User Reviews

This was a total let down. I was expecting something either truly over the top or something so bad that it was good, but director Ovidio Assonitis just sails right down the middle with a Jaws rip-off that is mostly dull, with the odd stupid scene to almost keep you awake.

Our aquatic nemesis this time around comes in the form of a mutated octopus, somehow changed into a man-eating monster by some sort of industrial, experimental tunnel (didn't quite catch that). It starts off by eating a baby and a sailor and the local police, plus nosy reporter John Huston, are baffled by the state of the bodies. You know the drill. Giant sea monster. Shady company covering up its errors (run by Henry Fonda of all people). Marine expert brought in to sort things out. Local authorities trying to stop public learning of monster in order to go ahead with big event (these days they would have been clapping their hands together with glee at all the money they'd save for cancelling).

There. That saved a few paragraphs, now let's look at some other details of the film. For some reason, John Huston lives with his sister Shelly Winters, and Shelly is divorced with a young son and his mate who are both taking part in the forthcoming Regatta. That whole scenario there smacked more of a US disaster film than an Italian rip-off film. Henry Fonda doesn't do much at all and unless I fell asleep, and may very well have done, the whole plot about the company creating the mutated octopus just kind of wafted away like a fart.

There are some laughs to be had, however, and not from that crappy comedian they have entertaining the crowd before the regatta (what was that all about?). First off, there's the big fat guy from Strip Nude For Your Killer going swimming while a guy false scares him twice (complete with dramatic music), only for the octopus to grab hold of him and stick his feet out of the water upside down like it was playing pee-a-boo with Sherry Buchanan. Before eating her too. I also burst out laughing when the authorities finally decide to stop the regatta after its already started by flying around in a helicopter with a tiny sign that says 'danger: go back'. The film cheated at this point by making me think the octopus had eaten every single person in the regatta, which would have been a much better result than the single person it actually at.

Best of all however was Bo Hopkins as the Orca whisperer. Here he gives a dramatic pep-talk to his two pet killer whales before they go into battle against the octopus in a sequence that seemed to last about a week. The speech was pretty funny though. Not enough to save the film.

So, boring then. Strange freeze frames here and there two which made me think the version I was watching was glitching.

Inferior exploitation indirectly based on the characters created by Peter Benchley but turns out to be an absurd sea-monster film with average creation of tension, thrills, horror, emotions and chills . Bone-chilling movie with scary scenes , lousy direction and contains similar argument screen-written to first entry directed by Steven Spielberg (Jaws) and second directed by Jeannot Swarc (Jaws 2). The film is developed in a shore community where each year 10,000 tourists visit Ocean Beach. Several people have disappeared , when appear the bodies , these are gnawed to the skeleton, the investigators have no idea which monster could do such things. This summer Ocean Beach has attracted SOMETHING ELSE! the townsfolk were terrorized by a giant octopus that threatens and attacks to pacific tourists at the local seaside and it's turning the beach into a Buffet . Two mean construction owners (Henry Fonda, Cesare Danova) made a tunnel in the underwater and disturbed its shelter . The local journalist (John Huston) tries to convince to local authorities( the sheriff played by Claude Akins) who reluctant listen him to empty the resort place , and they think he's nutty. But the large squid attacks and the victims are eaten and making a real carnage and those serving for lunch .Some adolescents are sailing on their sporting boats during celebration a regatta when the giant octopus threaten and destroy them . Then , a biologist (Bo Hopkins) helped by two killer Orcas determine to track down and kill it. He along with his pal are forced to fight for their lives in a mortal confrontation.

It's an absurd rip-off with some moments that get certain creation of tension, thrills,terror , emotions and brief gore. The rotten monster octopus attacks images deliver the exciting , devouring some notorious players and united to thrilling score by Stelvio Cipriani who heightens the suspense. Mediocre performance from known Hollywood stars as Henry Fonda , Shelley Winters , John Huston and Bo Hopkins . It packs sunny and colorful cinematography by Piazzoli filmed in location in Marineland of the Pacific , Palos Verdes Drive South, Rancho Palos Verdes,Oceanside,Pismo Beach, California . The original picture ¨Jaws¨ considered a real classic obtained three Oscars well deserved, this exploitation is very inferior and results to be embarrassingly directed by Ovidio Assonitis (Piraña 2 , Beyond the door). Rating : Below than average.

Other films about large squids are the followings : ¨Devil Fish¨ by Lamberto Bava , a recent version titled ¨Kraken tentacles of the deep (2006)¨ by Tibor Takacs with Charlie O'Connell and Victoria Pratt and of course the classic version ¨ 20.000 leagues under the sea¨ by Richard Flescher where appears the unforgettable giant octopus.

I have to wonder how this star-studded train wreck came about; I hope there's a better story than "they were in it for the money." Three legends - Shelley Winters, John Huston, Henra Fonda - in a low-budget, poorly..., well everything movie. The giant octopus is rarely seen, and when it is, it's pretty much obvious that it's a regular octopus filmed at angles and with bubbles thrown in to demonstrate violence in the water. And despite the three stars having above-the-title billing, they really only have supporting roles, and none of them get to Roy Scheider the octopus.

Actually I think I have it all figured out. Trying to cash in on the Jaws craze, they commissioned people to create another sea monster but overreached in hiring stars and blew their whole budget on their salaries. There we go.

When people start disappearing in a small seaside resort town, Ned Turner (John Huston), a newspaper reporter, becomes suspicious that is has something to do with an underwater construction project being conducted by Trojan, a company run by Mr. Whitehead (Henry Fonda). As Turner digs deeper into the mysterious events, his suspicions that something more sinister is responsible begin to grow. These suspicions are supported by marine expert Will Gleason (Bo Hopkins).

The above sounds much more appealing than it has any right to. This is one of the worst films I've ever seen, and I like Ed Wood! Tentacles is one of the many films that were made in the wake of Jaws that tried to capitalize on Jaws' incredible success. Unfortunately, almost everything about the film is completely incompetent. There are only two minor saving graces that caused me to give this film a "high" rating of 2 out of 10. One, there are some quality actors involved--Huston, Fonda, Hopkins, and Shelley Winters have all done fantastic work in other films, and two, there are a couple moments where the incompetence achieves a level of sublime ridiculousness so that Tentacles becomes "so bad it's good". However, don't put too much weight on either of those "pros", as the better performances (Huston and Hopkins) can't even begin to save this film and you have to sit through a tortuous, boring hour to get to a point where the film starts being more funny than painful.

There are a couple reasons you might want to watch this film. If you're a completist with respect to a member of the cast or crew, you'll have to watch, and this will likely be the lowlight of their career for you (at least no other film will "top" it, even if others can match it). Also, if you're a horror film completist (as I am), you'll want to grin and bear it once. Another good reason to watch it is as a lesson in how not to make a film, from every technical aspect. The script is horrible and at times completely incoherent. It may also set a record for the largest number of abandoned threads. The director appears to have slept through most of the shoots. The composer scores every scene inappropriately, and to top it off, one of the primary instruments is a harpsichord. The score basically sounds like random 70s porno music. The editor seems to think that his job involves not leaving any footage unused.

At about the hour mark, the director decides to employ a lot of freeze frames during a "high tension" sequence. It's also accompanied by bizarre non-sequitur "jokes" told by a guy in an Uncle Sam outfit while Shelley Winters desperately tries to reach two other characters on a walkie talkie, only we can't hear anything she says--we just see her mouth moving while we hear Uncle Sam's performance art. This is where the film finally becomes unintentionally funny. It makes little sense in the context of the film, although that seems to be a leitmotif.

Tentacles contains the most boring action/suspense sequences I think I've ever witnessed. There wasn't one for which my attention didn't drift. I started thinking about things like mowing the lawn, cleaning out the refrigerator, and so on. It's difficult to believe that any of the crew had a career after this, but amazingly, most of them did.

Did this movie strike anyone else as odd in that the big name actors (mainly Huston and Fonda) seem to be delivering their lines as though they don't know the plot of the film? Fonda in particular has so many scenes where his lines are vague and could fit into any number of plots, I truly wonder if he signed on for a giant cephalopod film.

This one is fun to watch just to see the old stars who should have faded away instead of getting old in this picture. It's so bad, it's funny and makes for a great comedy as long as you're not trying to pay too much attention. The camera shots are the best, never quite getting the stars completely IN the shot. I'm sure they wish they weren't in the shots at all. If you've got time to kill and some friends who like to make fun of bad movies, wrap your tentacles around this one. Ha-ha-ha! Ok, it wasn't funny, but this movie definitely is.

After watching "Tentacles" last night - and being absolutely miserable as a result of it, there's one fact that's more resoundingly obvious than ever, which is the irrefutable fact that JAWS sure did "inspire" a tidal wave of sea-beast themed movies - and from what I've seen virtually all of them are terrible movies (lame cash-ins). But yet some still manage to be pretty entertaining, however with Tentacles, that's not at all the case......

Firstly lets start with a quick cast run-down: Peter Fonda, John Huston, Shelley Winters and Bo Hopkins, so the casting is actually quite good and it was filmed on location off the beautiful coastlines of southern California, but once it's all said and done who really cares, because when movies are this exquisitely boring there's little in the way of positivity to mention. Tentacles is so completely and utterly lame it's hard to know where to start but here goes, the films all-star cast is used ineffectively (particularly in the second half) and Bo Hopkins delivers a lame and listless performance and just listen to his dialog. Terrible writing, terrible delivery, period. The films plot and basic story-line is poorly thought out and ill-conceived and from a special effects stand-point it's clearly obvious that the film simply didn't have anything near good enough to Stop Hearts or Wet Pants. Nope not all, nothing like what you see in say "20,000 Leagues Under The Sea" - 22 years earlier. No "effects-wizardry" to see here, just some crudely conceived, low-budget, under-water effects that have been spliced together and intercut with some live animal footage (once again taking notes out of JAWS' playbook); and on that note let it be known that simply showing an animal up-close does not, repeat, does not effectively project any grand sense of scale or "giant" size, nor does it fool the audience - not for a second. I think it's "The Night of the Lepus" that best illustrates that fact, which technically speaking is an even worse movie than Tentacles, but yet at the same time it's much more entertaining, if not entirely for the right reasons. Oh yeah, just to mention it, this film has a soundtrack that's utterly generic, sounds like stock film music to me; my guess is that they could hardly afford John Williams, in any case the films music sucks. If there's one aspect that Tentacles isn't completely incompetent in, it would have to be in terms of its cinematography, apart from a few questionable camera angles its photography is solid throughout.

Let me end my rant and review with this warning: For those who were considering wasting their time watching this pathetic garbage-pile of a movie (which is literally nothing more than an ultra-lame cash-in that's playing off of JAWS' record-breaking success), I'd recommend that you watch something else, as Tentacles scores in the bottom 1% of all movies. Lets be brutally honest it offers absolutely nothing that's good.

This has to be one of the biggest wastes of talent put on a screen. A cheesy rip off of JAWS(1975). An enraged octopus terrorizes a popular tourist site on the California coast. The whole project seems hackneyed and cheep. High dollar names in the cast can't keep this one from floundering. Appearing are: Henry Fonda, Shelley Winters, John Huston, Bo Hopkins and Claude Akins.

A big octopus terrorises a small seaside community.

I can only assume the big named cast members were betting on this being a surprise hit, as big as Jaws. They put it reasonable performances in what is one of the worst movies I have ever seen.

Aside from the rocket-propelled octo-head in the regatta scene, towards the end of the movie, the entire thing is dull and lacks anything of interest to keep you watching. Some parts of the movie just don't make any sense; there seems to be a huge foul up with footage vs storyboard and the editing in the last third tries to save it but fails badly.

Not worth watching, even just for fun to see how bad it is.

There was once this little movie, you might have heard of called "Jaws", about a shark that terrorized a little town in New England. It made a bunch of money and got a bunch of hack movie makers thinking, "How can we rip this off? What else in nature scares us?" So Dino DeLaurentis did something with a killer whale, and Roger Corman did something with piranhas, and Samuel Arkoff did this thing with a giant octopus. And he got some good actors to star in it, but it was clear they realized they were nowhere near quality and just phoned it in.

So this beach community in Los Angeles (which seems to have an inordinate amount of people with Italian accents, for some reason) is under attack by a giant octopus that is attracted to radios. The first victim is a baby. (Oh, if you have to kill kids to make your horror work, you're a hack!) We have a bunch of shots of a real octopus with miniatures and some day-players dying of bad editing.

Then you have this meaningless ending where they sic a couple of killer whales on the giant octopus...

The movie is never clear on who the protagonists are. I'm not even sure the writers knew. The whole subplot with John Huston and Henry Fonda almost seems tacked on.

I guess the actors were excited about being sent to Italy, and the downside is that..it was to be in this movie. I guess the producers were thinking they would make some money doing a version of "Jaws" with an octopus instead.

But the casual moviegoer, who has reasonable intelligence, will either be laughing at the whole thing or bored to death. Either way, the movie is not insultingly awful. At least Shelley Winters is under control, for the most part, but John Huston as a reporter is a riot. Danova had all his dialogue dubbed, which seems strange since he speaks English (he did in "Viva Las Vegas" and "Mean Streets", to name two instances). Henry Fonda & Bo Hopkins are also along for the ride.

Even at age 13 I recognized the acting as horrible! I wonder if they ever took any second takes!? Tidal Wave is the only other movie I remember being nearly this bad!

Well, hysterically bad! Everyone else's comments already hit the nail on the head, so I don't know what is making me laugh harder- this movie or the comments!

I hope everyone involved in making the movie at least had a good time in Italy and Southern California. Hopefully they were laughing, too. Huston was way too much of a genius not to have seen this as what it is- dreadful. Perhaps he thought it was a farce of some kind? I would love to have been a fly on the wall during the after filming drinks Huston, Winters, and Fonda must have shared.

The effects are bad, the dubbing atrocious, I couldn't tell if the weird sounds were music or sound effects, some scenes were lifted almost exactly from Jaws...

I could go on, but I think you've got the idea. If it is rainy outside, and you're bored and ready for a laugh, go ahead and watch.

But don't say you haven't been warned.

A creature is hunting off the Californian coast. Reporter Ned Turner (John Huston) recruits marine scientist Will Gleason to investigate the mysterious dead bodies. Tillie (Shelley Winters) is Ned's wife. Ned has been reporting on the tunnel construction company owned by Mr. Whitehead (Henry Fonda). The community prepares for an upcoming sailing regatta.

This is trying to follow the success of Jaws. It is nowhere as good and it suffers from its obvious copycat nature. With such legendary actors, it's assumed that they would be the constant leads and a guy like Huston could take over. It's all very bland and there is nothing these actors can do to save this. The three veterans don't have possession of the screen. Screen time is scattered among nobodies and secondary characters. The giant octopus is mostly silly. There are some miniature work and a rubber creature. There is some underwater work but nothing that exciting. Same goes for the action. This is a poor attempt to grab onto a tailcoat.

"Tentacoli" is a silly botch of a film, a "Jaws" inspired "nature strikes back" thriller minus the thrills, the suspense, and the gravitas. It's pretty bad, but it's bad in a quirky, mildly amusing way, with some decidedly odd touches here and there, not to mention some curious casting choices.

Written by Jerome Max, Tito Carpi, and Steven W. Carabatsos, and directed by Ovidio G. Assonitis ("Beyond the Door", "There Was a Little Girl"), it spins a yarn of a bigger than usual octopus that has been provoked into going after human prey. This is possibly the result of your standard issue shady corporation, an outfit named Trojan, that may be doing unethical things while it builds an underwater tunnel. Now all the citizens of a colourful coastal California town are fair game for the monster.

A genial John Huston, whose presence is welcome in anything, stars as an aggressive journalist working the story. In a weird, unlikely piece of casting, Shelley Winters plays his sister, who enters her young son in a sailing race. Claude Akins is the local sheriff, the always amusing Bo Hopkins a marine expert, lovely Delia Boccardo the marine experts' wife, Cesare Danova a weaselly Trojan employee, and a very pained looking (can you blame him?) Henry Fonda as Danovas' boss.

"Tentacoli" has its moments, although not many of them. The oddest sequence has an entertainer telling really bad jokes to a crowd while a frantic Winters tries to get in touch with her son and his friend via walkie-talkie. To show that they're not fooling around, the filmmakers make the bold move of making an infant the first victim. There's also a memorable kill just past the halfway point. The music score by Stelvio Cipriani is positively ridiculous (with a recurring harpsichord motif). The widescreen cinematography by Roberto D'Ettorre Piazzoli is gorgeous. The movie alternates between real animal footage and some very bad effects.

However, you haven't lived until you've heard Hopkins give his heartfelt pep talk to his killer whale friends.

Five out of 10.

This movie is really bad, but hilarious at the same time. It's like Jaws with tentacles crossed paths with Porky's. The acting is wooden, the dialogue is ludicrous, and the production values are el cheapo. But for a bad movie you couldn't ask for anything more.

1 out of 10, but for bad movie buffs 8 out of 10. Enjoy the ocean views though.

This is not a parody but a story rip-off of Jaws. Billed as a scary sea monster story with elements of the large-budget ensemble cast disaster films of that era, it had possibilities. Phew, what was Henry Fonda thinking? The bad directing, writing, editing, stiff acting of the "stars", etc. are all more entertaining than the story itself. Many continuity problems and corny cinematography techniques. You can't miss the swimmer who in seconds becomes as sunburned as a tomato. The $39 Casio keyboard gets a workout in the often inappropriate sound track. Even the environmental message was lost in the mire.

Director Hellman should have stuck to land-based stories and the genres with which he was familiar. His reputation for rip-off B films clearly did not pay off in this case. The octopus shots are annoyingly low budget. Rubber Shamu on a stick gets a workout.

There should be a category of 0 . . . but since 1 was the worst I could opt for . . . that's what I gave it. I happened on this little gem (ha!) late last noc. So I had to come to IMDb to see the details. The only truly funny part was watching the Octopus trolling through the water with it's eyes and just the top of it's head visible. If this was supposed to remind one of the scene in Jaws . . . it failed completely!!! Most octopuses and rather shy and most likely to run and hide . . . that's why I found myself laughing. They would have done better using a Squid . . . there has been documentation of Giant Squid and Orcas battling it out in the depths of the ocean. They even would have done better if they had used ants . . . as in one my favorite movies from childhood - THEM . . about ants being genetically mutated by exposure to radiation (if memory serves me right) . . . when filmed closeup - they were much more fearsome than this octopus. If you can afford to lose a few hours of your life in viewing this mess . . . go for it. I personally could have done better reading a book . . .

The premise of this movie sound's promising. A giant octopus in a Jaws like movie, but somehow the mixture of Italian movie and Hollywood big budget sci-fi just ended up bad chemistry.

The pacing of this movie was all broken up. It seems that actors on one scene from another didn't know what the overall movie was all about. This made the movie look so silly. The atmosphere of the movie flips from one scene to another too. In one scene you're obviously in California, and on another you're in the Mediterranean. European actor and American actors didn't mix well either.

Where did they spend the big budget on ? There're no special effects to speak of. Total appearance time of the octopus in this movie is less than one minute.

My personal opinion is that I didn't like any of the actors in this movie. I usually like Henry Fonda, but in this movie the choice of actors and their acting was horrible.

How they manage to mess this one up so badly is the biggest mystery of them all.

If you like Jaws or if you like bad movies or if you're a fan of any of the big name actors who appear in this wonderfully awful Italian film then I recommend it.

******spoilers within***********

I remembered the commercials for this movie back in the 70s, but couldn't convince my parents to take me. They knew better. This, along with movies like "Food of the Gods", was so my kind of movie when I was 10. Now, nearly 30 years later, I figured this would be one of those so-bad-it's-good bad movies, but nope. While it has a precious few of those moments, the other 90 minutes are just plain painful.

The set-up is that generic evil businessman, played by Henry Fonda, commits some kind of environmentally unfriendly act that for some reason causes a huge octopus to attack a coastal town in Southern California where many of the locals appear to have Italian accents. Annnnnyway, John Huston, looking like Ernest Hemingway, plays a journalist trying to solve the mystery of the skeletal bodies washing ashore and consults an oceanographer (Bo Hopkins) whose day job is talking to killer whales at Sea World. Shelley Winters, who plays his Huston's ditsy sister, strangely has a child young enough to be her grandson and opts to stay on land apparently not wanting to risk another capsized boat. After a few people get eaten, Hopkins decides to kill the freak of nature by setting loose his whales on it. That's about it.

Now, I know it's a fool's errand to try to figure out the logic here, but ...

1. If a giant octopus were laying waste to an American city, I'd like to think the powers that be would do more than let Bo Hopkins handle it solo with his pet whales.

2. How could radio waves above sea level (and sometimes far inland) trigger the attacks?

3. What was that Uncle Sam guy doing at the boat race?! He's telling incoherent, ethnic jokes like some obnoxious drunk at a bar and the crowd is just applauding all the way through. And, in an editing choice presumably meant to be ironic but coming off as bizarre, we see this crowd laughing and clapping interspersed with scenes of the children being attacked by the octopus.

4. One character says, "I thought octopus where shy." To which Bo replies that this one is, well, mad.

Worst moment: some guy (not the coast guard) has saved a bunch of kids being attacked by the octopus during a boat race, and clearly some didn't make it back. The idiot sheriff asks, "Are sure there weren't any others?" and the guy just shrugs. End of rescue mission.

Most surreal moments: seeing John Huston in a muumuu, and Shelley Winters making a pee joke.

If I've made this sound like campy fun, then I've sorely misrepresented this movie...