"Fishmen, Fishmen, Rolly-Poly Fishmen...," or...

At the end of the ‘70’s and throughout the ‘80’s, a strange thing started happening to some B movies.  They started looking more professional.  This had less to do with better artists and craftsmen moving into the B lines than it did with changes in all movies.  As Grade A movies suddenly became more expensive to produce, the budgets of some of their cheaper cousins grew as well, although maybe not as much.  Technical competence was more commonplace, which meant better grades of film and camera equipment were more available. Some B producers like Roger Corman (who produced this one) managed to recruit young talent that would later prove themselves to be master craftsmen.  The previews for several B movies began to look as good as movies with higher expectations.

None of this, of course, would save the movie once the characters opened their mouths and the script began to unfold.
 

Contents

• The Plot
• Hook, Line, and a Twin Engine Sinker
• Mrs. Paul Never Had Days Like This
• I Don't Drink Water.  Fish Have [expliative deleted] In It.
• Some Wholesale and Retail Slaughter
• The Good Stuff
• The Return of the Killer B Monsters
• It Shows a Lot of Polish...
• The Bad Stuff
• ...But You Can Polish Anything
• Omigod!  They’ve killed Nonperson!
• Mysteries of Science
• Beauty and the Rapist
• The Who Cares Stuff
• Notes on the Cast and Crew
• Roots, Shoots, and Other Compares
• The Bottom Line

The Plot

Hook, Line, and a Twin Engine Sinker

One of the other fishing boats goes out, and we are introduced to their youngest crewman, a small boy named Jackie.  He's told to man the winch.  They've got something in the net.  Cut to shots of a mysterious something-or-other thrashing in the net.  From the brief glance of its hand, looks like a refugee from the Black Lagoon.  The winch stops.  It's out of gas.  The skipper castigates Jackie for not making sure the winch's fuel tank was full, and the boy hurriedly tries to refill it.  The something-or-other continues to struggle in the net.  The boat crew decides to move forward, but engine won't start.  Jackie is called aft to help with the net and leaves an open jerrycan on top of the winch engine housing.  It falls and spills.

The rest of crew on deck tries to haul in the net.  The boom breaks and Jackie falls overboard.  He goes under.  Cut to an underwater shot of the net; a hole has been ripped into it.  Cut to a surface shot of the water; there's a lot of bright red stuff.  (I think a lot can be said when the first person savagely killed in a movie is a child.  This has to be said because it's not printable.)  Meanwhile, the man at the helm pops a flare, and that sets off the spilled winch fuel.  The boat explodes.  (We figure that jerrycan must've been a gift from Doctor Who.  It looked like a one gallon can, but, judging from the size of the blast, it must've spilled about fifty gallons.)  Elsewhere, Jim's out on his boat and sees the blast.  He tells his one of his crew to call the Coast Guard.
 
 

Presented in AcidVision (Where Available)	"What do you mean, 'The Smoking Lamp is out?'"

Cut to Jim's home at night.  He's talking to the sheriff about the explosion.  The sheriff (who's name sounds like Hank, but there's only one Hank in the credits and we've met him already) comments this could be bad for business.  Jim's dog freaks, so they let him out.  He runs to some tipped over garbage cans, sniffs around, and wanders off into the fog.  He's following a scent and barking when he is grabbed by a dark human shaped something-or-other with ridges on its forearms.  (And the second focused death in this film is a family dog.  See comment above about unprintable things.)

Next morning, Jim's wife Carol (Cindy Weintraub) sets out food for the dog and calls for him.  When the dog doesn't answer, she gets Jim.  They find slime on the garbage cans, and there's a trail of the stuff.  After following the trail, they find what's left of the deceased doggie on the beach, wrapped up in seaweed.  (At this point, we begin suspect that the killer may be a deranged sashimi cook.)

Meanwhile, Hank and his crew are at the docks carrying in some vital supplies (some cases of Oly).  When they get to their boat, they discover their dogs are dead, and notice that Johnny Eagle's dog is still alive.  (Dogs and children; who wrote this script, W. C. Fields?)
 

Mrs. Paul Never Had Days Like This

Cut to the Annual Noyo Salmon Festival dance.  All the other characters arrive, and we are introduced to corporate types from CanCo, the company that's building the cannery.  (My, what an imaginative name.  If they were from ConCo, would they be building a popular Welsh actor?  Mwahahhaha, ah, skip it.)  The master of ceremonies introduces CanCo's VP Borden and two science types, Edwards and Dr. Susan Drake (Ann Turkel).  Borden gives a (stereo)typical pitch on how good the cannery will be.  And jobs will come.  And the catch will increase; Dr. Drake's research has been about making the salmon bigger, faster, and more plentiful. Oh, yeah, and the trains will run on time.

The party takes off.  Jim talks to Dr. Drake about going fishing.  Peggy and Jerry make out.  (Designated victims?  Maybe they'll show us some pentagrams in their palms.)  Suddenly, the party stops.  Johnny enters with his dead dog and makes a speech on how the cannery will be stopped.  A public spirited extra tosses him out.  Hank goes outside and tries to talk Johnny down while thug holds him, then he roughs up the easy target.  Jim and Tommy jump in and rescue Johnny.  The sheriff breaks up the fight.

Next morning, Hank is in a small launch on a river.  He comes to a landing, but fixes the line to a sapling away from the landing.  A stereotypical musical cue tells us this is Indian country.  He listens in while the (dia)tribe discusses their legal actions.

Cut to Linda (Denise Galik-Furey) at the beach doing some sketches, and, a few yards away, Peggy and Jerry, who are in makeout mode.  (Are they history yet?  Almost.)  Peggy and Jerry walk down the shore, out of Linda's view and oblivious to a big reptilian looking footprint.  (Yet?  Way past due.  These characters are so disposable, we don't clearly find out Jerry's name until this scene, and we won't find learn Peggy's name until much later.)  They frolic in the water, so you get shot of legs in the water, as seen in Jaws.  (Yet?  Must've happened already and we missed it.)  Jerry pretends he's a monster while playing with her.  Eventually (Yet?  Yes, thank God, finally!), some clawed hands grab Jerry by the neck and face.  When he comes up, half his face is gone.  Peggy makes a run for it, but something grabs her by the ankle.  A monster pulls off her top and humps her in the missionary position while she screams.  Then the monster sings that Meatloaf hit, "Let Me Sleep on It."  Nah, but at this point, why not?  Elsewhere, Linda senses she wasn't really needed in this scene, packs up her sketches, and moves on.

Meanwhile, Jim's out on his boat with Dr. Drake.  They get a bite on their fly reel line.  Naturally, they have problems pulling in their catch, and the ominous music tells us it's not a fish.  Dr. Drake takes a several snapshots as the line parts.

Later, Hank's crew is at a bar.  Their leader reports his surveillance results to the others, and explains that Johnny and the others are getting some public relations type lawyers and taking their case to the state.  While drinking a few quality product placements from New Zealand, er, beers, the crew considers doing what may need to be done.  Elsewhere, Johnny and Jim are talking about the cannery.  Jim supports it, and they agree to disagree.  Johnny invites Tommy and Linda to see some steelheads over at his place.  They go with him.

Cut to a tent on the beach at dusk.  An unnamed couple is doing some suggestive small talk with a ventriloquist dummy while the girl strips down.  (Yes, it's about as infantile as it could be.)  Cut to an exterior POV shot approaching the tent.  A clawed hand rips through the tent and the guy while the dummy's eyes roll.  (Mine too.)  The panicked girl runs buck nekkid into the darkness and slams into a waitng slime monster.  (At this point, we'd like to thank the filmmakers for not wasting another fifteen minutes of our time with redundant fake-outs on characters we really don't care about.)
 

I Don't Drink Water.  Fish Have [expliative deleted] In It.

Linda takes Johnny's truck to get help while Johnny and Tommy fetch water to put out the fire.  The ominous slime head approaches.  Tommy hears a noise in the water and shoots a rifle at it.  (Guess that'll teach that noise to behave.)  Hands grab Tommy by the ankles and pull him into the water.  He struggles, clubbing his attacker with the rifle.  (No, he doesn't use the rifle as a rifle; Tommy has no problems with shooting at noises, but shooting at something trying to kill him is right out.)  Tommy manages to climb out of water, and the slimester jumps out after him.  Johnny throws an ax at it and shoots it a few times.

Cut to Linda, still driving the truck.  An unwelcome rider on the truck attacks her with clawed hands.  She jams on brakes and loses the rider.  She drives on, but a shadowy figure is in the back of the truck.  (Either this guy is one athletic puppy or Linda's an idiot who managed to get into a truck without noticing at least two large unwelcome passengers.)  Slimy arms reach into back of cab and grab her.  The truck goes over edge of a convenient bridge and explodes a lot.  (Fuel containers based on Doctor Who's TARDIS technology must be common in these parts.)

The next morning, Dr. Drake is trying to hire a boat while some locals at the pier talk about recent events.  Hank and his Howling Commandos are there, playing along with the conversation.  Johnny arrives with Tommy, who has been seriously injured.  He's rushed to a hospital.  Dr. Drake is taking notes.  Jim tries to organize a search party for the thing that attacked Johnny's place, but he has trouble getting volunteers, particularly from Hank's group.  Dr. Drake and Johnny are the only ones who'll go with him.

The search party stops at Johnny's place.  Dr. Drake jumps into the water and our time is wasted with underwater shots of her wader-clad legs in the water.  She takes a few pictures and announces they've been here.  (Well, duh!)  She deduces it's a nocturnal predator (encore duh) and also notes that, due to its size, it's from the ocean.

Cut to the search party on Jim's boat.  They have line in water.  Jim gets a message; Tommy's going to be OK.  (It's not known at this point, or ever, if anyone knew, or cared, what happened to Linda.)  Jim asks Dr. Drake what she knows that she's not saying.  She changes the conversation by pointing to some caves in the cove, and asks where they lead.  They get into a Zodiac type launch to find out.  On the beach they find (and we get to clearly see) one of the slimeguys, who is definitely not a morning person; he sort of weakly flails his arms at them.  Dr. Drake shoots it with a camera, while Jim and Johnny shoot it with rifles.  Another one of the more active troublemakers grabs Johnny and pulls him into the water.  Fortunately, Jim's a Hollywood style sharpshooter; he manages from several yards away to shoot the attacker without hitting the struggling Johnny,
 

Hank and his crew return with loot after another daring raid on the Artesians.	Hangovers.  You know I hate 'em.

They continue their search.  In some seaweed, they find a leg.  The leg is attached to Peggy, who's still alive.  (By the way, it's at this point we clearly get the character's name.  And if they find the ventriloquist groupie, it's not revealed; but then, she's probably expendable since she's already gotten naked for the camera.)

Back at lab, Dr. Drake is discussing the evolution of the out-of-towners.  They've got gills on side, built for land, maybe amphibious, large brain capacity, hands, and boom mikes.  No, wait, they don't have that last one, but the scene does.  Edwards enters and tells her to hush it up, but she's on a roll and cusses him out.  Later, Dr. Drake shows Jim and Johnny some footage of cell division and such while explaining that tadpoles, with a secret scientific miracle ingredient called DNA5, reach their adult stage much faster.  Then she announces that three thousand of their salmon with DNA5 escaped into the ocean, and it's possible a land capable fish like a coelacanth ate the salmon.  (I haven't seen a coelacanth since Monster on the Campus (1958), but that's another weird evolution story.)  Whatever it is, they've evolved quickly.  They ask her why the things are attacking.  She says it's probably regular animal reasons, like territory and threat elimination. Why the girl?

"It's my theory that these creatures are driven to mate with man in order to further their incredible evolution."  (Liz over at  "And You Call Yourself a Scientist!" has already been informed.  Bad science dialogue like this should not go unrewarded.)  Jim and Johnny collapse onto the floor in spasms of giggles.  No, not really.  They admit their concern with this modern, scientific problem and realize, as they speak, the Salmon Festival is in progress.  And the mayor hasn't closed the beaches.  (Ooops, wrong movie.)
 

Some Wholesale and Retail Slaughter

While all this is happening, we are treated to some tracking exterior views through windows at Jim's place.  Carol has put their toddler in a playpen.  She takes a shower and doesn't hear the DJ describing the mayhem at the festival.  We are distracted by more tracking shots on the house's exterior.  (Just as sharks are attracted to the sound of splashing fish, hideous monsters are instinctively drawn to a house when a female character is either scantily clad or in the shower; it's a trait they share with their evolutionary cousin, the salesman.)  Finally, Carol hears the trouble on the radio.  A monster sneaks up on house, and the toddler is frightened.  Mom comes and gets the toddler.

Back at the festival, a slimeguy rips up the DJ, and Miss Salmon conks the critter on the head with rock.  This seems to work.  (They must be following the basic Romero Zombie Rules of Engagement.)  Some of the other locals begin to fight back.  They dump some fuel on one of the slimy party crashers and light him.  (Yum.  Tuna casserole with cheese sauce.)  Part of the pier collapses and a young girl falls in.  Hank tries to reach down to pull her out, but a monster grabs her ankles.  Johnny shoots it.  Hank jumps in to pull her out.  The critter mauls Hank while Johnny shoots it a few more times.

Dr. Drake shoots a flare into the water, lighting the fuel and a few of the amphibious assailants.  (Bouillabaisse?  Technically, that should have at least two kinds of fish.)  Some of the other locals discover the ichthyological interlopers have thin skulls, and they introduce one to the wonderful world of blunt head trauma.  Others continue shooting the critters.  Maybe the people hitting them on the head should talk to the shooters.

During all this fun, Jim realizes his wife and child aren't there, so he heads back to his house.  Back at his place, the monsters attack.  Carol puts the toddler into the bathroom and grabs a knife.  After a couple of obligatory stalking shots, the critters break into the house.  One of them corners her in the kitchen.  She manages to squirt the fishy fiend with drain cleaner and hack it up with a big chef’s knife.  (Actually, the proper choice for fish in the kitchen is the filet knife.)  Suddenly, it's quiet.  After another series of stalking monster shots with, she jumps the next one through the door, which happens to be Jim.  The monsters have stopped attacking.   No idea where the other critters got to, but we suspect they were annoyed by the second use of the "mistake loved one for an intruder" gag and left.

The next morning, Jim and Carol are at the festival grounds.  It looks like a war zone.  Hank's in shock and is being carried away.  Dr. Drake has gone back to her lab.  Carol tries to convince herself everything's ok.  Jump to Dr. Drake helping Peggy deliver a baby.  The birth becomes a sick and unconvincing homage to the chest-buster in Alien, so we're left to assume this is happening at a CanCo, uh, hatchery.  The End.
 

Johnny (right) explains to Edwards (center) and Drake (left) how he got his head injuries.	The studio audience departs another spiritually satisfying taping of the Jerry Springer Show.

The Good Stuff

The Return of the Killer B Monsters

There is also the conventional wisdom here that prevents showing the monster too early.  It's always good to leave something to the imagination.
 

It Shows a Lot of Polish...

The monster attack scenes, especially at the climax, are extremely well edited.  During the big attack, the response of the locals is credible; at first they panic, then they form a counter attack with whatever they can get their working class hands on.
 
 

The Bad Stuff

…But You Can Polish Anything

Well, folks, this one must’ve been in the icebox for a while.  It’s really sad to watch a well produced movie like this when it sinks in that the script was so far at the other end of the quality spectrum, you can’t even be nice and think, “They probably meant this to be a satire.”

In the effort to translate Ye Olde B monster movie to an audience in 1980, a lot of the charm and innocence was lost in the translation.
 

“Omigod!  They’ve killed Nonperson!”

Although these characters existed in the script only as victims, giving them names would’ve gone a long way toward establishing some sense of sympathy for them.  Trying to play the “false scare” game on an audience who doesn’t know or really care about these people does not build tension; it builds impatient annoyance.

No movie with shallow, generic characters would be complete without the stereotypes of the day.  Let’s see, we’ve got the corporate guys who are going to going to ruin the environment, the dull witted blue-collar thugs, the noble and right thinking Native Americans on a reservation, and the evil scientist.  At least a professional looking woman plays the evil scientist for a change.
 

Mysteries of Science

The centerpiece of this story’s bad science is the idea that the fish men want to be more like real men.  Individuals like Pinocchio and King Louie aside, why is it natural to assume that a sentient non-human would want to be like us?  It may have a philosophical or spiritual appeal, but it isn’t credible science; it’s fantasy.  It makes less sense when an entire species is instinctively driven to do this.  The reason why this makes little sense is in the concept of natural selection, which is a fundamental idea in the theory of evolution.

For the sake of explaining this point, recall that natural selection means this: in the crapshoot of life, some species are going to do better in their environment than others.  The species that do the best in their corner of the environment are most likely to reproduce.  In this context, “survival of the fittest” is not about the best individual, racial group, political entity, religion, social standard, nation state, or economic system; it’s about the species.  It may be true that some extremely successful individuals are more likely to reproduce than other individuals, and this may improve the gene pool toward continual survival in the environment and competition with other species; however, it’s the species that survives, not the individual.

Since we humans tend to think we’re at the top of an evolutionary heap, it would be easy to assume we are at some kind of desired fulfillment of natural selection, a genetic “manifest destiny,” if you will.  Since it’s also an assumption that evolution is always an improvement, this leads to thinking that all species will, over time, evolve to be more like man.  Since the fish men carry magic science genes that let them mate with other species and produce offspring very different from the original parents, the mangled science concludes that the species is trying to jump ahead in an assumed natural evolutionary progression by becoming like humans as quickly as possible.

On the whole, the bogus science in The Horror of Party Beach was more credible, and Douglas Adams’ dolphins in the Hitchhiker's series were more reasonable.

One could be charitable and suggest this is a cautionary tale against genetic experiments and their effect on natural life.  I'm not so easy, and I've already beaten a similar line to death in a B-Note on Frogs.
 

Beauty and the Rapist

On the other hand, the fish men are not smitten by beauty.  They’re rapists.  It’s almost implied they’re exclusively male.  You could rationalize this by allowing there are fish women that look the same as the fish men (not all the monsters are shown raping a woman), or maybe you could say they’re a species of hermaphrodites, but don’t; you’d be doing more work than the writers.  There's also the mechanics of fish reproductive anatomy, but let's not dwell on that here, nor think how that would translate to a visual in a movie.

No, the fish men are the hoard of barbarian raiders found in the dark corners of history.  Suppose someone made a movie about Vikings pillaging and burning.  OK, you say, it’s been done several times already.  Now further suppose they took the time to show the raping (and not the original meaning of the word), and it looks like the rapes are played more for their titillation factor than the victim's horror.  I’d like to think that there would be some kind of social outcry.

One of the fundamental advantages of science fiction and fantasy is that it allows an author to say things he wouldn't normally be able to say.  I question the use of that freedom here.  The Western World is just now getting around to accepting that rape is not a sex crime; it’s a crime of violence.

However, I have to admit that I’m pretty desensitized to most other forms of violence presented as entertainment, so I’ll leave the whole question about the ethics of rape in entertainment to those women who may be reading this.  After all, a woman directed this movie.  If she had an agenda behind authoring a movie about fish men raping women, I don’t pretend to understand it, and, quite frankly, I don’t really think I want to know what it was.
 
 

The Who Cares Stuff

Notes on the Cast and Crew

Doug McClure (Jim) has been in tons of things.  He started in movies with bit parts in the late '50's and early '60's, but he'd be later recognized for his work on TV shows like The Virginian and Search.  In the '70's he started appearing as a leading man in some Edgar Rice Burroughs stories like The Land that Time Forgot (1975, which includes another fanciful kind of evolution) and At the Earth's Core (1977). By the time he made this one, his boyish good looks were on the road to chunky older guy looks, and in this story his character doesn't get to be as congenial as the usual Doug McClure character.  He passed away from cancer in 1995.

Ann Turkel has had an enigmatic career.  She's one of those actresses you'd expect to be in better stuff, but she kept showing up in things like 99 and 44/100% Dead (1974 -- for which she was given a Most Promising Newcomer award), Ravagers (1979), and Deep Space (1987).  She most recently appeared in The Fear (1995).  In Humanoids, she's very professional and straightforward with the amazingly bad science dialog.

Vic Morrow (Hank) will be best remembered for the notorious accident that took his life on the set of Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983).  He'd had several screen credits, but his high point was probably the excellent Combat TV series (1962 -- 1967 -- and he directed some of the episodes).  Toward the end of his career, he kept getting parts as middle aged bad guys, which is what he got stuck with here.

Denise Galik-Furey (Linda) had a mixed bag the year this one came out.  She was also in the remarkable Melvin and Howard and the unremarkable Don't Answer the Phone!  Most of her real work has been in TV serials, like General Hospital and (most recently) Port Charles.

Then there's Greg Travis (Radio Announcer).  Do you want to know more?  He was the war correspondent in Starship Troopers (1997).  (The man does seem to have bad luck during live feeds.)  For those who don't fast foward in between the good parts, he can also be seen as Phil Newkirk in Showgirls (1995).

Rob Bottin (Humanoid, Humanoid creator & designer) has since been in several better projects where he's built some more impressive suits.  He's received recognition for his work on Legend (1985) and for his design and creation of RoboCop (1987).  He picked up a shared Oscar for his work on Total Recall (1990).  He is currently the selected director for the much rumored Freddy vs. Jason (2000?).

A relative newcomer named James Horner penned the adequate yet forgettable music score.  Yes.  The same James Horner who would later write the stirring scores for The Wrath of Khan (1982), Aliens (1986), Braveheart (1995), Titanic (1997), and several dozen others.  Here in Humanoids, you can hear him playing with string and percussive styles that would later be his trademark.

Another relative newcomer, Mark Goldblatt, did the editing.  He had previously done a remarkable job on Piranah (1978).  His sense of timing here is pretty good.  His style became a little quicker and timing sharper as his career progressed onto things like The Terminator (1984), Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), True Lies (1994), and the short attention spanner Armageddon (1998).
 

Roots, Shoots, and Other Compares

The Mysterious Island (1929) – Submarine crew has several adventures, including the discovery of what looks like little fish men.  (I've really got to read that book someday.)

"The Shadow over Innsmouth" (1936) – H. P. Lovecraft story about a visitor to a creepy village and his gradual transformation into a mystical fish man.

Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) – Gill man falls for Julie Adams, and I suppose that makes him like most other guys.  Of course, his decision to start stalking her is probably a bad choice….

The She Creature (1956) – Female crustacian variation of the gill man is summoned by a hypnotist.

The Monster of Piedras Blancas (1958) – Lighthouse keeper tries to bribe a humanoid sea monster.  Slow story, great suit

Creature from the Haunted Sea (1961) – Early Corman effort about criminals creating a sea monser hoax, but then the real sea monster shows up.  Ending played for the weirdest possible laugh -- just about everyone dies except the real monster, who is last seen living happily ever after.

The Horror of Party Beach (1964) – Radioactive waste turns corpses into sea monsters.  Check out that one passing line about the monsters carrying off women for recreational (ree-creational, dammit) purposes.

The Incredible Mr. Limpet (1964) – Man makes a wish and turns into a fish.  This understandably puts a strain on his marriage.

War Gods of the Deep (1965, a.k.a. City Under the Sea) – Fish men invade a small town, but they are revealed to be the henchmen for a group of immortal smugglers.  Sort of an underwater variation of The Mole People (1956).

Creature of Destruction (1967) – Buchanan remake of The She Creature

Spawn of the Slithis (1977) – Mud man with genetic bits o' fish rampages in Venice, CA.  Astoundingly bad.

Screamers (1979) – A fishy variation of The Island of Dr. Moreau with a surprisingly gory prologue.

Zaat (1982, a.k.a. The Blood Waters of Dr. Z) – Scientist turns himself into a fishman and begins carrying off local ladies.

C.H.U.D.  (1984) – Vagrants mutate into what look like fish men.

Humanoids from the Deep (1996) – In addition to his cult status, Roger Corman is becoming all kinds of respectable, and he's been remaking some of his earlier efforts for cable.  This time around, the monsters are explained to be problematic military experiments.  Hmmm, Shock Waves (1977), anyone?
 
 

The Bottom Line

Published 7 September 1999