Monster (1980)
1980’s Roger Corman creature feature and New World Picture, Monster aka Humanoids from the Deep boasts an illustrious crew including Gale Anne Hurd (The Terminator) as a lowly production assistant, renowned film editor and Dead Heat helmer, Mark Goldblatt (Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Armageddon), and the late, great Oscar-winning James Horner (Titanic, Aliens) on musical duties. “Ruck Crew It Is” awards go to Rob Bottin (The Howling, The Thing), who created and designed the Humanoids—everyone has to start somewhere, eh? Also, Rowdy (Road House) Herrington was an electrician, and Steve Johnson (Ghostbusters) assisted with makeup and special effects. The picture is credited to director, Barbara Peeters—who by the sounds of it was executing things all too sensibly by choosing to keep the movie’s seaweedy sex attacks vague and shadowy, before being usurped by an uncredited Jimmy Murakami (Battle Beyond the Stars), who allegedly, at the request of Corman, favoured bonus T&A and a more explicitly depicted, sexploitative subplot, with second unit director, James Sbardellati (Deathstalker) also swooping in late to drizzle some extra sleazy sauce. If the version of Humanoids you have acquired shows the film’s on-screen title as Monster, then bully for you—it’s the complete and uncut European version.
If you’re as dense as me, you may be pondering what the fuck a cannery is, so I’ll save you the hassle of Googling it. A cannery is a factory where food is canned. I imagine you feel as stupid as I did, right? I think the general gist here is that these folks have been greedily slipping DNA-5 into the water to accelerate the growth of salmon, in order to rescue the commercial viability of their community—but it backfires by imposing gargantuan growth spurts on the fishies, and inadvertently creates rapey Humanoid monsters that cause absolute havoc. Now they want to mate with human women to extend their evolution! I’m slightly ashamed to say it, but I was in after hearing that synopsis.
The cast is hardly star-studded, but the soon-to-be killed on the set of John Landis’ Twilight Zone: The Movie, Kurt Vonnegut lookalike Vic Morrow pops up as Hank Slattery. I’ve got a real soft spot for Doug McClure as I watched him a lot as a lad in the cheapo dino submarine schlockbuster, The Land That Time Forgot—a film I know roughly every frame of, and that fuelled just about every Action Force (or G.I. Joe for any American friends) vs any old rubber dinosaurs I’d acquired from car boot sales, resulting in playtime scaling issues somehow worse than the film’s. Here, it’s difficult to tell if McClure is genuinely bamboozled, or playing it bewildered. Nevertheless, he’s hilariously watchable in a hammy performance—whether he’s discovering slime on a dog house, or trying some peculiar flirting. In Humanoids, he plays Jim Hill—the trigger-happy, king of the body warmers, flowery cowboy shirts, and stilted delivery. Poor McClure can’t even beckon someone over without doing it in a noticeably strange fashion. One minute he’s terrified and emotionally destroyed at the sight of a plethora of horribly murdered doggies, then in the very next scene, he’s grinning, or participating in perhaps the worst choreographed car park punch-up ever filmed.
I suppose they’re branded “Humanoids” as they really are just blokes in suits. It’s everything Alien thankfully wasn’t. These phony fish-men slice you open with their claws for a laugh, or if you have the misfortune of being an attractive female, do you from behind in the mucky sand. These fuckers also like to hide on the roof of your jeep, and smash your windscreen when you’re least expecting it. Fortunately, one can dispatch them with a few rifle blasts, a harpoon skewering, or failing that, try some drain cleaner or stab them with any knife from around the house. Perhaps the most memorable sequence in Monster is when the big-brained, barnacled Humanoids—sporting laughable, elephantine craniums, start smashing through the wooden boardwalk, attacking ladies, and slaughtering gents. It’s a budget massacre featuring loads of clawed-faced gore, with the Humanoids using their silly long arms to pull a fella’s head off, tear off limbs, and spray blood all over the pier—butchering DJs and bothering jiggling, tiara-adorned beauty queens. The creature on a merry-go-round alone may be worth tuning in for.
Monster’s naughty bits typically comprise of hot chicks frolicking, making out topless in the backs of trucks, and a ton of babes in underwear or out of their bikinis—stunning blondes conveniently draped in sheer nighties and sleepwear lingerie, an underwater ass-grab, and a shameless close-up bikini bottom bum-run. Another egregious sexual assault unfurls when an anthropomorphised ventriloquist dummy, its equally dumb owner, and surprise surprise—a lass with big knockers, get their tent ripped open by one of the sex-starved creatures, and the fully nude fleeing gal gets crudely violated amongst the seaweed.
Just as in Jaws, the filmmakers opt to utilise what seem like the real inhabitants of the town setting as extras, but here they can barely speak, let alone act. It’s tricky to tell what anyone is garbling on about most of the time—of course, it doesn’t matter at all. I lost count how many times they ripped off Spielberg’s shark spectacular—from Horner’s wannabe Williams score full of familiar tinges, also bonus Bernard Herrman-esque Psycho sting steals, and the thievery doesn’t end there—McLure’s Hill is a poor man’s Chief Brody, and the leggy, biologist photographer who knows more than she’s letting on—Corman-castigator, Ann Turkel (who later boycotted Humanoids over its superfluous nudity and exploitative nature) as Dr. Susan Drake, is a borderline Matt Hooper. There are nods and winks throughout—from tying off stern cleats, to lingering underwater POVs. They kill a nipper almost immediately, and then a hound too for good measure. Monster even features the most irresponsible use of gasoline on a boat since Jaws 2 where that daft woman cooks herself in her own petrol. The 75th Annual Noyo Salmon Festival is essentially Jaws’ Fourth of July, and the geezer giving the barracks speech does his best mayoral Murray Hamilton impression. A fisherman struggling to reel in a catch looks a lot like Quint with his piano wire, too—especially as the compositions are identical. They don’t even try to disguise it.
Humanoids shallowly showcases some old-fashioned American racism directed at the local Native American guy, but if you’re still on the fence, there’s a cool cutaway of an owl that rivals the raccoon witness from Wild Things, and it features the first—and perhaps only, dirty dishes jump scare in the entirety of cinema, which must count for something. It’s a film with far too many mid shots and nondescript coverage, resulting in quite inept storytelling and a lack of character differentiation. Once you’ve seen a few bubbly, underwater tussles and killin’s, you start wondering where the movie could possibly be going—thankfully, it’s incredibly short so c’est la vie. It certainly lacks the Joe Dante factor of Piranha, and the prestige of Jaws, but one merit of Monster is that it’s arguably bonkers enough in its performances and presentation to keep viewers—particularly altered ones, interested for a fairly breezy 80 minutes. As a caveat, the sordid plot may sound alright on paper, but it’s so klutzy, and very rarely has any kind of impact. As polished as the Shout Factory restoration may be, Humanoids is still largely amateurish and clunky in both its photography and execution. You get a free visor though if you watch this one.
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