Tentacles (1977) American International/Horror-Thriller RT: 102 minutes Rated PG (violence, a grisly image, language) Director: Ovidio G. Assonitis Screenplay: Jerome Max, Tito Carpi and Steve Carabatsos Music: Stelvio Cipriani Cinematography: Roberto D’Ettorre Release date: June 15, 1977 (US) Cast: John Huston, Shelley Winters, Bo Hopkins, Henry Fonda, Delia Boccardo, Cesar Danova, Claude Akins, Enzo Bottesini (as “Alan Boyd”), Sherry Buchanan, Franco Diogene, Marc Fiorini, Helena Makela, Leonard Lightfoot. Box Office: $3M (US)
Rating: *
I can hear the pitch meeting now. I can hear the makers describing Tentacles to American International head Samuel Z. Arkoff as follows: “It’s Jaws with an octopus.” I can see Arkoff mulling it over while visions of dollar signs dance in his head. He might have been thinking this: “Surely, the same crowds that made Steven Spielberg’s movie a bona fide blockbuster will turn out for this Italian-made/English-dubbed rip-off.” He ultimately gave it a thumbs-up and it got made. While it turned a small profit ($3M against a $750,000 budget), it didn’t generate the same revenue as its sire. Also, it sucks!
I didn’t know until I put it on the other night, but Tentacles is directed by Ovidio G. Assonitis, the same guy who made the wonderfully whacked-out sci-fi-horror The Visitor (1979). It also has two of the stars of that demented delight, John Huston and Shelley Winters. In Tentacles, the two acclaimed actors play a reporter and his loudmouth sister. Looking at their performances and listening to the dopey dialogue they’re forced to recite, it’s hard to believe they have four Oscars between them. John won his for writing and directing The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948); Shelley got her two Best Supporting Actress statuettes for The Diary of Anne Frank (1959) and A Patch of Blue (1965). What are they doing in a killer octopus movie?
The same could be asked about Henry Fonda (The Grapes of Wrath, 12 Angry Men), a once-great actor reduced to appearing in garbage like The Great Smokey Roadblock (1977), Rollercoaster (1977), The Swarm (1978), Meteor (1979) and City on Fire (1981). He plays the bad guy here, the head of a developing company building an underwater tunnel. Henry’s Oscar would come a few years later with his brilliant performance (opposite daughter Jane) in his swan song On Golden Pond (1981). At least he went out on a high note.
I’ve already told you the basic plot of Tentacles. Obviously, there’s a little more to it than that, but none of it really amounts to much. In the end, it’s just about killing the octopus that’s terrorizing the citizens of the seaside town of Solona Bay, California’s answer to Amity Island. I’ll talk more about that later.
The movie starts off with a baby in a stroller being pulled into the water (off-camera) by something unseen after his mother leaves him unattended by the water’s edge to go talk to a friend several feet away. Naturally, she’s freaked out when she finally notices the kid isn’t there anymore. The next to go is a one-legged sailor named Pegleg Bill. He’s yanked off his boat shortly after his assistant goes on lunch break. He’s later found by a young couple on a dinghy. She’s giving him a hard time about who’s the better kisser, her or some chick named Rosie. She jumps on him, trying to prove her point when Bill appears to their horrified eyes. It’s a gruesome sight.
Ned Turner (Huston), reporter for the local paper, decides to chase the story. He’s an odd one, this Ned. He typically wears a night shirt in the house he shares with his boozy sister Tillie (Winters), a single mother who spends her nights drinking and seducing men. It’s their childhood home and all of their happiest memories are right there. Anyway, he’s trying to figure what could have caused the kind of damage inflicted on the two victims. He does know that the company doing the undersea drilling has something to do with it. They are responsible, of course, but the boss Mr. Whitehead (Fonda) doesn’t want to hear it. He orders his flunky John Corey (Danova, Mean Streets) to deal with (NOT kill) Ned and the rest of the BS.
Ned visits his friend, oceanographer and killer whale trainer Will Gleason (Hopkins, The Wild Bunch), for answers. What are they dealing with in quiet Solona Bay? Will doesn’t know (yet), but he’s already sent two of his best divers to investigate. They, of course, will become the creature’s next victims. That’s when Will arrives on the scene with his hot wife Vicky (Boccardo, 1983’s Hercules) in tow. Due to a diving accident, there’s only so much he can do. He can’t go down too deep or for too long. It would kill him. A worried Vicky keeps reminding him (and us) of this fact. Still, he’ll do his best to be the hero of this fishy fish tale.
Tillie, in a move that defies logic and calls her parenting skills in question, enters her 10YO son Tommy and his younger best friend Jamie in the Junior Regatta. I don’t know the names of the actors playing the kids so I’ll just describe the characters. Tommy is annoying; Jamie pees a lot. Now here’s the f***ed up thing. Even after all the important folks know about the danger that lurks beneath the surface, nobody thinks to call off the event. What in the actual F? Naturally, the octopus attacks in a truly bonkers sequence with more freeze-frames than the J. Giels music video. I thought my DVD player was going haywire before I realized it was intentional. Throw in some wildly inappropriate electronic music and you’ve got the makings of an instant unintentional comedic bit the likes of which could only be made by an Italian filmmaker who thinks he’s the next Fellini or whoever.
Now you can forget about all of these plot threads because they get dropped after the whole regatta incident. Other than Will and his assistant Mike (Bottesini/Boyd, Encounters of the Deep), we never see any of the main characters again. This is because the production moved to Greece for the finale and the director couldn’t persuade John, Shelley and Henry to fly there. So it is that Will deals with the octopus with a lot of help from his killer whale friends, but not before he regales them with an inspirational speech before they swim off into battle.
Oh, I forgot to mention the town sheriff Douglas Robards. He’s played by Sheriff Lobo himself, Claude Akins. He’s pretty much useless. When Ned asks him if he has any answers about what’s happening, he replies, “I don’t even know where to start asking questions.” He’s no Martin Brody and proves it time and time again.
Science nerds will no doubt take umbrage with the film’s title Tentacles. Octopi do NOT have tentacles; they have arms. It’s squid that has tentacles. I was today years old when I learned this. In any event, semantics are the least of this movie’s problems. I don’t want to steer anybody wrong. I probably made Tentacles sound like great fun, but it’s not. It’s actually a bore. The pacing is deadly slow. There are long stretches where it’s all talk and no action. Worse, the conversations aren’t that interesting. When something finally does happen, it’s frustrating because you see how awesomely fun it could have been if Assonitis had the slightest inkling what he was doing. He had all the right tools and all the right parts; he just put them together wrong.
The acting in Tentacles is supremely bad. The main actors give what have to be the most embarrassing performances of their careers. It’s impossible to say who’s more ridiculous, John or Shelley. His character is weird; hers is shrill. She might have a slight edge because she looks too old to have a 10YO kid. Then there’s that silly sombrero she wears in a few scenes. Henry basically phones in his performance. We never see him anywhere other than his place and he’s usually on the phone with another character. Hopkins is on autopilot here. Boccardo has the range of a department store mannequin; it’s a good thing she’s hot.
The special effects, a combination of stock footage and a rubber octopus, aren’t too bad when you consider the film’s low budget, most of which was probably spent on casting. I imagine it isn’t cheap paying respectable actors enough to appear in dreck like Tentacles. It certainly wasn’t spent on gory effects or a coherent screenplay. The script, credited to three writers, makes no sense. The editing is sloppy, the cinematography is flat and the electronic score by Stelvio Cipriani is weird and out of place. It might be the best thing in this crummy movie. As thoroughly bad as it is, there’s still an iota of fun to be had watching it. I get a kick out of making fun of terrible movies, don’t you?
