When you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.- Friedrich Nietzsche
Oh, did another movie use that Nietzsche quote already??? Sorry, my bad. It probably wasn't half as good a movie as Creatures from the Abyss was, though. I'm sure of that (I say, quietly and sarcastically, to myself).
Did you ever go into a movie, blindly, and find yourself thinking, "Boy, they sure don't make 'em like they used to back in 1984." only to find out said movie was actually made a decade later? Well, when you watch the types of flicks that I do it'll happen from time to time. It turns out that in '94 those cooky Italians were still crankin' out old-school z-grade sci-fi/horror garbage of the highest order. And always looking for a blockbuster to knockoff like a cheap Louis Vuitton handbag, the spaghetti genre gave us this little gem.
Creatures from the Abyss is to The Thing and Piranha what R.O.T.O.R. is to The Terminator and Robocop. A unintentionally funny little romp through the bowels of bad cash-in movie making. Made on a shoe-string budget, this flick gives you everything you love about bad Italian knockoffs by the fistful. You get the horrendous script, the always-laughable dubbing and all the WTF moments you could ask for.
What it's about doesn't matter too much, right? But, I'll tell ya anyway. This group of college-age kids having a good time out on the water decide to take a wee tiny little dinghy out to the middle of the ocean (dummies!). They forget their gas can on the shore (big dummies!) and, without missing a beat, run out of gas. Well, they soon stumble upon an abandoned yacht floating mid-sea and board her and do some partying and exploring. They find out it was a research vessel studying some weird thought-to-be extinct species of fish. And those fish, it turns out, were munching on some nuclear radiated plankton and mutated into sex-starved and blood-thirsty monsters. Hence, the empty yacht (well, empty save for one chemist suffering from massive PTSD). Do I really need to go any further with this plot summary? Well no, but I'll tell you a few cool things that happen during this "tale of a fateful trip". You get a chick spewing a gallon a radioactive sludge mixed with live creatures, a dude bursting forth with a sea monster out of his mouth and other orifices mid-coitus, tentacle play, crazy sea monster POV, and the best 80s special effects in a 90s movie this side of the original Evil Dead. Top all that off with weird-o-rama gadgetry like a woman on a small TV monitor in the bathroom that, sensually, tells you how to do everything from scrubbing your body to wiping your butt.
If all that doesn't convince you to take a dive into this deep sea world of inept film making, then you must not be as big a glutton for cinematic punishment as I thought. But, I have to say that I did enjoy this flick a lot. Mostly because there is a lot to love. The story is great, the spirit behind the movie making is definitely apparent, and the use of mostly all practical special affects is a welcome relief from the drivel shoveled at us by the likes of SyFy and The Asylum Pictures. I'd put Creatures from the Abyss up against anything that they have released in the past few years anytime. So, if you're a fan of bad Italian ripoffs or just wondering what Stuart Gordon's early 80s film school project would have looked like, take this movie for a lap around the kiddie pool! A sailor's delight be ahead of ye, laddies!
7/10
Directed by Massimiliano Cerchi (1994)
Fact about myself: My favorite seafood dish is stuffed flounder with a white wine reduction. My least favorite is gas station ceviche... tastes even worse on the way back up...blehhh!
