The classic monster movie Octaman (1971) needs no introduction but I will endeavor to introduce it anyway. Harry Essex--famous for writing classics such as Man Made Monster (1941), It Came from Outer Space (1953), and Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954), and less famous for directing a 3D version of Mickey Spillane's I, the Jury (1953)--created a new monster when he wrote and directed Octaman in the early 1970s, giving legendary makeup artist Rick Baker his first film job. The film stands up as a genre classic made at a time when monster movies were considered old-fashioned.
Read on for a more realistic appreciation of Octaman...
The film opens with shots of sailing ships and mountain climbers as a narrator intones, “Since the beginning of time, men have roamed the earth and dared the elements in search of adventure. But today there is a new breed of adventurer: the scientist, who explores uncharted areas of the world not for riches or adventure but in search of answers to man’s problems of pollution and disease. Such a man, on such a quest, leads an ecological expedition to a primitive Latin American fishing community, where they uncover the hideous fruit of atomic radiation in the form of a bizarre legend wrapped in terror…and written in blood!”
After this eloquent verbiage, and a title sequence in which the frightening Octaman itself dances toward the camera, the film follows two men in a convertible as they drive to a camp in Mexico where the research hinted at in the opening narration is being conducted. While someone plays guitar, Dr. Rick Torres speaks into a tape recorder: “Sampling of blood taken from these primitive people whose main diet is seafood—fish—provides evidence that chemical changes produced by underwater detonations of atomic material have been carried by tide and currents to all parts of the world.” (His speech is a masterfully efficient example of acting and screenwriting, explaining the basic plot of the movie as well as the fact that fish is a kind of seafood.)
A member of the expedition named Mort Stein brings even more shocking evidence of the “hideous fruit of atomic radiation” in the form of a bucket containing a freakish (though adorable), living octopus that appears to be amphibious.
Rick, Mort, and Rick’s assistant Susan (played by Italian actress Pier Angeli in her final role before her death by overdose at the age of 39) take the bucket back to the edge of the river, where they let it crawl to the water, but then inexplicably return it to the bucket. All the while, they are unaware they are being watched by the Octaman itself, who is hiding behind some reeds.
Rick and Susan fly to the city to show the octopus to another scientist, Dr. Willard. Later, at night, an identical octopus remains in camp as one of the Mexican employees of the research outfit helpfully explains to the creature (and the audience), “We will call you Number Two, Numero Dos, to distinguish you from Mr. Stein’s discovery.” Tragically for the researcher, the Octaman walks to his tent and attacks him, killing him. The Octaman retrieves the small octopus and returns to the river. (In this fast-paced sequence, director Harry Essex reveals his unique, innovative style at filming a horror movie: with no suspense, the monster simply walks into the tent and attacks.)
In the city, Rick and Susan show the small creature to Dr. Willard (played by Jeff Morrow of 1955’s This Island Earth and 1956’s The Creature Walks Among Us). Unfortunately, the octopus is dead, but Rick explains that it was “a mutation of stars that had all the characteristics of a human cell.”
Dr. Willard is skeptical that the octopus’s mutation has anything to do with polluted water. Rick is angered. “Alive or dead, this specimen begs for further study.” When Dr. Willard pulls Rick’s grant funding, Rick storms out of the institute and, for reasons to be explained eventually, journeys to a horse stable where he meets horse trainer/stuntman/cowboy Steve Dodd. Mr. Dodd works for Johnny Caruso, who runs circuses and sideshows. Of course, Rick is looking for grant money from the carnival showman.
When they meet Johnny Caruso, he tells them with remarkable vagueness, “Just the other night on TV I saw one of them old flicks about an ape climbing the Empire State Building, the whole damn army chasing him. He kept swatting them airplanes buzzing around him like they were blue tail flies.” Fortunately for all concerned, Mr. Caruso agrees to fund Rick’s scientific expedition.
Rick and Susan return with Mr. Dodd and Mr. Caruso in a big RV to the encampment. Tragically, they find their camp empty and the Mexican researcher dead. Susan walks down to the river, where she sees the Octaman behind some reeds, though she tells nobody about this sighting, for unknown reasons. (Again, the director dispenses with any suspense, to powerful effect.)
The next day, they find Mort alive and discuss the situation. They are visited by local villagers, one of whom appears to be dressed like a flamenco dancer.
The villager, Davido, shows Rick sketches of the legendary half-man, half-sea monster with tentacles that inhabits the local waters.
The sketches prompt a quick, suspense-free flashback in which the Octaman kills Davido’s grandfather and throws him off a cliff — one of the indelible images of this classic film.
The villager leads the scientists to the top of a hill, where they can see a series of lakes where the villager’s grandmother said the creature used to live. They agree to break camp and search for the monster, unaware that other villagers are drinking contaminated water from the bucket where the small octopus was kept. These villagers are soon the next victims of the Octaman, who apparently lives much closer to the original camp than anybody expected. The Octaman punches them, then strangles one villager before stabbing another one in the chest with its tentacle.
Unaware of the monstrous murders, the scientific team takes the RV into the forest. Camping, they wax philosophical. Mort Stein says, “In a place like this, you begin to think of God and creation.”
“The question is,” Mr. Caruso responds, “have we improved any since creation.”
“Sure. We make mistakes but we also make progress. Some good, some bad. It’s all part of man’s journey. Young people, underneath all that hair and revolt, they know what it’s about. They know what we’re doing to our Earth, our water, our air, everything that grows.”
The film cuts to the Octaman standing near the camp. He does nothing but watch, moving his somewhat awkward tentacles up and down in the air.
The next day, Rick informs everyone that the water in the nearby lake is as radioactive as the water near the village. Mr. Caruso quips, “What happens if you drink enough of it? You turn into a mutant?” (Humorously, as if to highlight the circus owner’s lack of sophistication, he pronounces the last word mute-ANT).
“You remember the babies born with six fingers, or without eyes or mouths, after Hiroshima?”
Mr. Caruso scoffs dismissively, “Ah, that was Japan.”
Rick responds profoundly, “Air and water are everywhere.”
Again, the Octaman simply watches them as he stands in the lake.
Fortunately for the research team, a well-tended dirt road follows the rivers and lakes. They drive the RV farther along the chain of lakes and camp again, still searching for the Octaman, who is clearly following them. They set up camp again and the villager Davido says he found more of the small octopuses. Rick follows him away from camp. As Susan joins them, Mr. Dodd says, for no apparent reason, “A woman’s place is in the kitchen.”
When she leaves, he tells Mr. Caruso, “I think I’d better keep an eye on her.”
After they leave, the Octaman attacks Mr. Caruso, kills the villager Carlos, and retrieves another bucket with a small octopus inside.
The others return to find Carlos’s body and Mr. Caruso, who says he didn’t see the monster. They find tentacleprints in the dirt, prompting Rick to ask, “How can I believe there exists a sea creature with the arms of an octopus who walks on the Earth like a man?”
In an exciting sequence, the Octaman attacks the RV with Susan and Mr. Caruso inside. Susan honks the horn and Rick and the others return as Mr. Caruso shoots the Octaman with a handgun. They decide to leave Susan, Mr. Caruso, and Davido at the RV while they follow the Octaman’s trail to finally capture or kill the monster.
Seconds later, Rick, Mort, and Mr. Dodds are in a small motorboat on the lake. For the first time in the film, director Harry Essex builds suspense by not showing the Octaman immediately. Instead, the frightened explorers shine flashlights back and forth on the lake for several minutes. Then the Octaman’s tentacles appear on the edge of the boat. They cut off one tentacle but Mort falls into the water, though he is in no real danger as he climbs back into the boat.
Seconds later, the Octaman attacks the RV again. When Mr. Caruso opens the door, the Octaman literally punches him in the face (it is unclear which tentacle Rick cut off in the boat). A lantern explodes, causing a fire, but it is out a moment later, allowing the Octaman the opportunity to carry a fainting Susan away from the RV in classic monster fashion.
Rick and Mr. Dodds get out of the boat and confront the creature, blinding it with their flashlights. Somehow, this prompts the Octaman to set Susan on the ground. Then Rick sets fire to a ring of some unspecified material surrounding the monster. Eventually, exhausted by fire and the light of the flashlights, the Octaman lies on the ground. Rick and Mr. Dodds put a net over the monster, finally capturing it for Mr. Caruso’s circus.
In the morning, the group argues about whether to take the monster back to the city or to study it in its natural habitat (the net confining it and the darts tranquilizing it notwithstanding). It appears that they decide to do nothing, as by nighttime the Octaman is still on the ground beneath the net and Mort and Susan are standing guard over it. “I never thought of him as the enemy,” Susan says.
Mort replies wisely, “Beauty and the beast.” He then explains to Susan the fairytale of the same name. “All he wanted was to be loved, belong.”
“Well, isn’t that what we all want?” she says.
Suddenly, the Octaman is out of the net and threatening the two researchers. Perhaps taking Beauty and the Beast as a model, Susan moves toward the monster, her palms facing it as she tells it to move back. After several closeups of Susan’s and the monster’s eyes, the Octaman turns around and, as if in a trance, begins walking away.
Although they could have followed the slow-moving monster, the others let it escape, then stand around the campsite arguing about what to do. Fortunately, Davido knows the one place the Octaman will go to: an area where the lake grows narrow on its way from the sea. Also fortunately, there is a wide dirt road that leads to this place, so in the morning everyone gets in the RV and drives to the Octaman’s secret hideout. Of course, it watches them as they drive.
Soon, however, they stop the RV because it is blocked by a wall of trees and branches, echoing the Creature from the Black Lagoon’s trap in that earlier film. As most of the researchers work on removing the barrier, Davido sees the Octaman and chases it with his knife drawn. He sees it enter a cave; the others soon join him, deciding to go into the cave to capture the Octaman again.
After several minutes spent walking through the cave, they finally find the monster. Susan screams and the others fire their guns, then give chase. When they reach a dead end, the Octaman somehow engineers a cave-in, trapping the researchers.
“The air is bad in hear,” Mr. Caruso complains.
Susan tells him not to give up. “I remember a move once about a submarine trapped on the bottom of the ocean. The idea was to save oxygen by not getting too excited.”
Davido passes the time by whistling the tune of The Mexican Hat Dance. He also finds a small hole in the cave-in and hears water beyond it, so he volunteers to crawl through the hole. The others sit down and play tic-tac-toe in the sand. Eventually, Davido finds the cave exit, then crawls back through the tunnel to tell the others it provides a way out. The others follow him and when they emerge, shockingly, they are right in front of the RV. “We’re right back where we started from!” Mort marvels.
Even more shockingly, the Octaman is inside the RV. It punches Mort in the face as he opens the door, leading to the final confrontation. After most of the men have been defeated, Susan gets its attention again, allowing it to carry her away toward the lake, its intentions somewhat ambiguous. Susan, who has grabbed a handgun in the previous melee, shoots the monster in the midsection, betraying it. When it drops her, the others shoot it as well. Tragically (or perhaps not), the Octaman staggers to the edge of the water, falls down, and disappears. Davido tosses his hand-carved Octaman doll after it, where it floats upon the water.
The End
Octaman is not without its controversies. For one, some viewers complain the Octaman has only six tentacles, but those viewers clearly suffer from poor attention. The Octaman has eight tentacles: two at the shoulders, two at the midsection, two where a human's legs would be, and two more quite small appendages sprouting out from where the legs would be. Of course, the film refers to the monster and its related creatures as squids, not octopuses, so perhaps there is grounds for complaint, as most squids have 10 tentacles.
Another criticism is that Harry Essex simply repurposed his script for Creature from the Black Lagoon to make Octaman. Superficially, there are similarities--the relationship with the only woman on the expedition, the barrier preventing vehicles from escaping the monster's home, the desire to show off the monster as a carnival attraction as derived from King Kong--but the differences clearly outweigh the similarities. For example, in Creature from the Black Lagoon, the monster carries Julia Adams into a cavern full of water, while in Octaman the monster lures the researchers into a cavern that is completely dry. Also, of course, the earlier movie features a boat while the later movie features a Winnebago. People who complain about similarities are simply looking for flaws in a near-perfect film.
Finally, it is impossible to discuss Octaman without mentioning the talents of seven-time Oscar-winner Rick Baker. The Octaman itself is such an impressive creature (particularly when seen in still photos) that it is no surprise that Mr. Baker would lend his talents to its creation. But credit must be given accurately. Despite the fact that Wikipedia asserts Mr. Baker designed the Octaman suit, it was in fact designed and sketched by George Barr, then built by Mr. Baker (with help from Doug Beswick). Without the work of these talented individuals, Octaman would not have become the classic film it was destined to be.