This movie has gotten a bad rap because the way others have seen Ed's other movies. This is a real good film & I have to say, it's Ed's best where he means it to be!! Yes, it's low budget, but when you watch, you think of having a better budget and people would have thought differently after seeing this.

I sat down to watch this movie expecting something awful - boy was I not let down. First let's make sense of th story. Polliwogs fall up into the tree and sink in quicksand. Drinking jello-shots, torn blue jeans fill empty drinks with marshmallows. Once the marbles are finished chasing deflated pillows, penguins must burp up logs of toaster-waste. An army of warts gang up on a pair of Tuesdays and chill their frog-eyes with spaghetti sauce. (Scared yet?). Ole MacDonald and his farm sing a pistachio to sleep and staple papers to the walls. But then...yes then...I stopped dreaming and drank my milk. Mmmmm-mmmm good. Testimonial echoes beneath sheltered hamstrings and rusty face-plates...crying the silent cheers of boredom. Chisel me some jello-art and Un-smell my feet for half a league onward road hemlock and tomato plants. Phew...that was tough...but I think I summed up Ed Wood. Oh...and this is the finest movie wish I could Un-see.

I caught this film on Mystery Science Theater 3000. The film was directed by Ed Wood and it plays out pretty much like all his films I have seen. It just seems he tried to aim high, but did not have the resources to do all that much and you end up with very little going on and padding galore with only a couple of actual scenes that could pass as action or horror scenes. It is not super horrible though as it does feature Bela Lugosi, who I am guessing Ed Wood treated as the star he was and which is the reason he kept appearing in his movies. It also has Tor Johnson who is always good for the occasional unintentional laugh and there is of course the horrible octopus monster! The story is like countless others. There is a strange mansion in the middle of nowhere, in this film, the middle of nowhere happens to be in a swamp. In the house a man is performing all sorts of strange and horrid experiments. There is stories of a monster attacking and killing people and everyone assumes it is the strange man living with the scientist performing the experiments, but instead it is a strange mutant octopus! An intrepid reporter finds herself as this man's captive and it is up to her cop boyfriend to find her and stop the madman before he attempts to turn her into a monster too!Like I said, I saw this one on MST3K and it was a fairly good episode. Ed Wood's movies generally make for good MST3K episodes mainly because they are rather easy fodder for riffing. Also, like the other Ed Wood films, this movie is short so you end up with a short proceeding the film.So overall, not a great cinematic masterpiece, but the gang of Mystery Science Theater 3000 have had to sit through worse. The effects are bad, the acting is pretty bad and the monster laughable. Still, you get a giant octopus killing people! Well, it is not all that exciting but you do get to see Bela and Tor face off! Well, it is just a stunt double for Bela Lugosi, but still you get, um, you get...Hm, well you get a short movie.

Having enjoyed Plan 9 many times and Glen or Glenda once, I really expected this to be a serious turkey...and it wasn't! It's not overly good, but (since it came before Plan 9) I had ASSUMED Ed Wood had used this as a movie making dress rehearsal. Wrong! Lugosi is great! Tor Johnson is certainly more believable here than in Plan 9.It's a dumb movie with a dumb monster and dumb effects, but it works...almost. It's a fun watch: grab some popcorn and your buddies, set the bar low, and enjoy. Lugosi's performance makes me wonder what Plan 9 would have been like had he lived beyond 3 days into Plan 9's filming.