The Monster from the Ocean Floor (1954)

Review by All Movie Guide
Monster From the Ocean Floor represented a crossroads for Roger Corman. It marked the start of his career as a movie producer, but it was also responsible for moving him into the orbits of several people who played key roles in his subsequent career as a director. Corman had sold one screenplay in 1953 for the feature Highway Dragnet when he decided to become a producer. The idea for this movie came about after Corman read an article about a one-man submarine that had been developed by Aerojet General. Convincing the company that the loan of the device would get them some free publicity, he then wrote a story outline entitled It Stalked the Ocean Floor. A screenplay was cobbled together along with the financing, and Corman chose an acquaintance, actor/screenwriter Wyott Ordung, as director. The movie, budgeted at 16,000 dollars, was successful, earning a 60,000-dollar advance from Lippert Films and eventually a lot more, which allowed Corman to go into production on a more ambitious level. Thanks to the borrowed submarine, the picture appears a lot more expensive than something shot for 16,000 dollars should look. It's not Citizen Kane, nor is it trying to be -- it's just a diverting adventure story with elements of horror in it, akin to an adventure of Sea Hunt with a sci-fi angle thrown in. Corman and Ordung didn't have an easy working relationship and never did another picture together, but Ordung steered Corman toward several individuals who would prove vital to Corman's career. It was Ordung who offered a small role in the movie (as a Mexican diver) to a young gas station attendant he knew named Jonathan Haze (billed here as "Jack Hayes"); he was the first member of what became the Roger Corman stock company, and would grace most of Corman's productions of the 1950s and early '60s, including Not of This Earth (1957) and Little Shop of Horrors (1960). Equally important, Haze also steered Dick Miller, a writer-turned-actor, to Corman for work, and he would later become another key actor in the Corman stock company. Additionally, in trying to help Corman get distribution for the picture, Ordung hooked the fledgling producer up with James H. Nicholson, who had formed a distribution company in partnership with Samuel Z. Arkoff; Corman didn't deal with them on Monster From the Ocean Floor, but he subsequently went back to Arkoff and Nicholson and their company, American International Pictures, which became the major source of financing for most of his movies over the next ten years. Finally, Monster From the Ocean Floor brought Corman together with Floyd Crosby, an Oscar-winning cinematographer, who shot this movie and went on to photograph many of Corman's subsequent films.Monster From the Ocean Floor is great fun -- the script may contain warnings about the potentially catastrophic developments that can come out of experiments with atomic radiation, but it's really just an hour's worth of entertainment, with a little romance and some neat underwater photography (both elements relying on Anne Kimbell's zaftig figure), and clever use of a puppet monster, built and manipulated by Bob Baker, for its diversions. It's light years removed from, say, The Abyss, but also a lot less demanding for the rewards that it does provide. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide