Monster from the Ocean Floor (1954)

Julie, an American on vacation in Mexico, spots a giant, one-eyed amoeba rising from the ocean, but when she tries to tell the authorities, no one believes her. She finally teams up with a marine biologist in an attempt to destroy it.

Director:

Wyott Ordung

Writer:

Bill Danch (screenplay)

Stars:

Anne Kimbell, Stuart Wade, Dick Pinner

Cast

Complete credited cast:
Anne Kimbell	...	Julie Blair
Stuart Wade	...	Steve Dunning
Dick Pinner	...	Dr. Baldwin
Jonathan Haze	...	Joe (as Jack Hayes)
Wyott Ordung	...	Pablo
Inez Palange	...	Tula
David Garcia	...	Jose

Storyline

Swimming near a Mexican village that has been terrorized by a sea monster, Julie Blaie (Anne Kimball), and American artist, is terrified when an object rises to the surface. It turns out to be a one-man submarine piloted by biologist Steve Dunning ('Stuart Wade' (qb)). Later an abalone diver vanishes and Julie faints after seeing the monster's eye rise from the sea. Pablo (Wyott Ordung) and Tula (Inez Palange) plot to offer Julie as a sacrifice to their gods. Pablo deliberately attracts a shark while Juilie is skin-diving, but she escapes, and her line snags an object that Steve and Dr. Baldwin (Dick Pinner) establish as part of a huge sea monster.

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Plot Keywords:

ocean | mexico | marine biologist | sea monster | b movie | 

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Taglines:

Terror Strikes!...From Beneath the Sea

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Genres:

Horror | Sci-Fi

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Certificate:

Approved

Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

21 May 1954 (USA)

Also Known As:

It Stalked the Ocean Floor

Filming Locations:

Leo Carrillo State Beach - 35000 W. Pacific Coast Highway, Malibu, California, USA

Box Office

Budget:

$28,000 (estimated)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Palo Alto Productions

Technical Specs

Runtime:

64 min

Sound Mix:

Mono (Western Electric Recording)

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

The original title was to be "It Stalked the Ocean Floor," but the distributors objected on the grounds it was "too cerebral."

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Goofs

As the film opens, and the camera pans to a landscape where "no white man has ever been," at the top right of the screen a car can be seen traveling down Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu, where this scene was filmed.

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Connections

Featured in The Directors: The Films of Roger Corman (1999)

User Reviews

a real fright among the false

I rented this film because the composer was a good friend of my musician father Felix De Cola (who may have played the piano on the score!). It's a silly movie with an absurd monster, but there's a scene around minute 40 where the heroine encounters a shark that had me quite startled. The fish appears to be 2 meters long and its open mouth comes at the camera and then at the girl in several shots. Even if she was an experienced diver, this must have been an unsettling experience. And no, it's almost certainly not an animatronic.

This was a time when the psychotechnology of horror films was developing at its fastest, so you can see how the director (clumsily) tries to manipulate our fears. Crude films often teach us more than well-made ones.

As for the music, there's a distant similarity between Brummer's music and John Williams' Jaws theme, but I doubt the link is real.