It's Turning the Beach ... Into a Buffet!

September 11, 2010 6:35 AM

Tentacles - 1977 Italian Film That Is a Rip-Off of Jaws. Sherilyn Connelly over at The Dark Room Theater’s Bad Movie Night shares this 1977 Italian Jaws rip-off, with the satisfyingly cephalopadic moniker of Tentacoli (Italian for Tentacles, which it was named in the US). The movie features a host of big stars, plus Sheriff Lobo plus an orca PLUS some very large arms. Yes, despite the film being called Tentacles, arms because the creature attached to them is an octopus, not a Giant Squid. Here’s a montage from Tentacoli, set to the original soundtrack. It’s… not good. There are cheerleaders though. Via: Laughing Squid
posted by Fizz (14 comments total)

The annotations for this particular youtube post are somewhat amusing.
posted by Fizz at 6:38 AM on September 11, 2010

I imagined a cross between Sherilyn Fenn and Jennifer Connelly.

And I was happy.
posted by Joe Beese at 6:58 AM on September 11, 2010 [1 favorite]

I had one of those "funny newspaper bits" books with a tv-guide synopsis. It went something like this:

TENTACLES. 1977. What has eight arms and eats swimmers? Shelley Winters.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 7:42 AM on September 11, 2010 [1 favorite]

I don't know who the actress is right at the top of the Tentacoli montage, but surely she deserved better than this. Oh. Oh, my. I love this music, incidentally.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 7:54 AM on September 11, 2010

Wow. I saw Tentacles at the drive-in on a double bill with Squirm. That was about a deadly attack by earthworms. While enjoying these masterpieces I drank my first six pack. It was Miller High Life, which is to beer what Tentacles and Squirm are to cinema. Good times!
posted by Man-Thing at 7:55 AM on September 11, 2010 [3 favorites]

I feel sorry for the cast and remembered that Joan Crawford's last role was in Trog. Some fantastic early film actors ended up in bad B Movies. They come in two directions though, going up and coming down. And John Barrowman. Three directions then.
posted by shinybaum at 8:01 AM on September 11, 2010

Wow. My nine-year-old self saw this in the theater with my Mom; I recall it being popcorn-worthy for its time. She probably thought it couldn't be that bad with all these big names.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 8:57 AM on September 11, 2010

Goofs for
Tentacles (1977) More at IMDbPro »Tentacoli (original title)
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* Factual errors: Octopuses don't roar.

I like this.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 8:58 AM on September 11, 2010 [7 favorites]

I see someone has put up Peter 'Jaws' Benchley's Beast on youtube.... back in the day I read the book at least three times despite it being such a rip-off of Jaws it even SPOILER climaxes with three guys ('the ordinary joe', 'the tough hunter' and 'the academic expert') going out on a boat to confront the monster.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 9:22 AM on September 11, 2010

When you described it, I thought this would be another American retitling of Devil Fish.
posted by Countess Elena at 9:39 AM on September 11, 2010

Say what you like about Beast, it beats the pants off of Monster or Creature or whatever the one with Craig T. Nelson and Kim Cattrall and the spunky kid VERSUS a half-shark, half-dude thing.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 10:59 AM on September 11, 2010

Release the kraken!
posted by joelf at 11:33 AM on September 11, 2010

Also this look like its remake: The Eye of the Beast
posted by joelf at 11:38 AM on September 11, 2010

Say what you like about Beast, it beats the pants off of Monster or Creature or whatever the one with Craig T. Nelson and Kim Cattrall and the spunky kid VERSUS a half-shark, half-dude thing.

Heh, I've read the novel version of that too (though only the once) and it's slightly less ridiculous in print (the man-shark is a left-over Nazi experiment that almost makes sense) but you can tell Benchley's heart wasn't in it.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 11:45 AM on September 11, 2010