Friday, October 10, 2008

Manfish

(1956) Zero stars

(1956)
Manfish essentially combines Edgar Allan Poe's The Gold Bug and The Tell-Tale Heart into a single story about three deep-sea divers in search of buried treasure in the West Indies. The name of their boat is Manfish and sadly not the name of some underwater monster as I had hoped. Most of the film takes place while the boat is docked. Eventually one of the treasure hunters (lamely) kills one of the other treasure hunters and throws him overboard (again, while the boat is docked). Guilt over his actions eventually compels him to give himself up. Padded throughout the rest of the film are long Calypso musical sequences. Yep, that’s about it.

I was hoping for something like this,


And I even would’ve accepted this,


But instead it was just a lot of this,


What a ridiculously stupid and tedious film to get through. Lon Chaney Jr. slums here, most likely to support his legendary booze habit. There’s really no story at all beyond one guy sitting on his boat and freaking out because the body of his fellow treasure hunter is floating just below the surface tethered to a large oxygen tank. There’s about a 10-minute story here padded out to 70. Simply dreadful.

7 comments:

DKC said...

Too funny! Is is just me or do you seem to be watching some laaaaame flicks this year?

JPX said...

I like to watch lame ones during the day so I can save the scary ones for night =)

Johnny Sweatpants said...

The horror 50 pack strikes again! I actually started this crap-fest last year and aborted it about 15 minutes in... Thanks for taking (another) one for the team JPX!

Catfreeek said...

Ahhhh, Henry Limpet, now there was a manfish if I ever saw one.

Hahaha, great review. Who cares if the movies suck when we can all get such enjoyment from your reviews.

Whirlygirl said...

Don't let JPX fool because you he loves watching this crap.

Whirlygirl said...

and like that eh does because i enjoy reading them.

Octopunk said...

I like how that submerged skeleton is trying to party all the way to the end. "Spring breeeaaaak!"

Who are these people who say they're going to make a horror movie and then sneakily make a musical variety show? The final Howling movie (#7) does the same thing.

Malevolent

 2018  ***1/2 It's 1986 for some reason, and a team of paranormal investigators are making a big name for themselves all over Scotland. ...