cinema history class: humanoids from the deep

Session: Aquatic Horrors, Week 4
Movie: Humanoids from the Deep (1980)
Directed by Barbara Peeters

As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL

Plot:
A fishing village is terrorized by invading amphibious monsters. Hilarity ensues.

Reaction:

In the last post about the cinema history class, I proclaimed Frogs the best killer amphibian movie I'd ever seen. I stand by that assessment, but Humanoids from the Deep (originally titled Killer Humanoids from the Deep) gives it a run for the money. And, as long as we're doing some housekeeping, let me note that I think most of the frogs we kept seeing in Frogs were actually toads.

In contrast to Frogs, which took its time building tension, HftD gets us started with a bang, and doesn't really slow down. Subtlety is largely written out of the script in favor of a construction that resembles the slasher movies that were gaining popularity around that time. I'm not an expert on the subject, but there were a lot of stylistic similarities between this movie and Halloween. And, while we're at it, there was an obvious Alien ripoff moment.

Unlike Frogs, HftD  has the familiar "all hell's broken out and we're all gonna die" crowd scene as its climactic scene, and I'd forgotten how satisfying such a scene can be.

Ratings:

Me: 9

Christina: 9.5 (as the ultimate monster movie)

Ethan: 8

Sean: 3 out of 4