Humanoids from the Deep

I think the movie’s tag line pretty much says it all:

“They’re not human. But they hunt human women. Not for killing, for mating.”

If that doesn’t make you want to see this movie, then there is probably nothing I can say to convince you otherwise. (But I’ll try anyway.)

This film is a pretty uninspired piece of horror, recognizably ripping off several other movies (most notably Jaws, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, Halloween, and Alien, among others) with one very interesting twist. While the Humanoids from the deep do kill all the men (and dogs, for some reason) they can find, they rape every woman they see in an effort to propagate their species of amphibious man-salmon (don’t ask me why). The barely there plot almost makes sense, although at times it’s a little heavy-handed. (In a movie as silly as this one do we really need a serious subplot involving a racial feud between a Native American and the inbred hicks of the town?) It does its job though, which is to usher in scene after scene of Humanoid carnage.

Good points: There is a decent amount of gore in the movie, not a lot, but enough to keep you happy. There’s a nice shot where half of one kid’s face gets taken clean off. There’s also a pretty good helping of female nudity in the movie: a shower scene for no reason. One girl gets completely nude to have sex with her boyfriend before the Humanoid disrupts their party. Half of the girls will be wearing a top when the Humanoid attacks, then there will be a cut and she’ll be running away from the Humanoid, but her top will be mysteriously missing. Stuff like that.

Also, the filmmakers never saw an explosion they didn’t like. Whenever some gasoline would light on fire a giant explosion erupts without any explanation. In one scene a guy throws a moltov cocktail at a house, but instead of fire spreading everywhere, you guessed it, the house blows to smithereens. I half expected someone to drop a glass and then cut to a shot of the house exploding. Fire, fire everywhere.

The ending is also quite surprising.

Bad points: While the directing isn’t great, it’s quite competent. The editing, however, is atrocious. Continuity is also quite a problem (although that could probably be a good thing, depending on what you want to get out of the movie.) The Humanoid design borders on being pretty decent and horribly bad. Their faces are pretty creepy, and their hands are pretty cool, but then you have the top of their heads where you can actually see their brain from the outside (not scary at all) and their forearms are like ten feet long, which leads to all sorts of problems. First of all, because they are so long they sway back and forth like strings are holding them up. The actors seem to have little control over them. Also, because of the arms, the large heads, and the fact that the suits just look really heavy, the monsters aren’t really very fast or scary when they start attacking. I half expected some pre-schooler to start running around punching each one in the nuts while they lumbered around at their tortoise like pace. The arms also seem to be a pain when they have to hump the girls. Because they can’t use the arms to hold themselves up, their sex looks more like laying on top of a girl and wiggling slightly (although that could be Humanoid foreplay, I don’t know). All that combined with the incredibly annoying screeching noises they emit makes you wish they would all just die by the end.

It is a whole bunch of fun cheesy trash though. The first time you see one of them humping a girl your brain just automatically goes “what the hell!??” This is a great summer/drive-in movie to round up the friends for, get them plenty drunk and let the good times roll.

(B-)

[Note: If watching alone, subtract a grade point (or points) inversely compared to how much you want to see the film. If watching in a group, add a point for every person present (two points for every person if you are all drunk).]

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COMING UP: I still have Lifeforce yet to see, as well as my Blockbuster weekend of Unforgiven, Better Off Dead, Carrie, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and La Femme Nikita.