I have to admit, I was excited at the prospect of seeing this locally-made, self-dubbed ‘Ozploitation horror’ film. The promo material looks so promising - cute teen girl covered in blood with a shotgun, three foxy girls that appear to exactly reproduce the characters from Russ Meyer’s Faster Pussycat, Kill! Kill!, the Old Man in a Wheelchair that Knows What’s Going On and el monstro del mar itself, a kraken with snapping tentacles. Like most cinephiles of my generation, I have a particular fondness for low budget horror: the nonsense plots, bad acting and even worse effects, however, this seaside gorefest left me a little cold.

With a plot that reads like the love-child of Russ Meyer and Roger Corman, El Monstro del Mar! is deep in B-grade territory right from the get-go. We meet three foxy assassins with a passion for nice cars, sex, drugs, rock n roll, oh, and, of course, killing men in a bloody rage. They’re laying low in a rural seaside town and despite the warnings of the local wheelchair-bound ‘old-man-of-the-sea’, kickstart their trip with a dip in the sea - which, despite years of guys fishing from boats, awakens the kraken in an orgy of bloody dismemberment.

Now, this sentence may sound a little contradictory, but in this post-Grindhouse age of cinema, if you’re going to make a B-grade film, you have to be technically perfect first, then introduce the flaws, so that the audience is aware that B-grade is the effect that you’re going for and that you’re not just technically inept. Unfortunately, I think technically inept was the case here – particularly the poorly recorded and mixed sound – understanding the dialogue is a must, especially during significant scenes.

The film should have been an hour long, at most, with scenes dragging on for far too long, which as in Robert Rodriguez’s work, is probably the result of having the director as the editor. The script also could have used a good edit, with dialogue that seemed to teeter on the line between ‘intentionally bad b-grade dialogue’ and just plain bad dialogue. Acting wise, you get what you expect from B-grade, and the highlight was easily Kate Watts as Snowball. Her ditzy, cheesecake party girl persona suited the style of the film perfectly, and I was sad to see she was the first to go.

Also, come on guys, I understand that sometimes you don’t have all of your post done by the time you get it to the screen, but projecting it through the Final Cut Pro preview window is never going to show a film in its best light.

One of the redeeming aspects of this creature feature, however, was the use of good, ol’ fashioned effects. The gore and the monster were lovingly made puppets and squib effects were perfect B-grade, exemplifying the way that B-grade horror effects should be done.
All in all, a tolerable effort from Stuart Simpson and crew but it could have used more tentacles, less dialogue and a decent sound guy.

Written by Jess Fogarty