the audience applauded

n my opinion it was a great movie with some interesting elements, even though having some plot holes and the ending probably was just too messy and crammed together, but still fun to watch and not your casual movie that is similar to all other ones.

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

Critics who deign to notice this movie at all have nothing good to say about it, and what they do say runs to far fewer words than you're about to read if you bear with me. Reviewing a thing like this is for people who can see a glass as half full even when it's nearly bone dry. I am such a one.Consider that the stars are Hugh Herbert and Allen Jenkins. Jenkins was an iconic supporting player: the tough-sounding but easygoing, nasal-voiced, weary-eyed New York working man or minor crook. His spirit lives on in the type, even for those who have somehow missed his own performances. However, a movie in which he's a star is bound to be small beer.The other star, Hugh Herbert, is a study in the fleeting nature of fame. Once he must have had quite a strong presence in moviegoers' minds, for his unidentified caricature appears in a Disney cartoon, "Mother Goose Goes Hollywood" (1938), along with those of the Marx Brothers, Charles Laughton, W. C. Fields, and other enduring stars (but also others like himself who have not endured). Today, it's unlikely that anything about him would ring a bell with most non-buffs. He seems to exist not only in the past, but in a parallel past of secret fame. One would like to think that this fate was visited on him as punishment for his tedious trademark: saying "woo-woo" at crucial junctures.The opening scene of Sh! The Octopus finds Herbert and Jenkins in their star vehicle, a police car, driving along a lonely country road on a stormy night. So you see, the glass is going to appear half full if only you're in the mood. This is a burlesque of spooky-house mysteries. It goes beyond parody -- well, beneath it -- and revels in zany riffs.The ultimate setting, which we reach after a few more minutes on the country road, is a deserted lighthouse with as many sliding panels as one finds in the better sort of ancestral mansion. The riffs are played not only on the hackneyed situations of the genre, but also on the stock characters who turn up in it. These include the vulnerable but determined young woman with a missing inventor stepfather who screams just like Fay Wray (the young woman, not the stepfather) and the suave young man who may or may not be deceiving her.Then there's the not-so-young woman with something to hide, the straitlaced but comforting old nanny, the gentle old salt, and the jeering old salt for good measure. The usual bumbling, bickering police detectives are played by the stars.The metropolitan police are beleaguered by a crime network called the Octopus. The lighthouse is beleaguered by a real octopus. The missing stepfather is presumably of interest to the first of these. When asked who he is, the young woman promptly replies, "He's the inventor of a radium ray so powerful that anyone who controls it controls the world."Though it's a stormy night and the lighthouse is on an island three miles from shore, characters (including the nanny) keep arriving with no apparent difficulty. Such blithe staginess, along with the assembly of types, gives this little film the feeling of an extended revue skit. For most of its length, it's only a mind-clearing diversion. Then, when a certain performance shifts into high gear, it becomes a night to remember. To say more about that would be spoiling too much.As silly as this film is, it leaves us with something of value: a renewed understanding of what it means to be a journeyman actor. Even though we think we're watching plays or films intelligently, a well-executed type can tempt us to believe that the actor hasn't much else to offer. There's usually nothing to pull us back from that temptation. When characters in an Agatha Christie mystery reveal hidden identities, the revelations come as nothing more than new information about the same people. But here, where no semblance of reality is required, the actors can drop their types and take on utterly different personalities. Several do so before the story ends, and one of these is granted the chance for a bravura turn. You may never get it out of your head, but that's all right. It will make your head a better, more freakish place.The five-star rating I've given this movie does not mean I'm dissatisfied with it. I'd call that a high mark for a minor romp. As part of a double feature, it's worth half the price of a ticket.

How can you make a bad movie with Allan Jenkins and Hugh Herbert? We now know it's possible. The script is hopeless. The acting, aside from the two main characters, is terrible. The sets are cheap and at times seem ready to fall down. I'll bet that the film was made in less than a week.This is the classic two comics in a haunted house. The result makes Monogram's Charlie Chan series look professional and expensive. I rather like "B" films, but this is a "C." I'll wager that the kids in the Saturday matinées laughed when the fake octopus tentacles come reaching out of the wall to grab people. But why go on? This is a stinker, mercifully unavailable in standard VHS or DVD format.

A couple of years ago, a 35MM print of this was resurrected for the Boston Science Fiction Film Festival and Marathon (bostonsci-fi.com). Not truly SF, but it was so rare the organizers couldn't resist the opportunity to show it. It moves briskly along and the comedy is amusing enough to carry through the somewhat muddled 'mystery'. The ending, as others have noted, has that incredible pre-CGI morphing effect. Everybody who I talked to after the screening was truly impressed to see how well it was done 50+ years before CGI! In fact, its so seamless, I think it more effective than many a morph effect (for one thing, you feel that it truly IS happening before your eyes, not just some digital bits being manipulated by a computer). I noticed that SH! was playing on TCM this weekend and made a point to DVR the ending of it to watch that effect again. And again. Many times. Slow motion. Frame by Frame. It's still pretty darn amazing!SPECIAL EFFECTS SPOILER:As noted, I agree that it is a variation on the Makeup Effect used in the classic 1932 Rouben Mamoulian version of DR.JEYKLL AND MR. HYDE. Basically, it's done with trick makeup combined with colored lenses and lighting. It's all done "live" on the set. That's why there's no 'seam' where you see an optical dissolve (like those used in the WOLFMAN or THE INVISIBLE MAN). It's possible, that some post-production tinkering was done, but doubtful. It's still an astonishing illusion! The makeup is extremely well done, a wart seems to 'grow' on her nose, teeth get blackened and her whole complexion changes. The only 'give-away' I could detect was that the patterns on her dress get darker and harder to see when the light/filters are switched.Thing is, that one effect is so amazing, that I had completely forgotten about the 'twist' ending...and oh, those freaky offspring!

This film is sort of a "nautical" version of the Ritz Bros. "the Gorilla". A criminal known as the "Octopus" is trying to get a secret device from an inventor stranded on an island (with a lighthouse), along with many suspicious characters. (One of whom is the "Octopus"!).As in the "Gorilla", the plot of this film doesn't make much sense, but sit back & enjoy the thrills & jitters of the secret panels, clutching octopus tentacles (!) and spooky atmosphere! This film is for pure enjoyment; and not to be "analyzed"!One interesting note: at the end of the film, one of the suspects turns into the "Octopus"& the effect is AMAZING! I pride myself on how they did special effects back then, but I can't figure this out, as the film does NOT "stop action" & change the person into the Octopus; it happens "live"!Get out the popcorn & enjoy this great escapist film!