The Sea Serpent (1985)

Amando de Ossorio's last film, (although he's credited as 'Gregory Greens' for his direction and 'Gordon A Osburn' as writer on the English-language version), The Sea Serpent (1985) would be a poor epitaph for anyone's career, let alone for a director held in high regard for his 'Blind Dead' series.  In truth, though, aside from the four 'Blind Dead' movies,most of de Ossorio's work is fairly routine, rarely recapturing the musty menace and doom laden atmosphere of these films.  In truth, The Sea Serpent is just a fifties giant monster movie, replicating all of the flaws of the genre and offering no improvements in technical terms, other than the addition of colour.  It opens poorly, with a US warplane (represented via stock footage) is forced to jettison a nuclear weapon in the Atlantic, setting it to detonate on the ocean bed in order to stop the Soviets from getting their hands on it!  The whole thing is ineptly filmed, with the budget apparently not even running to US military uniforms - the guys back in the mission control room are all dressed in (scruffy) civilian clothes.  Of course, the explosion inevitably awakens a prehistoric sea serpent, which proceeds to rampage its way through Spanish waters.  I say 'rampage', but rather ludicrously, its attacks are always so small scale that virtually nobody sees the bloody thing, with the only survivors of its attacks not being believed.  It sinks a trawler early on, eating some of the crew, but only the captain sees it and hes accused of causing the sinking himself through being drunk on watch, losing his captain's certificate at the subsequent inquiry.  (Which calls into question Spanish maritime investigation techniques - they never seem to question how the captain's alleged drunkeness could possibly result in the boat's hull being breached below the waterline when in deep waters.  Such damage could surely only be caused by a moving, submerged, object).  

In its next attack, the creature eats a tourist who has foolishly gone to sea in a dinghy after a night in a casino - only her friend on shore sees what happens, (despite the beach being only yards from a crowded casino).  Obviously, nobody believes her and she finds herself locked up in a psychiatric unit.  So it goes on: the serpent destroys a light house but there are no witnesses except the keeper, who is killed, it attacks a boat full of cigarette smugglers, the only survivor being left semi-comatose and barely coherent.  In an incredibly contrived plot twist, this survivor is silenced permanently by the smuggling gang, fearful that he'll tell the authorities about their operation!  Naturally, the disgraced captain springs the American woman tourist from hospital and they try to find a way of proving the beast's existence, roping in a sceptical and ill marine biologist.  By an amazing stroke of luck, the captain's former first mate - who held him responsible not just for the sinking of the trawler, but also the death of his brother in an earlier accident - finally sees the monster himself, when it attacks a wharf (again, it conveniently leaves no other witnesses), joining the other three for a climactic sea serpent hunt.  

Now, the poor script, with its appallingly clunky dialogue, weak chatacterisations and plot convolutions that go to ridiculous lengths to ensure that, while it serves up a number of monster attacks, the authorities never seem to be aware of the creature's existence, wouldn't have mattered so much if the film gave us a decent monster.  Sadly, it doesn't.  Indeed, its special effects look several notches below those employed in the fifties monster movies that it is clearly trying to emulate.  The sea serpent itself is, in the main, represented by what is basically a sock puppet.  Or at least its head and neck are, every time it surfaces.  A larger model is used for when it has a victim in its jaws, but this is no more effective,  While swimming in the water, the model used looks like a child's toy.  Regardless of how it is being represented, it is a pretty lousy looking sea serpent, with bulging ping pong ball eyes and stick on fins.  In truth, all of the film's effects and miniatures work of a very poor quality.  Particularly bad is a scene at the film's climax, when the serpent attacks a railway bridge, coiling around the supports, just as a steam hauled train passes over it, (despite the fact that mainline steam haulage in Spain ended in the mid-seventies).  The miniature train itself is so crude that it barely qualifies as a model, looking more like a toy, an impression reinforced by the thin stream of pale smoke wisping from its chimney.  (This was most likely created by a Seuthe smoke unit, a crude device used by Tri-ang in the sixties on some of its model locos - it was basically an electrically heated metal plate onto which was poured oil, that burned off to produce foul smelling and unconvincing smoke - if you were really unlucky, it could warp and melt the plastic loco body).

Not surprisingly, in an attempt to disguise the poor quality of the effects, all of the monster's attacks occur at might.  On top of that, the film's photography, overall, is dark and murky, although this could simply be down to the fact that the version I saw was an old VHS transfer.  In its favour, the film actually musters a pretty impressive looking cast, including Timothy Bottoms, Jared Martin and Taryn Power.  All, however, are defeated by the script, which simply doesn't give them a chance to do anything other than go through the motions.  The biggest name, though, is an extremely ill looking Ray Milland (this was to be his last feature film appearance), who stumbles, mumbles and growls his way through the role of the marine biologist.  Even though I'm usually a sucker for monster movies, I found The Sea Serpent pretty hard going - I'd had hoped, on the basis that de Ossorio was director, that it might not be as bad as its reputation and might have some redeeming features.  Sadly, though, it comes over as barely competent, staggering through ts ninety minutes, or so, of running time, to a decidedly anti-climactic climax, with the monster getting away!  (The producers were clearly hoping for a sequel).  There's nothing distinguished in the direction, giving the impression that, to de Ossorio, it was just another low budget assignment, to be knocked out as cheaply and quickly as possible.  A sad footnote to hos career.