has an unsatisfying, disorienting climax that doesn't even involve its main acting draws. I would advise a good number of the other Jaws ripoffs, particularly Piranha and Alligator, or, sticking with the giant octopus angle, to just go with It Came from Beneath the Sea and not bother with this. When you're in a double feature with Reptilicus and that's the better movie, then you dropped the ball with a resounding thud.