Director – Oliver Hellman [Ovidio G. Assonitis], Screenplay – Steve Carabatsos, Tito Carpi & Jerome Max, Producers – Ovidio Assonitis & E.F. Doria, Photography – Roberto D’Ettore Piazzoli, Direction of Underwater Sequences – Nestore Ungaro, Music – S.W. Cipriani, Art Direction – M. Spring. Production Company – A-Esse Cinematografica.
Cast
John Huston (Ned Turner), Shelley Winters (Tillie Turner), Bo Hopkins (Will Gleason), Claude Akins (Sheriff Robards), Henry Fonda (Mr Whitehead), Alan Boyd (Mike Turner), Delia Boccardo (Vicky Gleason), Cesare Danova (John Corey), Sherry Buchanan (Judy)
Plot
Bodies are going missing or being found mutilated in the water around the California seaside town of Solana Beach. Journalist Ned Turner blames this is on the contraventions of safety regulations during the building of an underwater tunnel by the construction firm of Mr Whitehead. After Ned consults oceanographer Will Gleason, the real cause is discovered to be a giant octopus. Turner races to stop the octopus as his son sets sail in a yachting regatta.
The massive success of Jaws (1975) saw a number of imitators for several years after. These included direct copies such as Mako, The Jaws of Death (1976), Tintorera (1977) and number of copycats featuring other fishy species such as Orca (1977), and Piranha (1978). A number of these copies came from Italy – including Barracuda (1978), Killerfish (1979) and the notorious The Last Shark (1981). This was an era where Italian filmmakers regularly latched onto international box-office successes and flogged off cheaply made copies.
Tentacles was one of the films directed by Egyptian-born Ovidio G. Assonitis. Assonitis has directed several other genre films in Italy with Beyond the Door (1974), There Was a Little Girl (1981) and Out of Control (1992). He has also produced a number of Italian exploitation films with the likes of Who Saw Her Die? (1972), Three Fantastic Supermen (1975), The Night Before Christmas (1978), The Visitor (1979), James Cameron’s first film Piranha II: The Spawning (1982), Choke Canyon (1986), The Curse (1987) and sequels, Midnight Ride (1990), Sonny Boy (1990) and Red Riding Hood (2003). He also became the CEO of Cannon Films in 1989.
Unlike some of the other Italian films of the era, Tentacles ropes in a reasonable name cast. There’s John Huston, director of classic works like The Maltese Falcon (1941), The Treasure of Sierra Madre (1948) and The African Queen (1952), playing the lead role (and looking sprightly at the age of 71); along with Shelley Winters who had a multi-award-winning career since the 1940s cast as Huston’s wife. Bo Hopkins, a regular B movie actor of the period, who usually appeared as an action heavy, turns up doing the equivalent of the Richard Dreyfuss oceanographer role. Claude Akins, a regular film and tv actor probably best known as Sheriff Lobo on tv’s B.J. and the Bear (1979–1981), is the sheriff. Henry Fonda also appears as the head of the bridge construction company, although for all his involvement and accusations flung in the direction of his character, he gets very little to do in the role – the way his character is set up, you at least expect him to emerge as the villain of the show.
Giant octopus on the attackPossibly one of the most ridiculous images of 1970s genre cinema – a victim’s body being dragged away with the feet sticking out of the water
You cannot complain as all of the above deliver passable performances and are better than what you usually get in the usual Italian knockoffs made with no name actors. Nevertheless, you are left with the impression that people like Huston, Fonda and Winters were the dog end of their respective careers and taking the money from whatever offers they could and heading straight to the bank.
Tentacles churns through the formula of the Jaws copy – the initial isolated attacks; the oceanography expert brought in; the big holiday event (a yachting regatta) that comes under attack; the venture underwater to investigate. All that is missing from the usual formula is the equivalent of Murray Hamilton’s mayor insisting on keeping beaches open. There is also not the extended climactic sequence that Jaws had with the group out on the water hunting the shark/octopus – they do briefly do venture out but this is not a major aspect.
While in many aspects, Tentacles is a competent Jaws copies, it falls down in one crucial regard – the absurdity of its central menace, namely a giant octopus. A good deal of the film is just laughable – like the image of a body being dragged along by the octopus with its feet sticking upside-down out of the water, or the way the octopus’s devouring of bodies is dubbed over with a slurping sound. In other scenes, the octopus’s wake is represented by a pair of eyes prowling through the water. What really does the film in is the climactic scene where two whales take the octopus on and the conflict is reduced to two hand puppets fighting in shadow silhouette accompanied by effects of what sounds like a litter of chihuahuas in a feeding frenzy.
