Starring: Doug McClure, Ann Turkel, Vic Morrow, Anthony Penya

Directed by: Barbara Peters, Jimmy T. Murakami    Written by: Frank Arnold, Martin B. Cohen

The Story: This pretty much seals the deal for me. Roger Corman is a genius. His movies....even the ones I don't like...are so perfect for my Infernal needs that he's officially one of the Patron Saints of The Inferno.

Jim Hill (Doug McClure) lives in the small fishing town of Noyo with his wife Carol and baby son. Like most of the inhabitants he makes a living as a fisherman. Noyo is about to be put on the map because Canco Incorporated is planning to build a cannery there, something everyone agrees to as a good thing....except for Johnny Eagle, the local Native American. Johnny feels the cannery will be bad for fishing, but I don't recall hearing any plausible reason from him why that is so. Johnny also has a good shot at stopping Canco. The cannery would violate an agreement about tribal fishing rights and Johnny plans on taking the matter to court. (Just so you'll know, Johnny is the ONLY Native American seen in the movie. I guess its up to the viewer to assume that there's actually a tribe nearby that has Johnny's back. In one scene we hear Johnny talking to other about getting the courts involved, but we don't see them)

Jim is an easy going dude. He agrees to disagree with Johnny and gets along with him. But Slattery, another local fisherman is violently opposed to Johnny having his way. He feels that the Cannery will make big money for the fishermen...and he hates Johnny's guts. Not just because Johnny is against Canco, but because Slattery is a bit of a racist....and like all movie Racists he's got a little gang of goons that do his bidding. Unknown to everyone though, Canco has unleashed a terror in the local waters. Fish Men! Dr. Susan Drake, a scientist working for Canco has been experimenting with DNA-5, a growth hormone, to try and increase the size and quantity of salmon in the area. When we first meet Susan she seems uneasy and with good reason. Salmon injected with the hormone were accidentally unleashed into the water by tidal surges and her research wasn't complete. Who knows what might happen? (Well, we do...Fish Men!) Its well into the movie when Susan explains that other fish...coelacanths, she says....ate the salmon and mutated into Humanoids from the Deep, but we don't have to wait that long to see their handiwork.

The Fish Men are great opportunists. No one knows they exist at this point but they capture and rape women on the beach. I thought that the rape scene at the end of The Beast Within was pretty explicit...but the ones in this flick could be considered almost pornographic if it wasn't for the Fish Men costumes. But trust me, my droogies, there's no mistaking what's happening and there's a fair bit of full frontal female nudity. For some reason the Fish Men also kill all of the dogs on the dock on night....except for Johnny's. (and no one sees them do this, natch) Slattery accuses Johnny of doing this awful deed since his dog wasn't harmed. This causes a brawl at the community dance, but Johnny even points out that he doesn't have to kill dogs to get what he wants. If Slattery had a brain cell he'd consider that. what possible good could Johnny get out of killing a bunch of dogs?

It seems that accusing Johnny of stuff is a local pastime. Slattery and his goon squad blow up Johnny's cabin with some really explosive Molotov cocktails. Jim's brother Tommy and his girlfriend happened to be visiting Johnny at the time. No one is hurt by the explosion (miraculously....either Johnny's place was made of C-4 or those Molotov cocktails had nitroglycerin in them, 'cuz that was a big ass explosion) but the Fish Men attack right afterward, injuring Tommy and carrying his chick away. No one believes Johnny about the Fish Men, however....except Jim. With Johnny and Susan, Jim goes to look for evidence...and they find it! On the beach of a small island nearby, the Fish Men have made their nest. They attack but Johnny and Jim have rifles and start plugging monsters. They also find the nude and barely alive Peggy. Back at her lab at Canco Susan tells our heroes about the DNA-5 Salmon and how the coelacanths have evolved into Fish Men. she also lets us know that they are raping women to evolve more. Yeah, I couldn't figure that out myself, Susan. Well, actually I couldn't....because I don't see how that could work. A freakin' monkey can't produce a race of super-monkeys by doing the nasty with human women...and we have more in common with monkeys than we do with fish. Susan also...and this part made me chuckle...says that the Fish Men are on their way to becoming amphibious. Excuse me, honey...they already are amphibious! They can live on land and in water, and that was blatantly obvious.

With the proof in hand (a dead fish man) Jim, Susan and Johnny return to Noyo to convince the others. At the same time it happens to be the big carnival festival celebration at the docks. As the mayor says "People have come from hundreds of miles" to have a good time there. Well, not just people, Mister Mayor...the Fish Men arrive en masse just as Jim shows the dead body to the people. Carnage ensues! This sequence runs for a long time, too. We see people running from the rampaging monsters, women being raped, and general bad stuff going down. At one point Johnny saves Slattery's life...and we are thankfully not given a cheese moment where Slattery changes his racist views because of it. Eventually the Fish Men are driven off or killed. (Jim dumps gasoline into the water and lights it up to kill them....which is kind of dumb since most of the fish Men are on the land now...besides, they can breathe underwater so all they have to do is dive under the burning gas.)

The movie doesn't explain to us whether or not all of the Fish Men are dead. But the next dawn we get to see the carnage they brought. Not wanting to let the chance to rip off another movie, though, Corman leaves us with the final scene of Peggy giving birth, Alien style. A fish man breaks out of her stomach!

I'm way too lazy to look it up right now, but Susan says that the Fish Men were evolved from Coelacanths. Weren't they thought to be extinct until some fishermen caught one off of the coast of Africa? Am I mistaken about that? And if I'm not, then how did they get to the Pacific Northwest of the United States to be turned into Fish Men?

Best Lines: "You stupid ASS!" - Susan's outburst at Dr. Edwards when he suggests that her theory is wrong...even though the dead fish beast is right in front of him.

 Are you kidding me?

1.) Hmmmm.....after the fishing boat explosion at the start of the movie the sheriff makes an offhand comment to Jim about how some people don't think the town needs to have the new cannery built. Basically he's talking about Johnny Eagle. Jim of course tells him Johnny was no where near the accident but man, talk about going a long way to blame the only minority character in the movie for a crime! Johnny doesn't have even a motive for randomly blowing up privately owned fishing boats!

2.) Could Susan possibly look any more bored at the town party? Its almost funny....you can imagine she's sitting there thinking "Dumb ass hicks and their borin' ass party....stupid ass band playin' hick music...look at these yokels....blech...wish I was in the city right now.....I need a drink....". The only time she looks alive is when the fight starts between Slattery and Johnny.

3.) Good Googley-Goo! Johnny's cabin went up like the death Star from one Molotov cocktail! Where did Slattery get the recipe for those things? Captain Garth? (Fans of the Original Star Trek will get that one)

4.) Only in the movies....Susan goes to rent a boat and the boat rental guy replies "I wouldn't advise it. Not this morning.", so Susan, without asking why he said that goes "Thanks,". Now, we all know at that point that she's about to find out what's going on by the assembled crowd at the dock, but wouldn't a real person ask the guy what's going on? Personally, I'd be pissed with his answer. I'd be like "I said I want to rent a boat....I didn't ask you what you thought about it, bozo. Now here's some money, gimme the goddamn boat before I twist your head off.".

5.) Some people deserve a good smack in movies like this. When Jim, Johnny and Susan find the humanoids nesting grounds the beasts rush to attack them. The first words out of Susan's mouth are "No, don't shoot!". Right. Lady, even if it was regular guy rushing at me like that I'd be busting some caps in 'em. When its an amphibious snaggle toothed Fish beast, there's definitely gonna be some shooting on my part. What the hell did she want Jim to do? Offer the fish-beast a dollar to sit around and pose for her camera? As soon we were outta danger I'd give Susan a butt stroke to the head with my rifle.

6.) I don't get this...the Fish Men display intelligence...they're smart enough to use the cover of darkness...when the attack the carnival they even reason that they can collapse the dock and thus capture more humans as they fall into the water...but when they Fish Man attacks Carol in her house he just stands there while she knives him about twenty friggin' times! Isn't he smart enough to try to move away from her or at least block his torso with an arm? This numbskull just stands there while Carol practically guts him open!

Nudity and Sex: Total female nudity is seen. Several scenes of sex between woman and fish guys occur.

Huh?:

How does the dummy move its eyes while the puppeteer and his girlfriend are being attacked by the Humanoid from the Deep? Its a quick shot and we probably weren't supposed to think about it, but its there and I can't help but wonder. By the way...how many people would bring a ventriloquist dummy on a date? Even if I could use the friggin' thing I wouldn't! The guy already has the girl alone on a deserted stretch of beach, in a tent! Dude, you don't need to impress her anymore if you came that far! If you ain't gonna get some lovin' at that point the stupid woodpecker jokes and creepy dummies ain't gonna help.

Whether its the Community Dance or the big Festival, the people in this town throw some extra boring parties. Before the monsters attack the festival was DOA.

The DJ and the Miss Salmon (you heard me....Miss Salmon) winner deserve to be gutted by the monsters! The attack at the festival has been going on for something like ten minutes and those two are just standing there in their booth while fish monsters run around killing and raping right before them! They could have escaped loooong before one of the creatures gets to them! what were they standing around for?

Man, what was that old saying? Those that forget history are doomed to repeat it? Well, Jim's Wife Carol sure has a short memory. I was going to applaud her for being the only woman in the movie to successfully defeat not one, but TWO fish monsters by herself! But the morning after the carnage when she's with Jim, amongst the wreckage of the festivals and broken and bleeding townspeople she says  "Its all over now isn't it? Everything's okay isn't it?" Lady, the town was just attacked by Fish Men! You have absolutely no reason to assume that there aren't more Fish Men around waiting to come out.

The Final Judgment: As far as monster movies go, HftD is a decent flick. Its pretty much just what you expect it to be. It doesn't pretend to be some blockbuster sci-fi horror flick. Its just an entertaining little scrap. Therefore the devilish audience of the Infernal Theater give it 4 devil heads. Next time you're in the mood for Sea Food look it up.