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DVD Review
Terror Beneath the Sea
By Marcus Pan
This 1966 Japanese cult
classic is about as quiche as you can get. Its downright silly by
todays standards, and that makes it that much more enjoyable to watch.
Clichéd superheroes, forced-laughing mad scientist villains and
amazingly over the top monster costumes make this a collectors must
have.
Any fans of original noir horrors Creature From
the Black Lagoon, King Kong, and yes of course the Godzilla
series would love this sort of thing. The scenery is dazzlingly low
budget, the crazy shiny fish-men costumes is cheekily hilarious. This movie is
as much a pastiche horror as it is comedic gold. Even the premise of the story
has N.W.O. level entrapments and a Dr. Evil of its own sorts, Dr. Moore.
Dr. Moore finds a way to create an army of fish-men,
rambling about looking like long lost cousins of the black lagoon creature of
old. By applying some medications, and thereafter implanting a set of fish-like
lung-gill combinations, he creates these creatures that transform, after the
lung transplant, into terrible looking mermen who can only follow such
subliminal commands as fight and work. The control
panel that keeps these creatures in check, a twist dial that looks like a cross
between a childs play desk and a starship bridge, is one of the most
hilarious examples of low budget set scenery Ive ever seen.
Another that I enjoyed was the small cardboard-looking
badges that allowed our intrepid heroes, Ken and Jenny, to escape their glass
cell to roam about the complex, a modeled underwater complex more than three
thousand feet beneath the ocean. The sound effects are pure gold also, the
woosh of the door and the blips of the control panels. The flaming guns are a
nice touch. This is B-film, low budget joy.
After battling some of the mermen and eventually vanquishing
Dr. Moore himself our heroes, along with their other captured friends, blast
from the dome of the underwater complex in a rocket-like contraption
thats part Willy Wonka and part NASA just prior to the dome-shaped
models violent explosion.
This movie will remind you why B-movies have cult
followings. Its the movie collectors equivalent of a comic book
collectors rare find of, say, an old Spiderman comic from the 60s. You
cant get any more cheeky than this, and youll rarely have as much
fun watching a horror flick ever.
Contact Information: Dark Sky Films
Post: MPI Media Group, 16101 S 108th Ave., Orland Park, IL, 60467,
USA
Click to Buy!

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