Director: Ovidio G. Assonitis
Screenplay: Jerome Max, Tito Carpi, Steven W. Carabatsos
Starring: John Huston, Shelley Winters, Bo Hopkins, Henry Fonda, Cesare Danova, Delia Boccardo
Country: Italy, USA
Running Time: 102 min
Year: 1977
BBFC Certificate: 12
In the Californian seaside town of Saloma Beach, several people have turned up dead in the water under unusual circumstances. With no clear cause, seasoned reporter Ned Turner (Huston) consults sealife expert Will Gleason (Hopkins) and hypothesises that the deep sea tunnel being created by Mr. Whitehead (Fonda) and his Trojan Construction company may be to blame, and may have disturbed a vengeful giant octopus. Meanwhile, Turner’s sister Tillie (Winters) has entered her young son into the local yacht race, what could possibly go wrong?
In the unprecedented monumental wake of Jaws‘ release in 1975, a tide of copycatfish creature features saw a motley crew of beasts and monsters wage war against mankind, often along a coastline. None managed to de-throne Spielberg’s classic as the king of the ocean, and in fact most of them are pretty awful, boasting poor effects, lacklustre storytelling and performances from actors who seem to feel like they’re slumming it playing opposite copious amounts of foam and rubber. Enter Tentacles, released two years after Jaws and following a similar setup of sceptical officials in a tourism hotspot debating public safety with an aquatic terror on the loose, in which the title of the film is even named after the creature’s primary weapon!
Tentacles starts off pulling no punches with a slew of initial deaths featuring unusual victims and quite gruesome remains. In fact this film has a surprisingly high body count, though I’ll admit to some disappointment at the fake-out of what was implied to have been an off-screen massacre towards the end of the film. The film-makers clearly understood that it was a lot more difficult to create a believable octopus than it was a shark, and as such wisely opted to primarily use actual octopus footage for most of the scenes, and keeping human/cephalopod interactions to a minimum. When the two species do meet though I enjoyed their entanglements, but then I’ve never been one to let out-dated visual effects get between me and enjoying a film! As such I also appreciated the quite effective model work in some later scenes too, and am still laughing at the image of a model octopus swimming along with its static, featureless head above the water like a shark’s fin!
The biggest let-down for me was sadly in the performances. Henry Fonda menaces menacingly, Shelley Winters is having fun wearing a giant hat and bearing the brunt of some classic 70s sexism and fat-shaming, and Bo Hopkins is surprisingly the emotional core, but none of them have all that much to go with, and top-billed John Huston appears to be taking a walking nap through his scenes. There’s barely any character arcs between them, so much so that Fonda, Winters and Huston are all missing for the final third of the film, with no plot strands requiring any resolution whatsoever! Plus, there are so many supporting characters, each with so little differentiating them, that it became extremely difficult to remember who was whom when they re-appeared in seemingly critical scenes.
This review wasn’t intended to be a full comparison to Jaws, because frankly there are few films that would come out of such a battle even close to being on top, but when something is so closely trying to imitate a far superior product the comparison is difficult to ignore. One of the most infamous aspects to the earlier film is of course John Williams’ atmospheric yet effortlessly simple score, which Tentacles also tries to replicate with a repeated five-note synth arrangement that is immediately irritating and distracting. Also many scenes of dialogue take places over footage of walking feet or people with their back to the camera or covering their mouths to allow for some creative dubbing later on. Add to this the bizarre directorial choices of occasionally starting or ending a scene with a short freeze frame, or having ambient conversation or the world’s least funny comedian’s routine audio overlayed over what looks to be an important and highly emotional scene between named characters, and you have what could have been a great monster movie, but which sadly suffers from a lacklustre direction.
I enjoyed the film, and will certainly return to watch it again, but I can imagine this would leave most viewers intent on a thrilling creature feature somewhat disappointed.
Tentacles is available on Blu-Ray now from 88 Films. Special features include several in-depth interviews with director Ovidio G. Assonitis, cinematographer Roberto D’Ettorre Piazzoli, costume designer Nicoletta Ercole, and assistant art director Alvaro Passeri, plus a commentary with Italian cinema experts Troy Howarth, Nathaniel Thompson and Eugenio Ercolani.