Being Film #3 for Hooptober 2024
I can appreciate all the breaks Roger Corman gave people through his films over the years. And I can appreciate the fun schlock of many of his films – with the best of them there’s a charm and imprint that can’t be denied. And huge kudos to the man for giving female directors a chance to shine: I’m attributing anything good about Humanoids From The Deep to Barbara Peeters who took a swing with this Jaws ripoff and inject a sense of fun and social consciousness to the proceedings. But if you know anything about this film, it’s probably about the image I used for the header, which is not only exploitative in the worst possible way, but was done so without the cast and crew’s knowledge. So let’s get into why a few inserted scenes basically makes this a non-starter for me.
THE QUICK SUMMARY: Trouble’s afoot in the fishing town of Noyo, California. A cannery is trying to get in at the expense of the pristine fishing grounds, riling up the residents against the Native Americans who have already been relegated to less than equal in the eyes of many of the townsfolk. Throw some mutant evolving fish men who want to protect their own territory (and expand via vicious copulation) and you have a powder keg of layers upon layers of social commentary…if only someone would just stop inserting footage of women being raped by fish men, huh?
One step forward, two steps back, huh? Let’s talk about the good stuff first: I think it’s really interesting how Peeters and screenwriter Frederick James take this “Jaws but mutated fish men” and put the amount of social significance into it. You not only have the whole industry overbearing on a small town, you have the racism and question of who truly owns the land everyone works on. And then to double that by having your monster basically fight for the same thing.
The creatures are a product of experimenting with elevating growth hormones in salmon, who broke out and were consumed by prehistoric fish who quickly evolved into the monsters terrorizing the town. And those creatures are quite lovely – the practical work by Rob Bottin is fantastic even though you can clearly see this is a “main in suit” thing with telescoped arms.
Performances are about what you’d expect from an 80s Corman feature; despite having Vic Morrow, Doug McClure, and Ann Turkel who may have my favorite role in the film as the scientist who explains exactly what caused the horror. But eventually we run out of things to talk about and have to face the literal monster in the room: After the film completed Corman wasn’t happy with the subtle indirect way Peeters filmed the women being attack and so had reshoots done by James Sbardellati who inserted just terrible and gratuitous scenes of the monsters pretty explicitly raping the women. It not only feels tacked on, but it’s just ugly in a way really good exploitation isn’t. I get Corman’s reasoning (get more tits and sex in here!), I can’t get behind it. At all.
I understand the fanboy cries of how those scenes truly ratchet up the nastiness and make Humanoids From The Deep the fun schlock it is, but I’d argue those scenes do nothing except enable adolescent fantasies better left behind. Ultimately what fun I might have had with the film were dashed by those scenes, and truly, I don’t get the love for this one.
Better luck next time, as I have two more New World Pictures to do for this marathon.
Cinema Dual 