Read article MARE TENEBRARUM: Kinometry the depths of the sea? Meet its sequel!
The oceans full of dangerous creatures, from tiny invertebrates deadly poisonous to giant sperm whales. Many of them are embodied in adventure, sci-Fi movies and, of course, chinkororo. Of course, not all creations of mother nature equally “cinematic”. For example, poisonous jellyfish kill almost two times more people than sharks, but movies with man-eating sharks are released annually in several pieces, and a number of paintings where there are dangerous jellyfish, can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Or, for example, clam poisonous cone armed with a thorn dipped in a neurotoxin. Do you remember one movie where there is this deadly creature? Unlikely. Or, for example, a small grupocoltel octopus? Either. But the most dangerous poisonous creature! But his brother is in General harmless, the giant octopus appears in many stories. For a huge octopus, trying to stifle divers with their tentacles, where colorful.
In addition, modern survey equipment and techniques have made the underwater world of the ocean depths closer to the ordinary viewer, and now virtually everyone knows that the “blue continent” inhabited by mysterious, not monsters, but ordinary animals. Beautiful, imaginative, sometimes very dangerous but animals. Such natural creations as we are.
Therefore it is not surprising that the filmmakers consistently inhabit the waters of the oceans with unprecedented creatures of enormous size, terrible appearance and fierce disposition. Let us again dive into the eternal darkness of the marine depths and meet face to face with the monsters that live there by the will of their creators-writers.
The first movies about monsters emerging from the depths of the sea appear in 50 years. These include “the Beast from the depth of 20,000 fathoms.” by Eugene Lurie (in Russian, the name is often translated as “Monster from the depth of 20,000 fathoms”). The film is notable for the fact that it is the first in the history of world cinema the appearance of a monster was to test nuclear weapons. Two years after “the Beast”, in 1955, there is “Phantom at a depth of 10,000 leagues” Dan Miller, and in 1959, with a light hand Lurie from the depths to the screens emerges Pliosaur in the film “Behemoth, the sea monster”.
The eighties (or rather, 1989) gave us some wonderful films about the underwater monsters. The first thing to mention “the Abyss” by James Cameron. Despite the view of some critics that this painting is not up to kameronovskoy other creations of the same period, “Terminator” and “Aliens”, the film is a true masterpiece, a solid alloy of science fiction and Thriller. Yes, intense and scary moments there. However, to disassemble it “the Abyss” in this article, we will not. Though, because there’s no monsters as such. The scariest monster “Abyss” – the man himself.
In parallel with the film Cameron in 1989 in rolling out two more of the film – “Leviathan” George pan Cosmatos and “Deep Star 6” Sean Cunningham. The older generation of fans of the genre are undoubtedly familiar with both tapes, and the young generation, I hope, will be interested and will watch both. The plot of a classic: in fact, in another film, the divers are faced with the unknown monster, which has killed almost all members of the team, and she undersea station is destroyed.
In “Leviathan” the origin of the monster is a bottle of vodka was found on Board the sunken Soviet ship. All prodemonstrirovala this national drink ill strange disease, expressed in the appearance of itchy spots on the skin, weakness and an elevated temperature. The disease leads to death of several people, and then comes the worst their bodies begin to live a second life, merge together and the light appears a terrible monster that carries the traits of deep sea fish and humans.
In the “Deep Star” a monster emerges from a huge cave, the vault of which accidentally destroyed the builders of the underwater missile base. The creature vaguely resembles a cross between Rakauskiene and the crocodile: he’s got a long flexible jointed body, three-toed claws and tricuspid mouth as Griboedov of “Trembling earth.”
As you can see, both movies were made on the patterns of “Alien” by Ridley Scott and “the thing” is John carpenter. Of course, to call them masterpieces of the language does not turn, primarily due to the same type of predictable stories. But they are made in good faith, the special effects and now, almost thirty years later, look decent, and the main task of any horror film is to keep the tension and scare at the right moment – doing great.
At the turn of the 80s and 90s came another film about the collision of people with underwater monsters already mentioned in the previous article “Deep dive” Juan P. Simon. Here the crew of the submarine, “Siren II”, going in search of another missing submarine, faced with all sorts of creatures of genetic engineering, one of which is a colossal carnivorous algae that threatens the security of the entire underwater vessel. Unfortunately, a simple cheap special effects, ridiculous dialogue and a General absurdity of the plot is unlikely to make you want to watch this movie twice. But, judging by the comments online, many watched this movie in childhood, during the reign of the salons and ozvuchek Leonid Volodarsky, and in this category of “Dive” is a warm nostalgic feelings.
The last decade of the twentieth century was marked by an exit on the wide screen sci-Fi action/Thriller “rise from the depths”. The film received negative ratings from critics, I think, completely in vain, because it has all the necessary ingredients: the bandits who wish to Rob the biggest and most luxurious cruise liner, a couple of good guys (the team hired by the bandits of the boat), the ship “Argonavtika”, a mysterious desolate beauty, the thief, performed by Famke Janssen and, of course, a monster. Monster there is a luxury: something kind of monstrous octopus with a fanged mouth and lots of tentacles, each of which ends with one more mouth. The tentacles are omnipresent. They penetrate all the nooks and crannies, grab people, and then the soft tissue of the human body digested in the stomach of the monster. The skeletons, the monster burps like the owl, the burping fur and bones eaten by mice. And yet the film is remembered for its finale: the ship exploded along with the monster, the hero and heroine escape on a jet ski, landed on a desert island, it would seem, on it all… but no! Starts a volcanic eruption, you hear a thunderous roar, and we see how shaken and broken trees in the way of someone bursting out of the jungle…
“Rise from the depths” was released in 1998, the same year television introduced viewers to “the Creature of Peter Benchley,”. The three-hour film by Stuart Gillard based on the novel by Benchley, great White shark and talks about the monstrous hybrid of man and the great white. Monster launched a mad scientist using genetic engineering techniques (in the novel created by the Nazis back in WWII). He looks like a bipedal humanoid creature with a triangular shark fin and shark same mouth. The creators of the make-up effects worked wonderfully, the creature was really scary, but the film itself is satisfactory. Obviously, the negative role played by the limited budget.
All the above kilometrov share one thing – they are nameless. But there is a category of monsters that not only have names, but wander from movie to movie, from plot to plot.
One of these monsters is the Kraken. It is considered that the prototype of this creature in Norse mythology was a giant squid (Architeuthis dux), as I mentioned in a previous article. The name monster is probably derived from the ancient Swedish “krake”, which can be translated as “the stump of a tree with branches.” The first who compiled the folk stories about the Kraken, was a Danish naturalist Erik Pontoppidan, Bishop of Bergen (1698 – 1774). According to him, this is a huge sea creature, the size of the whole island, able to embrace his limbs and drag into the depths of a ship. The existence of the Kraken not be questioned among the scholars of the eighteenth century, so that even the great Carl Linnaeus included it in his system of nature (though the second edition of the “Systema Naturae” the monster was still excluded).
With Kraken, we meet in the”Battle of the titans” (1983, dir. Desmond Davis and remake 2010, dir. Louis leterrier), where he presents the incredible size of the giant with tentacles instead of hands, he that doeth the will of the gods of Olympus. In the second part of “Pirates of the Caribbean” he’s a major nightmare of captain Jack Sparrow. In “Pirates” Kraken has a more familiar appearance. In fact, that giant squid, enlarged to the size of the monster, able to put on the bottom of a three-masted ship. And he had the stinking funnel-shaped mouth, studded with teeth.
Speaking of sea monsters, it would be inexcusable to forget about kaiju.
The most famous of kaiju is of course Godzilla. The image of a huge lizard, with regularity, turning in the ruins of Tokyo, is so popular that movies about him come out in Japan since 1954. In 2016, came out of the thirties (and, of course, not the last) movie of this monster. Also well known and two American adaptation. In the film, Roland Emmerich (the one with Jean Reno) Godzilla tried to give scientific explanation, making it a giant mutated marine iguana. It was a bad decision, because in the original tradition, Godzilla is not an animal, and the embodiment of the destructive forces of nature. He has no need of food, spews flame from its mouth, the molten lava doesn’t hurt it. The film 2014 this has been corrected. A curious fact: from film to film size of Godzilla increases. If in 50 years the lizard reached a height of 50 meters and weighed approximately 20 000 tonnes by the beginning of this century, grew to 118 meters and “gained” almost five times – up to 90 000 tons!
It should be noted that Godzilla isn’t the only kaiju movies which were filmed outside of Japan. In 1961, as a response to Japanese cinema, screens out the film “Gorgo” is already known to us by eugène lourié. Gorgo – a cross between a huge lizard and a monstrous turtle, but he’s only a cub, but his mother is an Ogre is a monster in the best traditions of kaiju films. It is huge, obsessed with destruction and impregnable even to artillery.
And of course not to mention “Pacific rim” Guillermo del Toro, where the kaiju are presented in all their destructive glory. Unlike the Japanese movies, monsters del Toro do not act independently, and, in fact, being artificially created organisms, only carry out the will of the owners the aliens from another dimension. And five years earlier released the iconic movie “Cloverfield”, produced by JJ Abrams, which emerged from the depths of the Atlantic hideous creature turns into a pile of ruins of Manhattan. The uniqueness of the film in that it is a classic story about a kaiju filmed in the mockumentary style from the perspective of the bystander.
By the way, the question of the reality of the existence of kaiju from the point of view of physics has been raised repeatedly in popular scientific literature and periodicals. He was addressed by such eminent science communicators like Michio Kaku and Neil Degrasse Tyson. So, the conclusion is clear: if Godzilla and others like him were creatures of flesh and blood, their body instantly collapsed under the force of gravity, turning to the huge pile of guts and bone fragments, as soon as they make the least step from sea to land. So, you can take a breath of relief: even if the sea suddenly found a hundred-meter lizard, crawl ashore and destroy the port city she couldn’t make it. However, there is one “but”: as I wrote three paragraphs above, these kaiju are animals not monsters. And the monsters do not have to obey the laws of this world…
All the same, kaiju, no matter how improbable they may be, being quite tangible (though their nature is not quite clear), having a certain shape, height and weight. But in the vast seas in the dark depths of the sometimes the essence is invisible and intangible.
The manifestations of supernatural evil face hunters underwater treasure in the movie, Jean-Claude Dubois and Ouen Crawford “from the abyss of Evil” (year again 1989. Oh, and fruitful for underwater horror was the year!). A wonderful film by David TUI’s “Depth” (2002) the crew of a U.S. submarine stalking vengeful Ghost of a captain murdered his own crew. “Ghost ship” shows us a demon, luring lovers of easy pickings for a missing 60-ies of the Italian liner in order to capture their souls.
Supernatural entities, who have chosen the ocean of their possessions, for some, can be monsters, but for other gods. I’m talking about created by the imagination of H. p. Lovecraft the Great old ones – Dagon, and Cthulhu. With Dagon we meet in the film, Stuart Gordon, 2002, entitled “Dagon”. Admirers GFL know that the film is not an adaptation of the story “Dagon”, a free interpretation of another story – “Wraith over Innsmutom”. Deity itself show on the screen for only a couple of seconds, and the viewer has time to notice that it is black, slippery, with lots of tentacles. But the audience in detail to consider the transformation of the bodies of the villagers, embarked on the path of worship this monster: they gradually lose their human traits, the ability to walk and to speak articulately, but acquire the ability to live under water, their arms and legs turn into tentacles and claws, the gills are formed. The movie is a kind of happy ending: the main character also ceases to be human, but remains alive, and even takes on new meaning of its existence. Yes, the film is imperfect. It can be blamed for the cheap special effects and frankly rubber make-up, but among the many adaptations of the work of the master this is one of the best. However, you may not agree with me.
“The Call Of Cthulhu” (2005) Andrew Lyman. Small (less than 50 minutes), black-and-white silent film is almost a literal adaptation of the eponymous story, 1927. The film was shot as it could be withdrawn in times of Howard Phillips. For a wide range of audiences it can hardly be recommended, but everyone for whom the name Cthulhu is not just an obscure combination of letters, probably, should spend an hour of your life watching this film.
Well, as someone said (I think it was Kozma Prutkov), it is impossible to grasp the immensity, and, of course, the genre and segment of the world of cinema, devoted to the underwater creatures is not limited to given in the article a modest list. Fans of trash horror can recommend the works of studios, The Asylum and SyFy cable channel: “Two million years later” (aka – “Mega shark vs giant octopus”), “Mega shark vs cricosaura”, “Moby dick: the hunt for the monster”, “Attack the two-headed shark”, “Bermuda tentacles” , etc. If you are interested in movies about undersea monsters in General (not only sea) the must see is “the Creature from the Black lagoon” (1954). The story of the terrible habrachelovek, a sort of sinister Ihtiandra living in the Amazon, has long been a classic of chinkororo. No wonder Stephen king in “Danse macabre” was devoted to this film than one page. There, in the Amazon and its many tributaries, stalks his victims, a monstrous boa constrictor (Anaconda). A monster with a long neck and small head hiding in the depths of the Scottish Loch ness… Maybe a plesiosaur? It seems that excesses in the leader of Soviet film distribution in the mid-80s – Japanese film “Legend of the dinosaur”? In rivers, lakes and the labyrinth of the city sewer is inhabited by huge crocodiles and alligators (“Crocodile killer”, “Lake of fear”, “Primal evil”, “alligator”), and even obscure creatures like in the Korean “Invasion of a dinosaur”. And what only there were no monsters in the underwater caves! For example, prehistoric piranha (“Piranha 3D”, 2010 and “Piranha 3DD”, 2012) or unknown parasites that turn their hosts-humans into creepy flesh-eating creatures (Cave, 2005).
We return back to the sea, because our conversation about the monsters inhabiting it are not yet completed. In the ocean there are monsters of a different kind… But about them next time.
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