In short: The Sea Serpent (1985)

aka Hydra, the Sea Serpent

Original title: Serpiente de mar

The Sea Serpent concerns a giant sea serpent (surprise) created by an experimental H-bomb (cue five minutes or so of hilariously silly and contrived “coded” language between pilots and their home base, which does not look like a room in a military installation at all). A trio, sometimes quartet, of weirdos who witness various serpent attacks - a particularly grumpy looking Ray Milland, Timothy Bottoms, Taryn Power and Jared Martin as the on-again, off-again friend/enemy who believes Bottoms is responsible for the death of his brother only to join the fight once he finally sees the serpent as well.

If you’d tell me there were two Spanish genre directors called Amando de Ossorio, I’d absolutely want to believe you. It’s a more interesting explanation for the insanely varied quality of his work than the truth of luck, opportunity and what probably wasn’t a willingness to gilden any old crap.

Alas, this one was made by the lesser de Ossorio, so if you’re coming in expecting some moody sea serpent action, a bit – or a lot of – sleaze, and other more serious joys of a giant monster movie, you’ll be sorely disappointed. To be fair, given the quality of the sea serpent puppet, de Ossorio does his best with it, letting the adorable thing squish lighthouses or molest ships as often as he can afford it. Which, alas, isn’t all that often.

Thus much of the film has to be filled with the sort of cheap business you get up to when you have no budget for anything of visual interest and only a limited degree of imagination available. This starts with the much too long military code babble sequence and will continue through boring human interest – why the hell was the brother of Martin’s character not at least killed by the sea serpent instead of bad luck to make things at least a little less random and more dramatic? –, a conspiracy angle that makes little sense and is dropped whenever the film gets bored with it, and exciting sequences like Bottoms breaking Power out of a psychiatric clinic by putting her into a white coat and then simply wandering off with her until they encounter a guard who is beaten by some absurdly awkward flirting. An exciting giant monster movie, this is not.

Having said that, I can’t pretend I didn’t enjoy my time with The Sea Serpent. There’s certainly something about the crappiness of the monster that’s more charming than annoying, and the superfluous business between the monster scenes is certainly neither clever nor relevant but also kind of fun if you’re in the mood for filler instead of a main course.