Creatures From the Abyss (1994)

Made at a time when Florida was the location of choice for Italian exploitation film makers, (clearly there were tax breaks and/or brown envelopes full of cash changing hands), Creatures From the Abyss (1994) shares with those films a superficial glossiness and slickness that aims to hide both the movie's limited budget and its Italian origins.  The film tries to make the most of its budget but confining most of the action to an apparently abandoned yacht stumbled upon by a group of young people who find themselves adrift in a dinghy during a storm.  While such a confined, potentially claustrophobic environment should be ideal for building tension and suspense, most of the interiors are so brightly lit that they dissipate any hint of a menacing atmosphere.  They certainly don't help the film sell its main plot point - that the characters are being stalked by a fish.  Yeah, a murderous fish that can live out of water and wander around a yacht killing people, (it has already dispatched the crew).  Try as it might, the film just can't get over the utter ludicrousness of this fundamental story idea.  Even keeping the creature unseen for most of the film, instead relying upon fish-point-of-view shots to convey its stalking around the boat, the whole thing still seems ridiculous.  But Creatures From the Abyss piles on the lunacy as, after a slow start, it eventually frantically rushes toward an utterly bonkers finale involving people, infected by fish bites and radioactive plankton, turning into murderous fish creatures, with fish heads, fins and even pincers erupting from their bodies.

Creatures From the Abyss was clearly inspired by the likes of Piranha (1978) and Humanoids From the Deep (1980), with its tale of deep sea fish mutated by contaminated plankton into mutant killers with a penchant for molesting women.  Unfortunately, the film is too bogged down by lengthy scenes devoted to exposition - mainly involving one of the characters reading journals and computer records left by the crew - for the idea to be properly developed.  A lot of this exposition is quite unnecessary - it is surely obvious from the outset that the abandoned yacht was a secret oceanographic lab studying deep sea fish, after all, it has a well equipped lab full of exotic fish pickled in jars.  But it persists in wasting running time on interminable arguments between the two male characters as to whether it is drugs lab or a scientific lab - it creates conflict, but doesn't move the plot forward.  The script also has a tendency to keep introducing elements which turn out to be cul-de-sacs plot wise, most notably the revelation that the chief scientist on the yacht, (the only survivor of the crew, found hiding in a locker), was some kind of fish fetishist!  To be fair, this does result in possibly the most lunatic exchange of dialogue in a film full of bad dialogue:  "Professor, how long have you been fucking fish?", which garners the reply "They were old enough".

So, is there anything good about Creatures From the Abyss?  Well, despite the atrocious dialogue and poor dubbing, it does have some plus points.  The production design is quite striking, specifically with regard to the sets for the yacht's lab and living quarters. They might be over lit, but their gleaming modernity provides a stark contrast with the vessel's hold and engine room.  Their incongruity in the context of a boat at sea also helps, upon their initial appearance, to upend audience expectation and create a feeling of disorientation.  Unfortunately, the film fails to build on this.  The movie also includes some stop motion animation effects which, for a low budget film, are quite impressive.  Not especially convincing, but impressive nonetheless.  That said, one particular effect is laugh out loud bad: a fish being used as an experimental subject in the lab breaks free and attacks various cast members, quite literally swimming in the air, before it is beaten to death.  Utterly insane.  The make up effects which see various cast members transforming into fish creatures are quite well done and the gory mayhem that ensues borders on the surreal.  Particularly memorable is the transformation of a male character into a fish thing while he has sex with one of the girls, resulting in her quite literally being fucked by a fish.  (How envious the fish fetishist professor must have been).  This startling sequence eventually yield another bizarre sequence where the impregnated girl starts to spawn fish eggs.  (Actually, the way the scene is shot, at times it looks as if she is squatting on the deck taking a humongous dump).

There can be no argument that Creatures From the Abyss is a terrible film.  Not surprisingly, in view of the awful script and worse dubbing, the acting performances are uniformly poor, with poorly drawn characters that never rise above the level of stereotypes: the two bikini clad blonde girls are airheads, the dark haired one who keeps her clothes on is the sensible one, while the guy with glasses is an intellectual and the one without glasses a priapic narcissistic  jock.  But, with its insane plot and even more lunatic visuals, Creatures From the Deep is hugely enjoyable in an undemanding sort of way.  It is an excellent late night movie experience combining lots of unintentional laughs with some reasonably effective gore and even a bit of nudity.  I'd urge everyone to watch it if the opportunity arises.