CREATURES FROM THE ABYSS – What sticks in my mind is the massive toy bear they find in one of the rooms. I like the way it’s just ‘there’. It crops up again, looming in silhouette against a moody blue backdrop. It’s probably the same room, but that bear really deserved its moment. ‘Creatures From The Abyss’ shows signs of being a movie – it has credits, scenes, and a plot about some students on a ship with mutant fish – but, even watching it, it feels like a hazy memento of the time when someone was forcibly medicated. Only ever fragments, bizarre, boring, or just awful. Or awe-full! A cyclops mermaid clock murmurs as if in mourning for the Italian trash epic that was never truly hers. A science-oriented young man tells a woman in a bikini to fry him a fish so that someone can yak up yellow puke crawling with plastic insects. One of the possibly evil scientists responsible for the fish mutants appears just long enough to make a half-muted joke about the age of consent. What else happens? An eye plops out and lands in someone’s mouth during a bout of fish sex, that’s what! And there are tendrils… ‘Creatures From The Abyss’ is stifling / enlivening. The same genius made ‘The Mummy Theme Park’. Listen to the guy in the black overcoat – you may find yourself staring into ‘Creatures From The Abyss’, but don’t stare too long. You might find that mermaid cyclops clock staring back at you.
THE SEVERED ARM – First things first – a severed arm flops on the floor – superimposed, the title in red – The Severed Arm! I love the bluntness. And I’m all for films starring sentient body parts, but this is about something else. Having figured that survival must take the form of cannibalism, some guys trapped down a mine draw lots to decide who will lose a limb for the team. They don’t quite make it to dinner, but by the time rescuers arrive there’s a man who’s a few pounds of flesh short and pissed off. ‘The Severed Arm’ was made at a time of much social conflict. You sense that playing out within the film, with drab, talky, static shots vying with a crazed synthesiser soundtrack like hippies vs the squares. It’s really jarring. The uptight cinematography looks like it might win, but then an unexpected noirishness takes hold; in some films you really feel the night falling, and ‘The Severed Arm blossoms into a lovely inky mood piece. Long shadows follow the survivors around after dark, paranoia bites down, people are reduced to huddling in their front rooms where they spout off about the lone maniac who seems unstoppable – the guy only has one arm, but it’s the hand that counts, especially if’s holding a big f*ck off axe! Is this pre-slasher really some warped riff on ‘The Fugitive’? The ending is a pure drive-in era downer and will leave you feeling hollow in that special seventies way.
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