Very Cool!!!

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Absolutely Fantastic

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

There's obviously no point in claiming that this is anything like a good story. And yet... There is a strange emptiness that hovers over this film. Consider the opening shot of of a desolate boat in the middle of nowhere and the sound of bells tolling. Or when the body is found on the beach the odd poses of the people investigating the scene. 'Investigating' is not the right word. They stand like figures in a De Chirico painting. And then there is a sense that everyone is under observation. People watching each other. Then silent moments of anguish fill in the blanks. Milner holds reaction shots curiously long. Uncomfortably long. And it's fascinating. Were this film in a European language it might be seen as an existential statement.

A more realistic title for this so-called monster movie might be, "The Plastic Model from 10,000 centimeters." Even that would be a stretch in how far down in the "deep" we see this monster. The ancient distance of a league at sea was three miles. The diameter of the earth is 7,917.5 miles. So, something 10,000 leagues below the earth's or ocean's surface, would actually be more than 22,000 miles beyond the opposite side of the earth – in space. Even the centimeters are a stretch, because that would be 328 feet down. And in this film, the scuba divers hardly seem to go beyond 50 feet. In the scenes with the monster on their heels, the swimmers rise a few feet above the fronds and bottom sea growth to be at the water's surface. I belabor this point only to point out how bad everything is about this film. I give it one star above the worst possible only because the plot has just enough suspense to make it interesting enough to watch to the conclusion. Although one can easily guess what the ending will be. Otherwise the script is quite bad. It's a good example of the cheap run of films made during the 1950s. Unheard of sources tried to make a buck from the public's revived interest in monster films. There is hardly any script at all in this film. And where there is, is punctuated (indeed) with long periods of silence. It wouldn't be so bad if the camera had turned more on the surf or interesting scenery. Then, this very boring and lackluster plot was worsened by downright amateurish acting. This may be the worst job of making a monster. It must have been a plastic doll. It clearly was lifeless, however much the filmmakers tried to give us the impression that it was moving or alive. These folks could have learned something from the Japanese filmmakers of "Godzilla" the year before. To give this film even two stars is charitable, indeed.

The movie is actually has more of a story than than I anticipated - it's a not a great story or film; it's "OK", watchable if you can't find anything better to watch.I can say there are much better "B" horror films than this one but there are definitely worse than this one out there. The movie is nothing to brag about but is a little bit engrossing to a small degree.Expect to see a few business men in their suits & ties on a beach, a couple of women in bikini's, a silly looking monster, a mad scientist, a spy, and some other odd characters in this one.3/10

This DVD release, laughingly from Front Row Entertainment was typical D movie status from the Drive-In movie days of the 50's. Starring many unrecognizable actors with some notable exceptions that went on to do many hours of 60's TV shows. This film was shot on location at Malibu's "Paradise Cove" and on sound stage sets. The Cove was the TV home of Jim Garner's detective "Jim Rockford". Unfortunately this schlock film has none of that charm or suspense. The movie was produced and directed by the Milner brothers and they broke the cardinal first and most important law of low-budget monster movies, "Never show the film's monster to the audience until the very end of the picture!" The film's underwater dwelling half-lion & half-sea serpent is shown in all it's cheapness in the first 1 minute of this film, leaving the audience's interest to drain out of this film like a deflating party balloon. This 'formula' film has a mad small-town scientist, his attractive unmarried daughter, a visiting scientist stranger, many evil henchmen working for the mad scientist, a female international spy and a government police officer. The only plot element that wasn't the usual expected schlock was that this radioactive ocean 'ray' was going to be sold to an evil foreign government by a henchman for money, but that was foiled by the mad scientist, himself due to his guilty conscience. Some not expected hilarious moments were enjoyed by this reviewer when I inspected the film's mad scientist lab/set. Even though the scientist was supposedly working with highly radioactive materials, the scientist's protective suit was really only a fireman's cloth asbestos flame suit. Not much protection there! And also it was funny to see the radioactive experiment area was shielded behind a silly draw-string fabric curtain that was hiding a simple fish-tank. This fish-tank experiment container was made to look very ominous by the phony use of bright lights with an accompanied 'ray' sound effect. This set was ludicrous and looked very cheaply built. It was obviously on little budget. This film was not enjoyable in a bad/odd D movie way, just plain bad. The film went on too long and could have had many endings that were more entertaining than this very predictable one. This is waste of your time to view. Other sea monster D films like "Monster from Piedras Blancas" are better and more enjoyable. See the others.