The Shark Film Office

Monster from the Ocean Floor   (1954) Dir.: Wyott Ordung TC4P Rating: 4/9 Creatures: shark, octopus, and a monstrous octopus-like thing with a glowing eye. Monsters, nuclear waste, girls in trouble, sharks... some of the essential elements of low-budget "B" movie thrills back in the 1950s. It helps even more if the girl is in a swimsuit and is wet half of the film, and if the monster is a giant octopus of some indeterminate species, and if the giant octopus has a single eye the size of a cargo hatch and the creature glows due to possible exposure to nuclear testing. And, oh yeah, sharks... Roger Corman had all of these elements down already in 1954 in his very first full producing credit,  Monster from the Ocean Floor . The film is clearly influenced by the previous year's big monster hit,  The Creature from the Black Lagoon , and Corman and first-time director Wyott Ordung seem to be taking great pains to try and replicate the thrilling underwater sequences that mad...

A*P*E   (1976) Director: Paul J. Leder TC4P Rating: 2/9 "Imagine. Almost 36 feet tall... wow..."   - Freighter mate on ship transporting A*P*E across the ocean at start of film. You are going to run into this film on just about any "So Bad You've Gotta See It!"-type of site or book... and yeah, it is... and yeah, you gotta see it. Its fecundity is only matched by its stupidity, but in its tattered, zipper-up-the-back way, its actually quite clever. But only if director Paul Leder actually meant the film to be this bad. Could there be a chance that this chintzy, decrepit South Korean production is actually the most brilliant spoof in the history of movies? A film that not only mocks giant ape movies and current movie trends, but does it in the way that most common citizens "think" of or expect giant ape movies to be? Is the entire film a complete put on, and to a large degree, a cynical attempt to flip off the audience (which the big simian does at ...