EL MONSTRO DEL MAR!

 

This is a 2010 release, written & directed by Stuart Simpson

Starring Kyrie Capri, Nelli Scarlet, Kate Watts, and Karli Madden, plus a REALLY big Cuttlefish

PLOT SUMMARY: As the story opens, 3 women of questionable virtue are stranded by the side of a road in Middle Of Nowhere, Australia. We know they are of questionable virtue because two of them are in black miniskirts with fishnet stockings, and even the third one, the bottle blonde who resembles Mary Ann from Gilligan's Island -- well, she looks like Mary Ann Gone Bad. We can tell by the tiiiiiiiiiight outfit she's wearing and the abandoned hoochie-koochie she does on the hood of the car while waiting for help to arrive. Well, a carful of guys does pull over to help them, and at the first opportunity the girls slit all their throats, drag them off behind the nearest tree and drive away in their car, laughing gaily. In other words, they are FISHERS OF MEN, reeling them in for the kill much as other featherless bipeds reel in and kill US.  And for even less reason, as near as I can tell -- they never eat any of the men they kill.   At least when WE reel in some of THEM, we make them into more of US.  And cheer up, ladies -- some of that happens, very satisfyingly, in the course of this movie.

Back to the concerns of the featherless bipeds.  Things are about to get worse for all concerned when the killers fetch up in a little seaside village, where one of them has a friend who owns a beach cabin. They move right in and settle down to some serious drinking after the wheelchair-bound man next door angrily tells them to stop frolicking in the water -- it's very dangerous!  They keep right on frolicking, even roping in the old man's granddaughter Hannah, who has been sent over to tell them to turn down their music. Little does Hannah suspect that the new friends, who get her drunk and take her swimming for the first time in her life, are also on a cross-country kill spree. Little do the murderous vixens suspect that they have awakened an ANCIENT EVIL beneath the waves. WILL ANYONE SURVIVE?

CLIFFIE'S NOTES:

>> At no point does anyone explain why these three gals -- Blondie, Snowball and Beretta -- are driving from pillar to post, killing any man they can find. We see flashbacks of at least one other mass-murder scene and we don't know what set that off, either. We do more or less know that they are planning to continue.  Can it be just for the use of their cars?  If that's all they want, why do they hang them up with chains, pin them to the walls with knives through their chests and snort coke over the bodies?  As time goes on, I understand human behavior LESS AND LESS.

>> Late in the movie we get a brief history of the ANCIENT EVIL BENEATH THE WAVES, by which I mean a determined recruiter who combines the best features of a Cuttlefish and a Sea Snake, but we never get any idea why nobody ever tried to do anything about it other than stop swimming and hope it went away.  Interesting.  Their supposed terror doesn't stop anyone from boating, even fishing. And even though everyone in the village seems to make a living fishing, nobody tries to harpoon, net, blow up, or even photograph the ANCIENT EVIL BENEATH THE WAVES.  I want to repeat.  As time goes on, I understand human behavior LESS AND LESS.  But when it comes to this question, I suspect that some of the locals feel pretty close to, even protective of, the Cuttlefish.  WHO DO YOU THINK WAS FEEDING HER UNTIL SHE GOT TO THAT SIZE?  THE EASTER BUNNY?

>>  As one of the killer vixens points out testily, nobody has even bothered to post a NO SWIMMING sign.  Interesting, no?  THIS CUTTLEFISH OPERATIVE IS DEFINITELY NOT WORKING ALONE.

>> I love the way the old man worries so much about his granddaughter's safety that she's never swum on the beach out back of her house in her life.   He has effectively terrified her into lifelong landlubberdom.  But when she doesn't come back all night from the cabin next door, where there are drunken women gyrating all over each other, he doesn't even check on her. When she staggers home the next morning, smeared with makeup from the other women's faces and puking drunk, he never notices. But when he sees her wading in the surf, he freaks.  Wouldn't he be more worried about her being recruited by a bunch of drunken lesbians, here and now, than he is about her getting recruited by an ANCIENT EVIL BENEATH THE WAVES not spotted by anyone in 15 years?  I understand human behavior LESS AND LESS.

>> The recruiting operative is pretty cool.  She's essentially a Cuttlefish the size of one of the beachside cottages, but at the end of every tentacle you'll find a snake's mouth lined with teeth big enough for an Alligator to wear. Nice and slimy, too. AND she comes on land. Of course, she roars like a dragon. Every giant Cuttlefish does.  I can watch this movie and feel POSITIVE that the Cuttlefish was not built for the movie -- it was definitely the other way around.

>> There's a timelessness about this movie I appreciate.  The cars all seems to date from the early Sixties -- tuna boats with tailfins -- and the killer vixen named Blondie looks like a debauched refugee, as I say, from either Gilligan's Island or an Elvis movie.  The other two look like they got lost coming home from a late night at the Goth club in the late '90s -- coal-black hair, black/red lipstick, skin-tight black outfits, fish-belly-white faces.  The guys in the car who get their throats slit, and the guys in leather who get slaughtered in a flashback scene, all look like toughs from the 1950s, with greased-back hair, muscle shirts and motorcycle gear.  Hannah, the innocent, looks like she walked out of a rip in time leading back to 1975 -- long, flat, straight hair, freckles, and a series of cutoff jeans and country-mouse miniskirt type of outfits.  I hardly know what to make of some of the deleted scenes, when Hannah and the killer vixens painted themselves up like sugar skulls and apparently took LSD.

>> Who wins in this movie?  The fish army!  Half the remaining town is recruited by the Cuttlefish; the murder vixens gain a new purpose in life; and Hannah and her grandfather return to their posts -- they're clearly the guardians of the ANCIENT EVIL BENEATH THE WAVES.

>> Don't even bother asking why a movie written, directed, acted and assembled by English speakers has an Italian title.  I looked at IMDb and it said the other title they've used for this film is simply Monstro!  I understand human behavior LESS AND LESS.

I recommend this one. It was a blast, honestly.