Tentacles (film)

Tentacles (Italian: Tentacoli) is a 1977 horror-thriller film directed by Ovidio G. Assonitis and starring John Huston, Shelley Winters, Bo Hopkins, Cesare Danova, Delia Boccardo and Henry Fonda.

Tentacles
Theatrical release poster
ItalianTentacoli
Directed byOvidio G. Assonitis[1]
Written by
Produced byEnzo Doria[1]
Starring
CinematographyRoberto D'Ettorre Piazzoli[1]
Edited byAngelo Curi[1]
Music byStelvio Cipriani
Production
companies
A-Esse Cinematografica
Cherkawy Limited[1]
Distributed by
Release dates
  • 25 February 1977 (1977-02-25) (Italy)
  • 15 June 1977 (1977-06-15) (New York)
Running time
102 minutes[1]
Country
LanguageEnglish
Budget$750,000
Box office$3 million[3]

When numerous people go missing in a seaside resort town, a reporter discovers that a rampaging giant octopus is terrorizing the coast. While a marine biologist attempts to stop the octopus before more tourists fall victim to the creature, it appears that a corporation may be connected to the cephalopod's murderous behavior.

Although the film was intended to cash in on the success of Jaws,[4] Tentacles also bears numerous resemblances to the 1955 science fiction giant monster horror film It Came from Beneath the Sea.[5]

Plot

People are turning up dead at Solana Beach, a seaside tourist resort, their skeletons picked clean of flesh and bone marrow. The local sheriff has no leads, but newspaper reporter Ned Turner suspects the construction of an underwater tunnel by the Trojan company, owned by Mr. Whitehead. Whitehead threatens Turner to leave it alone, but after several more deaths, he interrogates killer whale trainer and marine expert Will Gleason.

When two of Gleason's divers are also killed, Gleason goes to investigate for himself and determines the attacks are the result of Trojan using ultrasonic drilling techniques with which the sound waves have been "above regulated levels", which maddens a giant octopus, causing it to attack and devour human swimmers and boaters whenever it feels similar frequencies. Criticizing him for risking his life, his wife Vicky joins her sister at the pool. When her sister goes on a boating expedition and also goes missing, Gleason's wife goes in search and is also killed by the octopus.

In the meantime, Turner's sister Tillie has taken her young son to a boating race, from which he is one of the few to miraculously survive. Gleason vows to kill the octopus and takes his trained killer whales out to where his wife was killed.

In the end, the octopus is killed by that pair of killer whales while Gleason tries to save another diver.

Cast

Production

Tentacles was produced to capitalize on the success of Steven Spielberg's Jaws,[6] and as such was produced on a much smaller budget of $750,000.

The initial script was much more comedic and satirized the "killer animal" subgenre, but after executive producer Samuel Z. Arkoff had his writer Steven W. Carabatsos retool it, it became much more serious.[7]

Casting

The lead actors were American, while the supporting cast was mostly Italian.

Ovidio G. Assonitis' first choice to play the lead role was John Wayne. Wayne accepted the role, but after Assonitis met him at his home in Texas, he realized the actor was far too ill to play the part[7] (Wayne would ultimately die of cancer in June 1979).

Assonitis turned to Henry Fonda, who had recently appeared in a string of Italian productions. However, the actor suffered a heart attack shortly before filming. Since Fonda had already taken a large advance, he was given the supporting role of Mr. Whitehead, while John Huston replaced Fonda in the lead role.[7] Assonitis and Huston got along so well that the former subsequently cast him in another lead role, in The Visitor (1979).

Filming

Filming took place on location in Atlanta, Georgia (where Assonitis would later shoot The Visitor and Madhouse), and Oceanside, Pismo Beach, and San Diego, California.[8] The aquarium sequences were shot at Marineland of the Pacific in Los Angeles County. The underwater sequences were shot in Italy.[1]

Initially storyboarded was a sequence in which the octopus destroys the Golden Gate Bridge, but the sequence was cut due to time and budgetary constraints.

During filming, the production lost the large rubber octopus in the sea, so the rest of the film was shot with a diver waving the only remaining tentacle.

Music

The film's score was done by Italian composer Stelvio Cipriani, who scored the similarly Jaws-inspired films The Great Alligator and Piranha II: The Spawning around the same time.

Release

The film was released theatrically by Euro International Films in Italy on February 25, 1977.[9] In the United States, the film was distributed by American International Pictures, opening in New York on August 3, 1977, and in Los Angeles on August 31, 1977.[1][10]

The film was a box office success, grossing $3,000,000.[11]

For the U.S. release, several cast and crew adopted "American"-sounding aliases, including director Ovidio G. Assonitis (as "Oliver Hellman"), composer Stelvio Cipriani ("S.W. Cipriani"), editor Angelo Curi ("A.J. Curi") and actor Enzo Bottensi ("Alan Boyd").

Reception

On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 0% based on seven reviews, with a weighted average rating of 2.6 out of 10.[12]

Contemporary reviews were also negative. Lawrence Van Gelder of The New York Times called it "an all-too-familiar giant octopus movie" that suffered from "atrocious acting in minor roles", "occasionally poor dubbing" and "a totally unoriginal story".[13] Variety noted that although "John Huston, Shelley Winters and Henry Fonda may bolster prospects", they "are all squandered in this one, thanks to a leaden script plus wooden direction by Oliver Hellman (who's also producer Ovidio Assonitiz)".[14][15] Linda Gross of the Los Angeles Times dismissed it as "a tedious movie, nightmarishly slow and intermittently out of synch".[16] Tom Milne of The Monthly Film Bulletin declared: "A devastatingly silly rehash of the Jaws formula, atrociously scripted, stiltedly acted, and reaching its low point in a grotesquely maudlin finale where the hero pours his heart out in a pep talk to the whales he has trained to graduate standards of communication."[17] Marjorie Bilbow of Screen International wrote, "The special effects are good and there is a fair amount of suspense before each victim is tentacled. But involvement with the characters is minimal ... the excitement lies only in anticipating when the next plastic victim will get nabbed."[18]

Home media

The Film was released on CED Videodisc in 1982. The film was released on DVD by MGM in 2005 as part of their Midnite Movies series. The disc was a double feature release, pairing the film with Empire of the Ants.[19][20] It was released on Blu-ray by Kino Lorber in April 2022.

See also

References

Footnotes
  1. "Tentacles". American Film Institute. Archived from the original on 28 March 2014. Retrieved 5 August 2019.
  2. "Tentacoli". British Film Institute. 1977. Archived from the original on 27 July 2023. Retrieved 31 July 2023.
  3. Donahue, Suzanne Mary (1987). American film distribution : the changing marketplace. UMI Research Press. p. 300. Please note figures are for rentals in US and Canada
  4. Kim Newman (2008). Nightmare Movies: Horror on Screen Since the 1960s. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2011, p. 93. ISBN 9780786435562.
  5. William Schoell (2008). Creature Features: Nature Turned Nasty in the Movies. McFarland, 2008, p. 139. ISBN 9780786435562.
  6. Tentacles at the MGM Archive
  7. "Intervista al produttore Ovidio G. Assonitis | NUOVISSIMO MILLEFILM". 1 June 2011. Archived from the original on 1 June 2011. Retrieved 19 June 2023.
  8. (1983-12-01). Spotlight on filming in SD County. Daily Times-Advocate, 52, 56-57.
  9. "Cinema a Roma - Tentacoli (prima)" (in Italian). unita.it. Archived from the original on 17 August 2016. Retrieved 3 July 2016.
  10. "Movies Around Town - Tentacles". New York Magazine. 8 August 1977. Retrieved 3 July 2016.
  11. Richard Nowell (23 December 2010). 'Blood Money: A History of the First Teen Slasher Film Cycle. Continuum, 2011, p. 257. ISBN 9781441143167.
  12. "Tentacles (1977) - Rotten Tomatoes". Rotten Tomatoes.com. Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved 31 October 2018.
  13. Van Gelder, Lawrence (4 August 1977). "Film: Squid Pro Quo". The New York Times: 55.
  14. Willis 1985, p. 317: "Review is of 102 minute version viewed in London on June 15, 1977"
  15. Willis 1985, p. 318: "Review is of 102 minute version viewed in London on June 15, 1977"
  16. Gross, Linda (September 2, 1977). "Octopus Rocks the Boat in 'Tentacles'". Los Angeles Times. Part IV, p. 15.
  17. Milne, Tom (June 1977). "Tentacoli (Tentacles)". The Monthly Film Bulletin. 44 (521): 129.
  18. Bilbow, Marjorie (21 May 1977). "The New Films". Screen International: 16–17.
  19. "Empire Of The Ants / Tentacles (DVD)". dvddrive-in.com. Retrieved 3 July 2016.
  20. "Tentacles (1977) suckered me thirty years ago". blackholereviews.blogspot.it. 5 June 2007. Retrieved 3 July 2016.

Sources
  • Willis, Donald, ed. (1985). Variety's Complete Science Fiction Reviews. Garland Publishing Inc. ISBN 978-0-8240-6263-7.

Notes
  1. Tentacles is described by some sources (including the American Film Institute) as an Italian and American co-production, while other sources (including the British Film Institute) describe it as a wholly-Italian production.
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