So I had just seen 'The Thing with Two Heads'
starring old timer and former Academy Award Winner, the late
Ray Milland, and I knew Ray had made some really bad movies in
his later years but I was pretty sure that I had seen the
worst of those in 'The Thing with Two Heads'. Imagine my
shock and sadness to find out that I was wrong. No sir,
near the very end Ray showed up in this film, director Armando
D'Ossorio's 1984 crapt-epic, 'The Sea Serpent'.
Ray would pass away not too long after this movie, and while
I'm not going to lay the blame on 'The Sea Serpent' for
killing Ray Milland, I mean the man was 81 years old, but I
don't think it helped.
Some U.S. pilots are doing some nuke testing over some
ocean. That in itself is pretty odd, but even odder, at
least to me, was that one of the fighter pilots was
Jamaican. Now I'm not saying that Jamaican's can't fly
jets and stuff, it just seemed strange to see a Jamaican
dropping nukes over some ocean. Apparently the Ruskies
are aware of our test so our pilots have to dump and detonate
the nuke in the ocean. Yes, this seems like the absolute
height of irresponsibility, but we had to wake up the sea
serpent somehow, and now he's up and he's hungry. Now I
seriously can't recommend that anybody see this movie, but
dear God in Heaven is the sea serpent awesome! I mean
it's like the worst designed monster in any monster movie
ever. Yongary can finally rest easy now.
Now we meet our films star as played by Timothy Bottoms, whom
I'm told looked to have a bright career in front of him at one
point. Oh well. Today Mr. Bottoms is Pedro Fontan
because nothing says 'Spanish National' like watching Timothy
Bottoms in a skull cap. Pedro is the shamed captain of a
fishing boat… do you understand this…he's the shamed captain
of a freaking fishing boat! No one wants to let this guy
steer a boat to catch fish. He's a loser like no other,
this guy. Nonetheless, the owner has no choice but to
let Pedro do his thing because there are no other captains
available. Also note that this boat lost its first catch
because the fish were glowing. Apparently that's
bad.
Sure enough, Pedro's boat is attacked by the
sea serpent and most everybody dies except for Pedro and
Linares (Jared Martin) who hates Pedro because he killed his
brother. Kind of. Not really. We're not
going to get into it. And Linares didn't see no gatdamn
monster! Pedro is taken to trial and now the world's
most pathetic fish boat captain isn't even allowed to do that
mundane task anymore.
Next we meet Margaret (Taryn Power) who's at the casino with
her lousy friend who is gambling all of Margaret's money
away. Then this friend jumps in a boat and is eaten by
the awesome sea serpent. Margaret saw this, plain as
day, but sea monsters don't exist so they put her in the
looney bin. Mental note: Spaniards will put you in
the looney bin for almost no reason.
Pedro has discovered Margaret and logically figures that she
can support his story. Make sense, because people often
listen to lunatics locked away in sanitariums. But
where's Ray Milland? Well, after Pedro breaks Margaret
out of the crazy joint, we need to speak to a sea monster
expert, and that would be Dr. Wallace. Dr. Wallace
believes these loons and he has a plan. Better yet, even
Linares is on board because he saw the sea serpent eat a
homeless dude. What's up with that Sea Serpent?
Now Dr. Wallace's plan, as far monster killing plans go… is
terrible. In fact, and this is spoiler, it totally
doesn't work. At all. The sea serpent just goes
away, with Dr. Wallace theorizing that it will probably show
up in Brazil someplace in couple of weeks and terrorize them
instead. This is followed by Pedro and Margaret running
down the beach kicking up water in happy joy. Then the
credits roll. Now I get that they're happy and all that
the monster is gone, that's cool, but maybe somebody should
place a collect call to Brazil and let them know they got
issues coming their way. I'm just saying.
I saw this one for free on You Tube, and I think it's totally
legal since it would've been long taken down by now, but it is
still there. So if you want to see it… just throwing
that out there. The thing is, while this movie is
absolutely awful from its first frame to the bitter last
frame, horrible acting, horrible voice dubbing, terrible
pacing, and special effects that seemed closer to 1924 than
1984, but the monster was so devastatingly awesome that its
existence alone almost makes this must see TV. In fact,
the sea serpent might just be my favorite movie monster
ever. Gamera is weeping somewhere, but Gamera wasn't
made from socks, ping pong balls, spray paint and broken
glass. And they built close to a life size version of
this thing, at least big enough so people could fit in its
mouth. Somewhere on the planet Earth that monster is in
a warehouse, and I'm looking forward to bidding on it.
We watch a lot of bad movies here at the FCU, by design no
less, and you will be hard pressed to find one worse than 'The
Sea Serpent'… but that monster… oh… I gotta have it.
