31 Days of Halloween - Day 7 - Movie 2

The Navy searches desperately for a giant octopus that's attacking ships, and finally San Francisco in It Came From Beneath the Sea (1955). I've seen this movie a number of times in my life and there's nothing really wrong with it. It's well made. It has a good cast. Ray Harryhausen's special effects are as awe inspiring as always. For some reason though, I found it really hard to get through this movie on this viewing. It suffers from the same trappings that plague a number of genre movies from this period; unnecessary narration and a really long process before the story gets underway, and once it does, it's just about over. It's military organization vs monster procedural on display here. In order to spread the special effects out through the whole movie we're given brief octopus attacks followed by a long sequence of scenes of investigation, hypothesis, and arms akimbo discussion followed by another octopus attack and more of the same intercut with stock footage of navy planes searching, and ships dropping depth charges on the ocean, followed by more waiting discussion, etc. It does give the movie a documentary like feel, as if this is really the Navy at work trying to take care of this giant octopus threat, but boy is it dull. The scenes featuring the stop motion animated giant octopus are still great though.