Humanoids from the Deep |
  • USA • 1996 • 86m •   • Directed by: Jeff Yonis. • Starring: Emma Samms, Robert Carradine, Justin Walker, Mark Rolston, Danielle Weeks, Clint Howard, Kaz Garas, Warren Burton, Bert Remsen, Barry Nolan, Barbara Niven, Season Hubley, Greg Travis. • Music by: Christopher Lennertz, Ben McCain.    While a town is in a state of alert, the monster of the sea keeps mutating the townspeople at an alarming rate. A researcher finds a genetic disorder that has been caused by a chemical that has been dumped into the water that has caused the creature to have an alarming appetite.
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Review:
Written & directed by Jeff Yonis this was a made-for-cable TV remake of Humanoids from the Deep (1980), both were executive produced by Roger Corman. The script changes a few things & not for the better, for a start it brings in the obligatory teen cast, it cuts out all the gore, rape & exploitation from the original & introduces the clichéd army involvement & secret Government experiments as an explanation for the origins of the sea monsters, what I want to know is how Emma Samms kept a straight face as her character explained to Wade that these sea monsters are in fact death-row prisoners whose DNA had been mixed with that of a fish to try & create an amphibious soldier! This short passage of dialogue has to be heard to be believed, extremely silly & funny sounding stuff. It's a much smaller scale film, in the original it really felt like the whole town was under attack but in this there are only a few basic character's, the introduction of the army doesn't help & I just thought it was a step down from the original on every level. Having said that it moves along at a fair pace, the basic story of raping sea monsters is still the same & if you don't expect too much it provides a fair amount of fun & entertainment.
Director Yonis does a pretty decent job & it looks slightly better than the average TV film, there isn't much in the way of scares, tension, shocks or atmosphere. To save money this uses footage from the 1980 original particularly during the scene set in the funfair, it comes as no surprise that our heroes are nowhere to be seen when all the carnage is taking place as they are seemingly stuck in a funhouse as the sea monsters attack outside, this footage is badly edited into the main feature & looks out of place. The gore is severely toned down, a ripped off arm, an Alien (1979) rip-off monster birth sequence & a guy with one leg missing is about as nasty as it gets. No nudity this time either.
Technically Humanoids from the Deep is alright, it was obviously made on a low budget. The monsters themselves look like men in rubber suits because that's what they are although they don't look too bad. The acting was pretty bad.
Humanoids from the Deep the remake is not as good as the original in any way but when all said & done I thought it was OK, it certainly passed the time harmlessly enough. Probably just about worth a watch but nothing overly special.
Review by poolandrews from the Internet Movie Database.
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