Humanoids From the Deep (1980)

[Mike Morbid]

Remember how the movie Alligator told us you shouldn’t get rid of your scaly pets down the toilet? Humanoids From The Deep showed me that it is also a bad way to dispose of your sea monkeys and Viagra. That isn’t actually how the sea creatures in this flick came to be, but allow me my delusions.

Yes, this is a movie about loathsome monsters that emerge from the water. That was quite the thing during the late seventies to early eighties, with three Jaws, two Piranhas, and a Blood Beach. It sort of leads me to wonder why anybody during that time went within a day’s travel of open water. I had no choice, I live on an island. To this day, though, I usually stay as far from it as possible. Some might theorize that it is actually because I’m a pasty-skinned being with the body of a rotten carrot, but they don’t know me, they don’t know my troubles.

Anyways, the star is Doug McClure. You may know him from such films as Death Race and The Land That Time Forgot. Also important to the story are a Native American who is wise and tough, a lady scientist who knows more than the people she is working for, and a jerk who is a jerk, not to mention a racist. Oh yeah, and an assortment of fishmen who do not have honourable intentions.

Those of you who have heard about the movie have a good idea about the basic premise. I’ve been hearing about for two or three decades, but have only just got around to watching it. I went in expecting an exploitative shlock-fest. Thankfully, or regrettably, depending on your mindset, it is not all that lurid. There is some nudity, but the attack scenes are brief and not very explicit. The movie also takes it self fairly seriously, there is little in the way of camp or humour.

Humanoids is fairly straight forward and hits most of the familiar notes, but it did surprise me with one development. The setting is summer in a beach community, and there is a tourist attracting festival underway. Right away, you know that after the danger is discovered, the town leaders are going to blow it off and insist that there is no real danger, for fear of losing those visitor dollars. However, there is surprisingly little scoffing at the idea of watery monsters, and by the time it becomes well known that there is something seriously wrong, there is not a whole lot of time to do anything about it before things get out of hand.

The monsters have a real hatred of dogs. The jerk and his friends go on the dock and discover that most of the canines in town have been savagely killed. Apparently most people like to keep their pets near to their boats. As soon as he surveyed the carnage, I had a good idea who he was going to blame for it, and figured within a few scenes and a few drinks he would come to that conclusion. I was wrong, as I barely had time to finish that thought before he jumped straight to ‘we have to get him’.

Anyways, we eventually come to the big climax. The scaly tribe make themselves known and things get a little hectic. People are running all around, creatures are pillaging, and we have a DJ who is very dedicated to his profession. I don’t know about you, but if there was a big-clawed monster only feet away that was moving toward me in an unfriendly manner, I would likely leave the area. He just keeps on telling his listeners all the details of his predicament. I salute you, sir, and I’ll leave a nice marker at whatever fish toilet you end up in.

But I digress. This scene goes on for quite a while longer than you think it would. I would think that in real life monsters would attack, there is a short period of bloodshed, and then it abates because those who weren’t initially caught are now in another zip code. Here, though, people just keep running all over the place and not going anywhere. Were there some kind of perimeter rules? Were there referees on hand to make sure nobody left the play area?

I have neglected to mention what our two main protagonists are doing during this. As soon as the crisis begins, they jump on a boat, go out a bit, and start dumping oil in the water. After they did this for what seemed like eleventeen days, they lit the oil water on fire. This seems a rather problematic solution to me. There are quite a few of the creatures already on land, so they won’t be bothered by this. As for any who might still be in the water, well, there is a lot of water there. All they have to do is swim around or even under the fire.

Enough of my yammering, though. This is far from a classic movie, but it isn’t really all that bad. It won’t really be scary to most seasoned horror watchers, but if you don’t have anything else to watch, it is a decent warn-up movie in a horror marathon. I’ll give it a mild recommendation.

[endo]

I like this movie, always have. Of course, I saw it as a teen and testosterone may have played a part in how much I liked it back then, lol.
Great review as always!

[Mike Morbid]

Oh yes, I definitely would have been a big fan of it when I was a teenager.