Humanoids From the Deep (1996) * 1/2 (out of 4) Remake of the 1980 film pretty much has the same story as chemicals turn regular salmon into walking killers. The 80's film was a lot of fun due to the violence, gore, nudity, sex and outrageous politically incorrect humor but pretty much all of that is missing here. The director throws out all sorts of gore but he forgets to make the film very fun. Watching both films back to back would just make this one seem even worse than it is. David Carradine is horrid in the lead but Clint Howard has a pretty funny role. Stick with the original.

What I like most about this remake of the schlocky, exploitative original is that this film offers an explanation for why these mutant creatures exist. Granted, the explanation is pure sci-fi, but you buy it in the context of the film. Teenagers protesting the local fishery and the father-daughter relationship are added here with nice results. It feels contemporary. The creature effects are good, and the director does a good job of keeping them in the dark, something the original did not. Robert Carradine sports a beard and actually looks like a gruff fisherman, the antithesis of his "Revenge of the Nerds" character. All in all, this picture had good drama, good dialogue, tense attack scenes, and very good comic relief. Give this one a chance. It does not disappoint. Lastly, I watched the original film recently. To all those on this site that like the original "Humanoids," stop romanticizing a bad movie. You need to watch it again. It does not hold up. The remake is definitely better all around.

You are in dire straits when you remake a Corman movie and make it worse than the original. The original HUMANOIDS was fascinating, but this one feels like a Sci-Fi Channel TV movie - those are pretty terrible.I love Robert Carradine and it was nice to see that Justin Walker from CLUELESS is still around, but this was just boring!!! I couldn't even stay with it long enough to get to the Humanoids! Sure, I could have forced myself through it, but, at a certain point, you just have to ask if you want to spend 90 minutes of your life this way.I've seen the BUCKET OF BLOOD remake, which seems to be from the same "Roger Corman" presents series and it was far more interesting - better cast, better cinematography. Actually, though, come to think of it, I turned that one off too. Stick to the originals.

Animal rights protesters picket a fishing company because they're dumping the growth hormone "Synestin" into the ocean to bulk up product. Five giant, gilled monsters live on the chemical, kill people and knock-up kidnapped young women. Star Robert Carradine, playing the type of stubborn, embarrassing, single-father type whose character drives a beat-up old truck and drinks Pepto straight out of the bottle (so much for character development, eh?), teams up with an investigating scientist (Emma Samms) and others after his daughter is kidnapped.Much of the sleazy audacity from the wonderfully trashy 1980 original is dropped here, but some of the make-up FX are good and it still features two stomach-burster scenes, an eyeball that squirts blood, skinny dipping and naked, bloody women crawling out of a cocoon and swimming to safety. The carnival finale employs most of its scenes from the original feature (I recommend sticking with it).This was part of the ROGER CORMAN PRESENTS... cable TV series from Concorde/New Horizons (all of which were exec. produced by Corman). The end credits remind us that "No animal or humanoid was harmed or mistreated in the making of this motion picture."