There’s a lot going on here. Salmon Festival. A Lack of Salmon. An imminent cannery. Restless dogs and a one-legged seagull. Plus plenties of bad jump scares and maybe some screaming topless women. This is a full package here.
Small coastal town, lotsa boats and fishersmen. But lately, not a lot of salmon. Plus a big cannery is looking to set up shop and has some of the locals wary. Suddenly though, a lot of dogs go missing. Then some locals. The next thing you know there’s a beachside brothel and the seaweed hits the fan.
I can’t say this is a horrible movie, it takes awhile for things to ramp up. While the acting is middling, the whole setup and pure carnage that eventually ensues is kinda fantastic. This takes The Creature from the Black Lagoon up a few notches, through a Roger Corman mentality, with the creatures designed and created by Rob Bottin. Yeah, there’s a lot of drama through one of those hippy ecological filters. But nicely interspersed with horny teens meeting gruesome ends and Olympia beer. Plus a librarian-like marine biologist looking for fish sticks. Or, something like that, hard to tell. Unfortunately for the local community, these new marinal immigrants do seem a bit...I dunno, finny? Is that the fish equivalent of horny? Whatever it is, it’s not pleasant for the locals beset by some super mutoidy kinda rapesy Lovecraftian Deep Ones. Science.
