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Half-man, half-sea serpent; all thrashing rubber! Filmmaker Harry Essex is at it once again. Yes, the writer of Creature from the Black Lagoon and It Came from Outer Space is once again striking fear into the hearts of ecologists with his stock footage-padded warning about protecting the earth against our own toxic pollution. This time, though, our gill-man is an eight-limbed monster with really intelligent eyes and a supremely pissed-off disposition and its name is OCTAMAN.
It also hides in a Winnebago.
Designed by a young Rick Baker in his bedroom (who talks for about 25-minutes about the making of the movie in the special features), the slimy foam rubber-suited monster in this creature feature walks upright, dragging two useless limbs behind him. He also growl-breathes quite loudly (does he have asthma?!) and is quite clearly operated by a man. Its unmoving mouth is sealed in a scream with a whole lot of sharp needle-like teeth in it. There will be no making out with this beast. And its glossy neoprene torso has two more limbs on each side for a total of eight killer weapons – if only the poor man (Reed Morgan) inside could control them!
You see, when the red-eyed Octaman walks on land – because he must rescue his kidnapped kin against the well-meaning ecologist team of Dr. Rick Torres (Kerwin Mathews, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, The Three Worlds of Gulliver, and Jack the Giant Killer) and Susan Lowry (Pier Angeli, who tragically killed herself shortly after the release of the movie) – the monster simply bitch slaps its human targets with a swing of its out of control tentacles. Hilarious. Eyes gouge out its victims heads due to its strength. One punch! And then Octaman figures out how to stab. It slices! It dices!
Who knew “a squid in a canister” could lure such a threat from out of the depths?! Someone did because when the team returns – this time with a greedy circus owner who wants the creature for his carnival show, a native youth wise to the local legend (he even has a creature concept drawing of it!), and a bunch of villagers from a remote Mexican village in order to call him out – even the RV gets attacked by the pissed off Octaman.
Atomic age legends are rarely this visible. But, truly, that’s the added bonus to plunking down some coinage and picking up a copy of Retromedia’s blu-ray release of Octaman. The eight-armed creature is seen right at the beginning of the movie and then constantly throughout, as a small fishing village – keeping one of its kin in a blue plastic bucket – is its original target before it is challenged time and time again by one of the dumbest hunting teams ever assembled.
Day or night, Octaman is all about killing those who won’t leave it alone and the more unhurried the team is, feeling oh so very superior in their RV and fishing boat, the more chances Octaman has at perfecting his kills. You actually see – with its waving tentacles in the dead of night – the creature (or the filmmakers) learn how to make the kills better.
While crafted in a totally different century, the waterlogged horror story of scientists and fisherman combating a freak of nature remains nearly the same as what came before from Essex – except for the fact that the fabulous gill-man has been replaced with a rubber-suited slimy water goat with lots of flapping appendages.
With this release, which also includes Essex’s follow-up The Cremators (filmed in 16mm for Roger Corman's New World), Octaman has arrived in HD! The eight-limbed threat is real and so are the unintended laughs. Hear, hear, me, me!
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[tab title="Details"]
MPAA Rating: Unrated.
Runtime: 79 mins
Director: Harry Essex
Writer: Harry Essex
Cast: Pier Angeli, Kerwin Mathews, Jeff Morrow
Genre: Horror | Sci-fi
Tagline: Horror heap from the nuclear trash!.
Memorable Movie Quote: "A mutation of sorts that all the characteristics of a human."
Theatrical Distributor: Heritage Enterprises Inc.
Official Site:
Release Date: November, 1973
DVD/Blu-ray Release Date: January 18, 2018
Synopsis: A team of researchers discovers a strange mutation of man and octopus who proceeds to terrorize them.
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[tab title="Blu-ray Review"]
Blu-ray Details:
Home Video Distributor: Retromedia
Available on Blu-ray - January 18, 2018
Screen Formats: 1.85:1
Subtitles: None
Audio: Mono
Discs: Blu-ray Disc; single disc
Region Encoding: Region-free playback
Retromedia presents Octaman with a solid 1080p transfer, complete with 1.85:1 aspect ratio and a Mono 2.0 soundtrack. The film has been scanned in at 2K and is a definite must-own for any fan of creature features. The film is rough around the edges – as it was filmed on short ends – and there’s probably no amount of restoration that will help tune out the grain. Colors are sharp, not strong. Black levels are thick. While this looks to be a naturally-lit film, the location is problematic in picking up some of the audio. Details in the suit are nice. There is a lot of compression artifacts in both transfers but that is to be expected.
Supplements:
Commentary:
-
None
Special Features:
Essex’s follow-up The Cremators (filmed in 16mm for Roger Corman) is also included making this a great double-billed creature feature. The supplemental items include a GREAT interview with Rick Baker who talks about how he got involved and some of the hysterical things that happened during the shoot, including one stunt which caused a whole bunch of trouble for the suit and the actors. In another video interview, the star of Blood Mania, Maria De Aragon, talks about the making of The Cremators.
- The Cremators
- Rick Baker Remembers Octaman
- Maria De Aragon Looks Back on The Cremators
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