Over at MoviesOnline a post is up listing the 10 best ‘It came from the deep sea’ monster movies. I am not sure I agree with the list. Where is Mega Shark and Giant Octopus? What about MEG? So readers what are your favorites? Please provide a Youtube link to a trailer or movie clip if you can. I will continue to add them to this post. In that tradition is our beloved Mega Shark and Giant Octopus
So more recommendations for commentors
War-Gods of the Deep
Night Tide
Surface
The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms
Godzilla
and The Deep
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Craig McClain is the Executive Director of the Lousiana University Marine Consortium. He has conducted deep-sea research for 20 years and published over 50 papers in the area. He has participated in and led dozens of oceanographic expeditions taken him to the Antarctic and the most remote regions of the Pacific and Atlantic. Craig’s research focuses on how energy drives the biology of marine invertebrates from individuals to ecosystems, specifically, seeking to uncover how organisms are adapted to different levels of carbon availability, i.e. food, and how this determines the kinds and number of species in different parts of the oceans. Additionally, Craig is obsessed with the size of things. Sometimes this translated into actually scientific research. Craig’s research has been featured on National Public Radio, Discovery Channel, Fox News, National Geographic and ABC News. In addition to his scientific research, Craig also advocates the need for scientists to connect with the public and is the founder and chief editor of the acclaimed Deep-Sea News (http://deepseanews.com/), a popular ocean-themed blog that has won numerous awards. His writing has been featured in Cosmos, Science Illustrated, American Scientist, Wired, Mental Floss, and the Open Lab: The Best Science Writing on the Web.
Godzilla? Hello?
If Piranha is on the list, what about another freshie – “Creature From the Black Lagoon”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lM1o1xe5FGE
Or a personal favorite, the undersea humanoids in “War-Gods of the Deep”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fo8SrycaTFE
Perhaps some vintage Dennis Hopper, with “Night Tide”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2G5zK3zEB0
And if we can throw television into the mix, “Surface”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYV8DBSEeMo
Godzilla is the clear winner.
In geek-overdrive – how can they put ‘The Host’ in their list when that beastie is clearly a far inferior river organism. Unless you’re pretty scared of water a river can hardly be said to be ‘the deep’.
Finally: no list is complete without ‘The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms’.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beast_from_20,000_Fathoms#Legacy
Am watching the BBC’s new drama “The Deep” right now! Tense stuff…
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00tc8r5
No ‘Deep Blue Sea’ (1999)?
What is the title of the movie during which something in the sea evolves (during the 90 minutes of the film) more and more intelligent, bigger, more aggressive, more shark-like and then the brave protagonists dive through an underwater cave into a secret WWII-era lab in which someone inspired by Haeckel was fusing human and shark embryos in order to make smart sharks (I guess as Nazi weapons). Battle ensues.
And this was old technology, making chimaeras or something like that
though the movie is modern. The lab is old – it took 40-50 years for the sharks from the experiment to evolve smart enough, big enough and mean enough to start terrorizing humans…
How about the 1916 production of 20,000 Leagues?
http://video.syfy.com/movies_events/scificlassics#////movies_events/scificlassics/movies/20000-leagues-under-the-sea/v56762
The Beast from 20 000 Fathoms scared the bejeezus out of me as a kid. Locally, Citytv in Toronto used to play “Not So Great Movies” every Sunday afternoon, usually Godzilla.
How about the Kraken from the 1981 Clash of the Titans
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQpgIJUh9D4
Please let’s not forget “The Intruder Within” from 1981. Classic stuff, and you can imagine the pitch for it: “It’s Alien, but like, on an oil rig” – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QioyXBc7lUY
Wrt Deep Rising, which gets a spot in the MoviesOnline list with its giant proto-priapulids, there’s a great line in it:
“At 4,000 feet, the Ottoia are about as long as a pencil, with bodies about the size of a golf ball. But those at 20,000 feet have been found to eat full-grown sharks. At 30 or 40,000 feet… Well, you do the math.”
Ok, I’m not great at maths – but I have looked a global bathy map.
However, people who live in glass houses etc etc: as for BBC’s new drama The Deep, I have to confess to being the “Science advisor” in the credits.
Without risking any plot spoilers for folks in the US, I apologise in advance for the rather large Vampyroteuthis; I tried to persuade them to go for a bigfin squid instead, but they were wedded to it.
And to having moonpools in their subs. And a vent field on an aseismic ridge. And to ignoring the laws of physics with regard to pressure etc.
But hey, “The Core” had three science advisors!
Coturnix – the movie you’re looking for is “Creature”, loosely based on “WHite Shark” by Peter Benchley.