It Came From Beneath the Sea (1955)
Review by Dindrane
Film:
DVD:

Written by George Worthing Yates and Hal Smith, based on a story by Yates
Directed by Robert Gordon
Starring Kenneth Tobey, Faith Domergue, Donald Curtis, Ian Keith, Dean Maddox Jr.

Features:

• "The Harryhausen Chronicles" featurette
  
• "This is Dynamation" featurette
  
• Trailers
  

Dindrane's Horror Warnings:

• Giant octopus terrorizing scientists and San Fran
• Dead folk

Released by: Columbia/Tristar
Region: 1
Rating: NR
Anamorphic: Yes

My Advice: Rent it for a lark.

Harryhausen creature features may be one of today’s most beloved guilty pleasures. In a day when anything is possible, even easy, with CGI, it’s a pleasure to see special effects done the old fashioned way, with miniature sculptures like wee works of art, and clever camera people doing their best to avoid mistakes and tipping their hand.

It Came From Beneath the Sea is a classic monster movie. We have a submarine full of civilians scientists down deep in the ocean, facing off with a giant octopus, driven from his deep-sea home by the testing of H-bombs. As part of his rampage in search of decent food to eat, the octopus attacks all manner of humans and even bits of the San Francisco landscape. Will the military be able to kill this beastie without taking themselves out with it?

Many of you have heard my theory, and the theory of other film critics, that each generation has its particular boogie man who features in nearly every horror film made in that decade; films, especially horror films, come in cycles. In the 1950s, the fallout of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (no pun intended) was that an entire generation had to face how they felt about the results of nuclear power and the effects this would have on innocent people, not to mention nature. We therefore get movies like this one, Them!, Earth Vs. the Spider, and a hundred others, all irradiated, mutated animals and people that express a generation’s fear about what we really don’t know how to control. Of course, the problematic answer is usually, in the films, to kill the "monster," but the psychology of horror films is fascinating for what it reveals about the society that produce them.

The features on this disc are rather nifty: we have a look at the work of Ray Harryhausen in a sort of filmography, and we also get a featurette on what dynamation is. Dynamation is the stop-motion photography process that Harryhausen pioneered for use in his special effects blockbusters, including the later classic Clash of the Titans. Involving hours of back-breaking work, painstaking detail, and a high level of artistry, dynamation made many 50s and 60s movies as enjoyable and realistic as they were.

The video quality is much better than you might expect for a film made in 1955. The black and white footage has held up nicely to the ravages of time, and looks as crisp as ever. The sound is a wee bit mute here and there, but is overall quite good, and no special effects sounds or dialogue are hard to get.

In short, if you love monster movies, especially giant monster movies, then It Came From Beneath the Sea is a heck of a lot of fun. State of the art graphics for 1955 will impress you when you realize that all of it was done by hand, with teams of puppeteers, artists, and set designers, working their hearts out.