Humanoids From the Deep (1980) Review by MacheteMassacre

Written by: MacheteMassacre

I can't think of another film that really captured my attention like this film has. I'm going to go ahead and say that this movie is one of my all time favourite guilty pleasures. Humanoids From the Deep really has it all! Gore, nudity, monsters, rape, bad plot...it borderlines being an exploitation film and really pushes the envelope to receive attention.

Humanoids From the Deep is produced by the man you love or hate, Roger Corman. It takes place in a Pacific Northwestern town and it's fisherman. Some new salmon cannery is being built by a company called Canco, which experiments with growth hormones and accidently causes the birth of killer, sex crazed monsters. Oops. Anyway, some fisherman, like the racist Hank Slattery (Vic Morrow) like the cannery and cause our independent fisherman Johnny Eagle (Anthony Penya) and Jim Hill (Doug McClure) trouble since they oppose this cannery. They discover these humanoids along with Dr. Susan Drake (Ann Turkel) and try to thwart their rampage on the town's carnival.

Let me briefly walk you through the first twenty or thirty minutes. First, they start with a little kid being killed, followed by the cute little doggy and then they follow that up with monster raping a girl (after it rips her boyfriend's face off)! This movie certainly knows how to capture (or repulse and scare away) an audience. Now, the monsters themselves looks a silly, but I found myself actually liking their long, gangly arms and staggering walk. Got a feel for this movie yet? You get plenty of gore in this film and it looks pretty decent (it was done by Rob Bottin after all). Townsfolk are slashed up with blood spraying, the women are raped and killed. Even the monsters get their brains bashed in and shot. One of them even gets stabbed to death, complete with exposed organs. And the ending will make you cheer for gore...and make you think about Alien.

Although the credited director is Barbara Peters, Roger Corman felt her version lacked the exploitation elements. She refused to shoot more sex, nudity and gore, so she was fired and Corman brought on Jimmy T. Murakami. Other names on the crew is editor Mark Goldblatt and Gale Ann Hurd. Also, the woman who plays the Salmon Queen, Linda Shayne, went on to direct movies herself, like the Purple People Eater and Undercover Kid.

Unfortunately, I had use another resource to get this movie, so I was unable to review the actual DVD itself. I'm not sure if it contains any good (or any at all) special features, but the transter and sounds are pretty decent.

I guess this is what you can expect from the man who produced Piranha. This was shot two years after Piranha and I'm starting to wonder if Roger Corman was watching too much Discovery Channel and wanted to make the perfect killer fish movie.

If you are ever looking for a film that doesn't take itself seriously, but is full of fun and other things disturbing, this is the movie for you. While Humanoids From the Deep is not the greatest horror film ever shot, it is still very damn entertaining.

This is a community member review and not a staff member review. We appreciate and respect the opinions of our readers and are gratefull that they took the time to contribute it.

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