An accidental Theme happened with last week's Review of The Sentinel, the Film I watched yesterday (but will review tomorrow) and this Film.
Let's see just how derivative 1977 can be!
It also has the ability not to disrupt/splash water as it kills an old man and... a 10-month-old baby?
You don't mess around '70s!
- A Reporter (John Huston!) investigates the strange deaths.
- His Sister (Shelley Winters) has a kid who's entering a boat race with his friend.
- A businessman (Henry Fonda!) is hiding a secret involving the latest device his company put in the water.
- A Whale Trainer (Bo Hopkins- RIP) loses two friends to the creature when they investigate the deaths.
Before they can figure out what is truly going on, his Wife's friends go out and killed in broad daylight.
She goes out that night and gets it too.
By the way, THIS is supposed to be the attack on the Film's famous Poster.
See the similarity?
It all leads to the big boat race, since so many of these involve a Scene like this (see The Last Shark, Deep Blood, etc) and the Monster attacks.
See the similarity?
They try to be all classy here as the Scene plays out with only the Score playing and it is crosscut with people blissfully unaware on the shore.
...then they do this shot.
When all else fails, there is only one solution...
Make that two.
Will Bob Hopkins' surprisingly maudlin speech do the trick?
To find out, stream the Film now.
An alright Film, but even 2 years removed from Jaws, this already feels pretty stale. The Film doesn't exactly make a big effort to be anything other than 'What if Jaws, but an Octopus.'
Is there a way to look at this Film than anything else besides another wannabe-Jaws? Is it just White Buffalo or Orca or The Last Shark? I mean...pretty much, yeah.
In the Film's defense, there's not as much xeroxing here as with The Last Shark. There's no proper evil Mayor/Rich Guy to blame and there's not really an obvious Quint. Bo plays a mix of that Character and Dreyfuss' Scientist. So, points for being a slightly different Film in the most basic sense.
All of the Big Stars don't add too much to the Film really, other than their waning gravitas and Star Power. Two of them- Huston and Winters- have nothing to do with the Story after the Boat attack. Fonda only appears in a few Scenes, as he just had a pacemaker put in and couldn't do much more than sit/stand and talk.
Tentacles is at a weird crossroads. It is not as goofy as stuff like Cruel Jaws, nor is it as good as actual Jaws. It has brief moments of actual Horror and long stretches of nothing (like Deep Blood). So what happens when you're not good enough to be a true Classic, but not bad enough to be a Cult Classic?
An alright Film with some odd Star Power of its day. The titular creature doesn't quite do enough until the latter half of to keep most people's interest though.
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