Monster from the Ocean Floor (Blu-Ray)
**The Blu-Ray/DVD from Film Masters of “Monster from the Ocean Floor” was available on February 4, 2025. This is a review of not just the feature, but the Blu-Ray edition. The grade for this will be for the main movie itself; the set grades will be featured in the body.
“Monster from the Ocean Floor” (1954)
These early monster films produced by Roger Corman are take-them-or-leave-them offerings. If you are the type of person who enjoys watching the cheesiest efforts of the ’50s and ’60s in genre, or have nostalgia for the drive-in double features of the time, then a film like “Monster from the Ocean Floor” will appeal to you. If you’re a Corman completist, then this new restoration from Film Masters will be essential. If you’re a normie film watcher, this will probably be a hard pass for you; even by the standards of the era, this one is a particularly low-rent effort from the producer.
The film begins with a woman and a young boy on the beach. Actually, it begins with narration to fill in parts of the story and setting the low budget, and 64-minute running time, aren’t able to show us. The boy is telling the woman, Julie (Anne Kimbell), about legends of a monster in the ocean. We never see the boy again, but the legends stick with Julie as she teams up with a marine biologist (Stuart Wade), who believes her when she sees a one-eyed amoeba coming up from the ocean.
That plot synopsis is basically all that happens in the film. Written by Bill Danch and directed by Wyott Ordung, this is as thin a narrative as Corman ever produced, and it’s one that might be better served with a “Mystery Science Theater 3000”-style joke track above it to hold our interest. This one was a slog to get through, even at an hour-plus. The story is not interesting, nor are the characters. The monster is kind of cool, and the underwater scenes are well-directed, but anything to do with the characters is a snoozefest, and that’s most of the movie. As I said, Corman completists and cheesy movie fans are the fan base for this release.
Blu-Ray Presentation
Film Masters is a great label for this type of schlock, and they’ve done a great job with movies like this over the years. Their work on “Monster from the Ocean Floor” is no different. This film looks and sounds as good as it probably ever has in their restoration here, with no sense of damage to picture and sound. In terms of the extras, we get a great color booklet with liner notes by Tom Weaver; the original theatrical trailer, as well as a newly-edited trailer post-restoration; and a gallery of stills from the film. In addition, we get a feature commentary by Weaver, with archival audio by Corman, and two featurettes- “Bob Baker: From Monsters to Marionettes,” about the puppeteer who brought this monster to life, and “Roger Corman Becoming a B-Movie Maker,” which is an archival interview with Corman about his early career.
Film Grade: D+
Audio & Video: A
Bonus Features: A
I’m glad that I’ve had the chance to watch this film, but in terms of the Corman productions Film Masters has brought to its release table, this is definitely one of the least compelling to watch, despite continuing their strong production record of their releases.
