Last night, I discovered MONSTER FROM THE OCEAN FLOOR (1954) among the curious free holdings of Amazon Prime. After a mildly rough title sequence, it settled into the best quality I’d seen, having only ever seen it on various cable "public domain" outlets, and I soon committed to seeing it through.
I think Roger Corman’s first sf-horror production still plays very well—not as a SF or horror picture, necessarily, but certainly as a calling card for a new name in independent film production. The story, basically written as a means to get free promotional access to a one-man mini-sub (ie., production value), is really about the power of myths and legends to obsess and fixate us; it even ventures to suggest that everything we think we know about science can become its own self-limiting belief structure. By the end of the picture, the practical, science-loving hero (Stuart Wade) must not only acknowledge the possibility that his new girlfriend’s (Ann Kimbell) belief in the sea monster of local legend is well-founded, but he must literally reenact the myth of Ulysses and Poliphemus to save her from it.
For a picture that’s barely more an hour long, that’s a pretty neat trick of narrative layering: to present a nascent romantic relationship in terms of an essential conflict of world views and beliefs, and having the hero rather than the heroine be the one to capitulate to the other's stronger self and will; its climax shows him taking a giant step outside his core belief in science to literally occupy the realm of myth and legend (ie., his girlfriend's beliefs), and returning to a shared sense of reality in which their previously uncertain relationship suddenly clicks. Also, the extensive underwater photography by Floyd Crosby is about on par with most episodes of SEA HUNT, thus well above the norm for a picture of this kind from this era.
Because MONSTER isn't the scary movie it promises to be, the movie has always been viewed with condescension and even outright derision, but it's a more ambitious picture than it appears to be. Produced for roughly $35,000 (maybe even less), it was sold to Lippert for distribution for $110,000—$60,000 of which went to Corman and put the most durable of Hollywood careers on track. Robert Lippert was reportedly annoyed when he learned that the picture was made for considerably less than its professed cost of $100,000 but the picture ultimately earned $850,000 at the box office. Even today, almost 70 years after its humble release, its cost-to-profit ratio continues to put that of a good many more famous pictures to shame.
Subscribe to Tim Lucas / Video WatchBlog by Email
If you enjoy Video WatchBlog, your kind support will help to ensure its continued frequency and broader reach of coverage.
