And it's this love of the octopus that I brought with me into Octopus 2: River of Fear. Here's what happens: people turn up dead in New York harbor, and Nick, the marine biologist or something, suspects the worst: a giant octopus. Most won't believe him, but he has a few converts, and they are able to blow the thing up (twice, for some reason) before the Fourth of July celebrations.
A friend of mine who worked at a lab that studied marine life told me how her fish were being eaten by something after the last assistant went home at the end of the night. They tried to stay later, or at different times, to try and catch whatever it was, but they still couldn't figure it out. So they set up a camera, and found the octopus they had would leave his tank after the lights went out, sneak into the other tanks, eat all the fish he could, then be back in before the lights were on again. Octopuses are smart.
And this is true for this movie too. The octopus attacks a fishing ship, and sets a bomb on board. At least, I'm assuming he did, because there was no other explanation for the ship exploding. What frustrated me was how he went from being a criminal mastermind, to Grimace trying to steal milkshakes in the old McDonaldland commercials. There's a scene where a guy has a dream that the octopus is attacking a toy of the Statue of Liberty. They should've had the octopus take over the landmark for real, hold the tourists hostage, and threaten to release a dangerous gas that's held in green balls. Then Nichlolas Cage and Sean Connery could infiltrate the Statue and rescue the people. Maybe we'd call it The Rock 2: Octopus 2: River of Fear. Just a thought.
Another great facet of this gem is the use of footage from the Sly Stallone vehicle Daylight. I'm not kidding. I guess looking at it objectively, it's a better use of that film than actually watching it. I may use footage from Cliffhanger for my next action film that takes place in the woods. My buddy's actually using shots from Demolition Man for his post-apocalyptic futuristic thriller, Space Mutiny 2.
This brings me to what's interesting about this film: the director seems to be going for some Ed Wood effect. He filmed it in Sofia, Bulgaria ("Let's make a giant [octopus] movie in Bulgaria, but set it in New York!"; http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0273907/usercomments), yet used plenty of NYC stock footage. It's worse than saying he wasn't fooling anyone: he wasn't trying. The octopus itself is another example. The thing isn't CGI, which is the way most other movie makers in this genre are going. He decided instead to use this big rubbery thing, a la Bride of the Monster.
That leaves me with an interesting conundrum here when it comes to my recommendation. This movie is difficult to mock if everyone at the party knows it's supposed to be bad. On the other hand, this movie isn't as good as say Bad Taste when it comes to bad, camp horror. I mean honestly, I'm not sure it's that great an ode to Ed Wood. As such, I can only recommend giving this a shot if you're with some friends, killing a couple hours, and you see this on Sci-fi. Don't rent this, and don't buy it unless you see it for like $.50. It's just not exactly worth your time, even for an octopus guy like me.
For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0273907/
Looking for more action? Check out my short action novel, Bainbridge, and all my other novels, over at my author's page! Click on the image below, go to https://www.matthewpoirierauthor.com/
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