This movie amazes me in how terrible it is. There is truly ZERO talent in the director, writer or anyone involved (sans classic actors). It is simply insulting beyond belief. Just about anyone could have made a better movie. I know for a fact that I could have. The fact that this film cashed in on Jaws and skillfully coaxed (tricked) many of us to go see this damn thing in theaters in 1977 (I did at age 11), is quite frankly disgusting. They should be ashamed of themselves. Yeah I know as this writing, its been 41 long years since it came out, but its still and always will be 2 hours of my young life I can't get back.This might be the worst bad movie on earth, based upon its budget and cast. The director should apologize for it. He's not going to, because according to its wiki, it made quite a mint worldwide. Its simply a horrible piece of crap, and I despise it more than words can tell. I've been on a kick lately, googling and watching movies from my childhood. I had never seen it since 1977, so I decided to look at it today.I didn't expect to actually get MAD about it, but I am! It makes me sick how poor it is. How an utter lack of talent went into it. How it tricked movie goers into seeing it, with a stylish (for the time) movie poster. Its such a pile of garbage, my God. I almost feel guilty that I dragged my poor mom and dad to the drive-in, to witness this film. What they must've thought. A few months after Star Wars, and this is what we get from going to the movies?Damn this director to hell!!!

This wasn't so bad, with a run time of about 100 minutes and it being an Italian Jaws rip-off this had all the ingredients of a terrible giant monster movie, most underwater monster movies are really boring and cheap, "Tentacles" its neither of those, at least its only that for a few scenes.The music its good, the direction its decent, the acting its serviceable and the attack scenes are not suspenseful but they are fun to watch. One big problem is that its terribly overwritten and most of the plot points it introduces don't really have a conclusion or at least not a satisfying one. Also, this movie has a thing for duality, I don't know if its intentional or not, but that's just something I noticed.For being a movie with real stars and decent effects it could be considered somewhat disappointing but I haven't heard many good things about it, so I decided to give it a decent rating, however, sometimes it was dangerously close to a notorious Ed Wood movie scene.

"Tentacoli" is a silly botch of a film, a "Jaws" inspired "nature strikes back" thriller minus the thrills, the suspense, and the gravitas. It's pretty bad, but it's bad in a quirky, mildly amusing way, with some decidedly odd touches here and there, not to mention some curious casting choices.Written by Jerome Max, Tito Carpi, and Steven W. Carabatsos, and directed by Ovidio G. Assonitis ("Beyond the Door", "There Was a Little Girl"), it spins a yarn of a bigger than usual octopus that has been provoked into going after human prey. This is possibly the result of your standard issue shady corporation, an outfit named Trojan, that may be doing unethical things while it builds an underwater tunnel. Now all the citizens of a colourful coastal California town are fair game for the monster.A genial John Huston, whose presence is welcome in anything, stars as an aggressive journalist working the story. In a weird, unlikely piece of casting, Shelley Winters plays his sister, who enters her young son in a sailing race. Claude Akins is the local sheriff, the always amusing Bo Hopkins a marine expert, lovely Delia Boccardo the marine experts' wife, Cesare Danova a weaselly Trojan employee, and a very pained looking (can you blame him?) Henry Fonda as Danovas' boss."Tentacoli" has its moments, although not many of them. The oddest sequence has an entertainer telling really bad jokes to a crowd while a frantic Winters tries to get in touch with her son and his friend via walkie-talkie. To show that they're not fooling around, the filmmakers make the bold move of making an infant the first victim. There's also a memorable kill just past the halfway point. The music score by Stelvio Cipriani is positively ridiculous (with a recurring harpsichord motif). The widescreen cinematography by Roberto D'Ettorre Piazzoli is gorgeous. The movie alternates between real animal footage and some very bad effects.However, you haven't lived until you've heard Hopkins give his heartfelt pep talk to his killer whale friends.Five out of 10.

Move over, Spielberg, because there's a new aquatic horror in town! Released in the same year as "Orca", this film is essentially the poor man's version of "Jaws", having the same basic idea as the hit blockbuster but using a giant octopus instead of an over-sized shark.The story takes place at Ocean Beach, a tourist spot where an underwater excavation disturbs a massive tentacled terror on the ocean floor and it soon goes on a rampage. Victim after victim, everyone becomes baffled by how these horrible events are occurring, until finally scientists and reporters alike deduce the eight-armed culprit and its cause for such violence. It all leads to an underwater battle of titans.The movie has an overall decent cast such as John Huston, Bo Hopkins, and Henry Fonda. Music is sorta hit-and-miss, sometimes being creepy and suspenseful and other times being silly and dated. The setting is good and some of the underwater scenes are interesting to watch. On the downside, a few of the human characters are somewhat uninteresting, certain dialog is a tad hokey, and a scene or two have the tendency to drag a little.The octopus is definitely the biggest highlight of the movie. The way they did the creature is pretty clever (you'll have to see for yourself how). The beast is actually more of a threat than the shark from "Jaws" is, being more elusive, intelligent, has a higher body count, and is less conspicuous. It's also quite merciless as it's not as picky with whatever human victim is in/near the water as the shark is. This coupled with the great climax is what gives the majority of points I give this creepy creature feature.All in all, this is an overall decent movie. Not as spectacular or groundbreaking as "Jaws", but at least worth a watch once or twice. Check out Tentacles and enjoy!