It Came from Beneath the Sea

U.S.A. / 1955 Directed by Robert Gordon Starring Kenneth Tobey Faith Domergue Donald Curtis B&W / 78 Minutes / Not Rated Format: DVD (R1 - NTSC) Columbia TriStar Home Video

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2008 Special Edition

		Review by Brian Lindsey

6     7   10 = Highest Rating

The most famous bit of trivia connected with this mid-'50s monster flick is that special effects wizard Ray Harryhausen, in order to save money, made his giant octopus with only five tentacles instead of eight. (A quintopus?) No matter. The creature is so wonderfully articulated (for its day) that I'd bet most people would never notice, even with repeat viewings.     It Came from Beneath the Sea was Harryhausen's follow-up to the hugely successful Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (which is finally making its way to DVD later this year). It also signaled the beginning of Harryhausen's longtime collaboration with producer Charles H. Schneer. Together the two men were responsible for some of the most beloved fantasy films of the twentieth century, including such classics as The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, Mysterious Island and Jason and the Argonauts. With It Came they serve up your standard giant monster on the rampage flick, chock full of the usual clichés but made enjoyable by its appealing leads and, of course, that five-armed stop-motion beastie.     The late, great Kenneth Tobey (1951's The Thing from Another World) tops the small, mostly anonymous cast as Commander Pete Mathews, skipper of one of the U.S. Navy's atomic-powered submarines. On a shakedown cruise in the Pacific the vessel is suddenly attacked by a huge, unidentifiable force — Mathews and crew have never experienced anything like it. For a time the sub is held fast, unable to move even with engines racing at flank speed. Finally freed, the sub surfaces and frogmen inspect the damage. A big chunk of some unknown rubbery substance, which is highly radioactive (and never shown to the audience, by the way), is discovered jammed in one of the diving planes. Mathews takes his boat back to base at Pearl Harbor to affect repairs and file a report on the strange incident.     The Navy, keen to learn just what it was that almost sank one of their high tech submarines, tasks Cmdr. Mathews with recruiting top scientists to find the answer. He finds the brains he's looking for in professors John Carter (Donald Curtis) and Leslie Joyce (Faith Domergue), each an eminent marine biologist. The mystery substance seems to be organic in nature. But what sea creature could possibly have a grip powerful enough to hold back an atomic sub? After 13 days of intense lab research — which seems an awful long time for such first-rate scientists — they deduce that the substance is, in fact, octopus flesh. Prof. Joyce theorizes that a gigantic octopus, mutated by atomic testing, has emerged from the unfathomable abyss of the Mindanao Deep in search of food... and mankind is on the menu.     Mathews' Pentagon superiors initially scoff at the theory until a freighter is dragged beneath the waves by the monster and some of the crew survives to tell the tale. When people start going missing from coastal areas in the Pacific Northwest the military begins taking countermeasures, such as emplacing submarine nets to guard harbor entrances. But "It" is a lot bigger and meaner than anyone realizes. Entering San Francisco Bay, the beast makes a shambles of the Golden Gate Bridge and wreaks havoc along the ferry docks, flattening a few innocent bystanders with its massive, writhing tentacles. To save the day Mathews and Carter challenge the monster aboard Mathews' submarine, armed with a specially-designed torpedo. They'll only get one shot... Make it count, son!     Every familiar '50s giant monster movie cliché is on hand in It Came: the silly romantic subplot, an over-reliance on stock footage (some of which is obviously from the 1930s), a strident score comprised mostly of library cues, the pompous narrator, lots of cigarette smoking. We certainly don't get enough creature action, as (apart from the memorable freighter attack scene) our gargantuan octopod only appears during the final 15 minutes or so. Yet the film works as a pleasing trip down Memory Lane — provided, of course, you're old enough to have been enthralled by this sort of stuff as a youngster, one whose whole week was spent in anticipation of a Friday night or Saturday afternoon Creature Features broadcast. (I'm talking way before the advent of cable.) Harryhausen's stop-motion menace aside, the fun comes from watching the always reliable Ken Tobey essay yet another no-nonsense American military man, this time flirting with a lovely proto-feminist scientist. To the film's credit Faith Domergue's character is a spunky, self-assured gal who knows her stuff, takes no guff, and doesn't end up acting as if her PhD is in making sandwiches and coffee for the guys. (Sadly, she's never fitted out in a tight, derriere-enhancing jumpsuit as she was in This Island Earth. And while her Prof. Joyce may be independent and headstrong, she still winds up a sucker for manly Ken in his Navy dress whites.)     Actually, a good chunk of the film is devoted to the somewhat strange semi-love triangle between Joyce, Mathews and Carter. (Yep. Blatant padding at its most obvious.) Prof. Carter would seem to have the edge — Joyce and the sub skipper have nothing in common, really — but he ends up the gracious loser. Almost a benign eunuch, you get the odd feeling that instead of making a move on his comely colleague, the professor is content to let the other two go at it. He'd rather just, er... watch. (Observation being a key discipline of science and all.)

The last of Columbia's Ray Harryhausen Signature Collection DVDs, It Came is presented in anamorphic widescreen (1.85:1) with a digital mono audio track. Picture quality is quite good for a nearly 50-year old film. Ditto for sound, though during scenes aboard the submarine at the beginning of the movie dialog was somewhat muffled and occasionally hard to discern. For the remainder of the show there's no problem. (I believe this is a symptom inherent to the film's sound recording and not the DVD, as there's a lot of whirring and clacking of machinery in the sub's control room. If needed one can always flip on the English subtitles during this sequence.)     As has been Columbia's practice, the same documentary (The Harryhausen Chronicles) and featurette (This Is Dynamation) included on the other Harryhausen DVDs are also found here. A few trailers are offered, for 20 Million Miles to Earth, Mysterious Island and the DVD special edition of Close Encounters of the Third Kind in addition to that of the main feature. (Note: EC's DVD rating of 7 for the disc is conditional on not owning any of the other Columbia-Harryhausen titles. Otherwise it's a "6".) 6/12/03

UPDATE This DVD went OOP in 2007. On January 15, 2008 a new 2-disc special edition will be released, featuring the original B&W film and a newly colorized version supervised by Ray Harryhausen. Extras will include five featurettes (an interview of Harryhausen by Tim Burton among them) and an audio commentary with Harryhausen.

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