A little-known piece of history: During the Cuban missile crisis, a Russian sub was downed by American torpedoes, causing it to spill its contents — more specifically, barrels of anthrax — deep into the ocean, thereby causing an octopus to mutate to gigantic proportions.
Flash-forward nearly four decades and an American sub carrying a Russian terrorist-cum-prisoner finds itself being slapped around by the eight-armed beast. Strangely, none of the passengers takes the news with much surprise. “From what I can tell,” says the hot oceanographer calmly, “we’re dealing with a giant sea creature.” And no one bats a freakin’ eye.
The octopus threat actually is secondary in Octopus, compared to a plot thread that has the Russian’s pals hijacking a cruise ship in order to rescue him, eventually culminating in an absurd finale where the octopus mounts the mighty liner and starts whipping the shit outta all aboard.
Directed by Shadowchaser trilogy shepherd John Eyres, this cheesy underwater monster movie is one in which the token minority dies and dead bodies have the habit of “popping out” while live bodies walk by it. The fake rock music seems lifted from that cable series where Emmanuelle was in space.
In an entire cast of no-names, Carolyn Lowery (Candyman) stands out as the oceanographer, mostly because the script gives her three opportunities to strip down to her underwear. She seems a little saucy and ditzy to be an oceanographer, but she does a good job, considering she’s in the movie Octopus. —Rod Lott