User Reviews

Griffith, Corman's muse on masterpieces like "Little Shop of Horrors" and "Bucket of Blood", tries his hand at directing for a change at the behest of Cirio "Vampie Hookers" Santiago. Guess what, it's a Jaws ripoff, and it's set in Hawaii. Instead of Roy Scheider we get one rather gorgeous woman romping around and clashing with, not the corrupt mayor, but the fershlugginer resort manager, a mind-boggling, thrashing and mincing performance by some guy (Virgil Frye?) Every once in a while there are incomprehensible quick-cut sequences of crap happening underwater including this inflatable fish with Dorito teeth. The climax involves blowing the fish up by completing a circuit by reaching into the giant fish's mouth and connecting two wires. Just like in real life! Don't ask for an explanation. Stupid, yes, and amusing as such, but also kind of aggravating.

Rubber fish, horrible script, jumbled plot and terrible acting aside this movie was quite enjoyable just for the laugh factor. Meant to be a Jaws type movie, this was just plain bad. Not worth seeing unless you are a fan of B-Movies. If you are a fan though, this movie won't disappoint, all you've come to expect from terrible B-Movies is to be found in large quantities in this one!

The price we paid for the success of "Jaws" was a heavy one, with so many other aquatic killer animal features released in the subsequent years. The "Jaws" spoof "Piranha" is one of the better ones, by far. This is one of the lesser ones. It's a crude, ineffective, even boring "thriller" about a prehistoric monster fish released from imprisonment in the sea after an underwater earthquake. It proceeds to feast upon locals and visitors in the area, including patrons of a resort. Ultimately, many expeditions are launched to find and destroy the fishy menace.

It's hard to care much about this trite story, especially when the presentation, and characters, are so lacking in interesting features. Granted, it does get a shade more amusing once the frequency of fish attacks increases. Special effects are as crude as you could imagine - the more you see of the predator, the more unconvincing and laughable it looks. Attack scenes feature a lot of fake blood in the water, and splashing, but choppy editing where you really don't see very much. Voyeurs will appreciate the amount of female flesh displayed.

Fortunately, the atmosphere and flavor of the location (although set in Hawaii, it was shot in the Philippines) help to make it tolerable. Unfortunately, a lot of the acting is incredibly amateurish. Susanne Reed ('Code R') is a gorgeous, sexy leading lady, but the less said about her performance, the better. However, she's not the worst offender. That dishonor belongs to Kedric Wolfe ("Forbidden Zone"), who's utterly annoying as the high strung resort manager. Familiar faces Sam Bottoms ("Apocalypse Now"), as the young hero, and Virgil Frye ("Revenge of the Ninja"), as his scruffy, surly uncle, do what they can; Frye tends to steal the show.

Only recommended to people who just CAN'T get enough of this genre.

Four out of 10.

After reading about this film for years in magazines and reference books, I finally managed to track down it down some time ago at a local Blockbusters. I honestly didn't expect it to be good, but I had no idea how truly terrible it would turn out to be. There are a whole bunch of Jaws inspired cash ins out there for your perusal, the original Pirahna being the best, Up From The Depths being the absolute worst. What really gives this film it's claim to infamy is the astonoshingly bad comedy relief that pops up in the last half as all the goofy tourists head out to catch the killer fish. It's so bad that it actualy makes the work of Jim Carey and Adam Sandler look inspired. No mean feat to be sure. The great poster for the film gives you the impression that the creature will be an aquatic dinosaur or sea serpent. No such luck as all it is, is some kind of rare, deep sea fish brought to the upper surface via seismic activity. It's also not very impressive looking and the FX artist who created it regreted (years later in an interview in Fangoria) not having a good enough budget to craft a decent looking creature. One funny thing about the monster fish is that it shares a power that many other type of similar B movie monsters have, namely the ability to sneak right up on people despite being about 20 to 30 feet long. How do they do that? A week before NBC unveiled their terrible adaptation of Peter Benchly's "Beast," a local channel had the bright idea to air Up From The Depths. It's a tough call as to which is worse but I feel that "Up" gets the nod. File it under, "How not to do a Jaws cash in."

Alright here I go. I saw the video box to this when I was VERY young in the mid eighties and wanted to rent it because it looked good and scary. But my parents would not let me! So fast forward a few years and I see the film Piranha. I see the finale and a shot from this finale is on the back of the vestron box of "Up from the Depths." So I begin to think I was making it up. That I had not seen a movie of this title. That Piranha WAS the movie I saw. Then I find out about a website called imdb.com and I look this title up. Sure enough I was NOT dreaming! I was actually so excited and went to the only Blockbuster in the state that carried this title about an hour away from my home just to finish the life's pursuit! I got home with intense anxiety, plopped the VHS in the VCR and... what? what is this? this isn't scary? why... how... And that is all that was there. This film is a pretty cheap knock off of Jaws and does not know it is! It deals with two stupid people who for some god unknown reason are spending time at the beach WHEN, they run into some(not so)dangerous trouble when a shark that is like, two feet long comes a shore and starts nib nib nibbling at the vacationers. I was so appauled that I, being a hard core film lover, had been thinking about this film all that time and wondering if I would ever see it! No wonder I could never find it one ago. In fact, in an article I read, the production was so in trouble that it began in Malta, which doubled for the Phillipines, which tripled for Hawaii. The list goes on and on. The scenes are so laughable. Like a scene which a supermodel gives gum to a fish, and she later is doing a nudie shoot on a boat that is attacked by the ugly duckling of a fish. The fish looks cardboard and makes a sound that could frighten a muse! What were the cast and crew thinking! However I would watch it if push came to shove because I am a hardcore Corman fan. But in all honesty and sincerety, stay away unless you really want to waste your money or it is on tv and you feel you just HAVE to see it. 1/10

It has been awhile since I have seen this, but I remember it being bad in a very good way, campy as all hell. I laughed and laughed at the end when, to lure the sea creature to the shallows, they dragged a bleeding guy behind a boat attached to a rope! I found this at a video store a few years ago, and have never seen it anywhere again, not one they even show on TV anymore.

During my ongoing quest to track down literally every "Jaws" rip-off ever made (strange hobby, I know…), I already encountered numerous of truly horrible – yet highly entertaining – junk movies, but "Up from the Depths" most certainly makes it into my all-time top five of awfulness! This is your basic and by-the-numbers "Jaws" plot: tourists and divers are mysteriously disappearing nearby a Hawaiian holiday resort, but obviously the neurotic manager continuously keeps claiming everything's fine in order not to upset his guests, especially when a famous fashion model arrives at the resort for a photo shoot. Then, of course, the inevitable beach attack follows… The funniest part about "Up from the Depths" is that you'll spend most of the time figuring out exactly what type of watery critter we're dealing with here. It's not a Great White or any other species of shark. Nor it's a crocodile or any other kind of commonly known sea predator. It's a fish! It's some kind of over-sized and prehistoric turbot with two fins sticking out the water and an insatiable appetite for dumb and stereotypical B-movie characters. Following good old monster-movie traditions, we're gradually being shown a bigger piece of the creature with every attack, yet by the time it fully emerges from the water, you wish they would have left it all up to the imagination .The special effects look so unimaginably cheesy and pitiable! "Up from the Depths" starts off slow and a tad boring, but admittedly shifts into higher gear halfway through the film, when the manager puts a price on the animal's head and thus literally generates a cowboy round-up; There's never any sign of suspense to detect, even in spite of director Charles B. Griffith's attempts to insert a wannabe ominous musical score and hectic POV-underwater photography. Don't expect any gory smörgåsbord massacres or bloody make-up effects, neither. This is basically a comical viewing experience, filled with both intentionally and unintentionally hilarious situations. The screenplay itself contains several running gags (a constantly bickering elderly couple, the bimbo photo model not realizing she's on Hawaii, etc...) and the sheer incompetence of the ensemble production team induces even more chuckles. "Up from the Depths" truly deserves its embarrassing 1.8 out of 10 rating, but still I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to tolerable fans of cheesy bad cinema.

Up from the Depths, directed by Charles B. Griffith and "starring" Suzanne Reed and Sam Bottoms - alright I could put any names out there and would get the same recognition. This is one of Roger Corman's New World Picture rip-offs to exploit something that had been successful on screen. This time around we have a Jaws minus credible cast, story, special effects, etc... But this film never really tries taking itself too terribly seriously, and I found it much more in line with another Corman produced film called Piranha. Both films have just enough "comedy" in them to make them almost parodies of the killer fish genre films. Anyway, Up from the Depths is pretty bad. Its weakest point is a terrible script about some rubbery prehistoric fish that we never really get to see too closely attacking tourists at a tropical resort. The script just does not convey any real "threat" nor does it make us take any of the characters or situations all that seriously. Maybe, because the film tries hard at being funny that is why, but some menace is needed to make a film like this work. The actors are not very good either. Sam Bottoms? C'mon. The usual New World Picture format of needless(yet expressively photographed) nudity is here too. I have seen a lot worse films; however, then Up from the Depths. It is an entertaining "bad" film if nothing else. And as a former reviewer noted, this is one of those films that has an awesome poster - a poster that easily out-distances its film in terms of aesthetic quality.

A seaside community is besieged by a giant shark like creature that threatens the local serenity. Greedy resort proprietor (Wolfe) sees a marketing opportunity and invites all and sundry to hunt down the perpetrator for a booty in cash and hotel discounts. Sounds reasonable. When you see the concoction, you'll understand why that shouldn't be too much of a problem. But then, there are as yet undiscovered marine life living in deep sea trenches that could conceivably resemble the giant, dual-dorsal finned groper with dentures. Kudos to director Griffith for envisaging such a beast so we can marvel at nature's oddities.

"Up From the Depths" is a fast paced, amusing experiment which has attracted minor cult status for its sheer absurdity. The acting, in particular, is atrocious and not all of it is ham flavoured, so there's some excruciating performances to endure. Director Griffith, who hails from the Roger Corman inspired school of movie making seems to have attempted a cheerful homage to those early, inexpensive AIP monster movies, and there's certainly a camp quality to the dialogue and acting (the scene in which the samurai tries to alight from the beach in his canoe is hilarious in context).

Dubious voice-over looping is badly out of sync with the actors' speech, while the shark is one of the more intrepid creations of a sea monster, but still has enough mobility (combined with the right camera angles and additional footage) to give the attack scenes some plausibility, if only for a moment. An occasional severed head falling to the sea floor post attack tells us that at least some of the meagre budget was dedicated to make-up effects, perhaps so much that the makers couldn't blow up the shark itself – its fate is implied with a loud explosion, although there's no visible evidence (save for everyone waving their arms in jubilation).

Despite a reasonable cast (Bottoms, Frye, Howerton & Metcalfe), a zany soundtrack and comfortable plot, the budget doesn't go far enough and it's likely destined for lifelong obscurity. Too bad if you're mainstream, just wish they'd release on DVD for the rest of us.

After a strange series of incidents, the owner of a Hawaiian tourist resort tries to downplay the incidents especially when he finds a local swindler trying to stop the resorts' activities, but as the attacks by a released shark get more destructive he's forced to rely on his help to stop the deadly creature.

On the whole, this one was a highly disappointing effort. Among the better features here is that there's a somewhat enjoyable set up here to get the shark released on the community. The opening footage of the unwater earthquake and the resulting off-screen attack with the blood-cloud floating to the surface is a fine start to things, while the resorts' imminent missing person's investigation alongside the various sea creatures coming ashore and wrecking the guests' time. As well, the sneak-shots of the fins swimming through the ocean or flash attacks happening to the staff at the resort do a decent job at building up a potential threat in the waters. As well, when the shark-creature appears this one gets rather enjoyable. The first attack on the pearl smugglers has some decent underwater stalking scenes before the expected blood-cloud emerges, while the centerpiece scenes of the shark attacking the resort are a lot of fun. Smashing the transport boat to snap up the persons' onboard is a fine way to go into the creatures' attack on the guests on the beach in full view of everyone causing massive panic to erupt in the race to get to shore, giving this one some solid action. Some of the attacks to catch the shark by having the locals go out after it only to hilariously fail provides some laughs, and with these taking place with a real shark, prop give this some positives. There are a few problems here. The main problem is the film's utter boredom for the majority of the first half as it tends to focus on extremely uninteresting storylines that do nothing for the film. Focusing on the relationship of the three main characters involved around the resort, from the owner to his assistant who's romantically involved with the swindler trying to peddle the sight-seeing tours around the hotel property for a vast majority of the first half is just boring to get through. That carries over into the different sketches shown of the various guests going around trying to enjoy life around the resort which isn't any better, leaving this one incredibly bland and dull to get going. The other issue here is the completely unnecessary setup of the useless cliches present here. The most obvious one here is the lame reasoning to keep the resort open as the manager continually keeps it going merely for monetary gain despite ample evidence something is going on with the missing staff and guests. Even after realizing the creatures' out there with his presence during an attack, the decision to keep the resort open and offer up a reward for it tends to sit uneasily here in being a realistic scenario. The last complaint is a wholly rushed and underwhelming ending, where the build-up to this great fight with the creature is over quickly and suddenly, taking the sting out of it somewhat and being the film's main flaws.

Rated R: Graphic Language, Graphic Violence and Nudity.

I played the photographer in this torpid screecher. One reason the dialog is so stilted, is that somehow the sound track and the written script were lost. Weeks after we'd finished shooting, some of us "actors" assembled in a theater to watch silent clips, try to remember what we'd said, and dub that in. It's ad libbed, and the reason some people sound like others is that we dubbed for more than ourselves. The underwater scenes (I was shooting a topless babe named "Iris Lee" when the monster ate her, then ate me) were filmed in about 25' of water over a South China Sea reef, but the budget did not provide breathing apparatus for me. They gave me a mask and the 2nd stage of a SCUBA regulator with a red garden hose taped to it, told me to "act like I was breathing." At -15', with the most horrendous hangover I ever had. Then, the underwater camera not having been tested, the cinematographer shot everything off frame. When that was discovered, they inserted the red dye in an aquarium "death scene" from "Pirhana" and made do. There are shots of the ominous fin cruising cross-scene; you can see the wake of the outrigger canoe pulling it. There was a guy sitting inside the "fish" guiding it with a joystick; one afternoon he hit the reef, fell out the open side, and put his arm on a lionfish. VERY bad thing, the arm swelled to the size of his thighs and turned black but the Batangas Provincial hospital saved his life. Next day they moved him to a cheaper hospital! There was a lot more stuff, as you'd expect from a movie that opens with a pig intestine draped over someone's shoulders. I rated it 10 because as terrible movies go, it excels. It is so bad I think it deserves to be right down there with the Bush presidency. Chuck Griffiths and most of the actors in the film were great people. Chuck is far more talented than this movie allows him to show, and I'd like to visit with Suzanne Reed and Kedric Wolfe again some day, see how they've gotten along. Joe Cantrell

When seismic activity off the coast of Hawaii unleashes a previously trapped selection of prehistoric sea life including one very large, odd looking carnivorous fish, the locals at a sea resort subsequently find themselves on the menu in this very silly Jaws inspired poop-fest. Far more terrifying than said oceanic predator however is the God-awful troupe of actors assembled in this! Put it this way, if incompetent overacting is what floats your boat, then you'll absolutely be in heaven with this one.

Luckily it is entirely clear that the director knew what a stinker he was involved with here and quite rightly injects much humour into proceedings (most of it sadly falling woefully flat but oh well, it's the thought that counts after all). It would be all too easy to poke fun at the rather poor looking creature in this (which is absolutely NOTHING like that depicted on the video sleeve!) but to be fair I have seen far worse in my time.........no really I have. The real problem here however is that much of the underwater footage is so dark that it is virtually impossible to discern what the hell is going on (not that one is probably missing much anyway). The ending to is handled about as lousily as humanly imaginable but after having sat through the previous eighty five or so minutes of this rather mundane effort, the viewer will be perfectly prepared for such a let down.

I wouldn't in all seriousness recommend this to anyone other than extreme bad movie lovers.....and even then I would attach a caution. Oh well, at least it's marginally better than Devouring Waves aka Devil Fish/Monster Shark.

This is a nearly completely redone version of Jaws, of course. The monster gets a 1, pretty lame big rubber fish. The script a 2, too much really bad humor that's tried to be passed off as wit. The supporting cast a 3, some are okay some are not, and the boy and girl leads get a 4, they really are not bad and handled their parts in such a grade C film with respect. The nice scenery of a remote Hawaiian island gets a 5 and the all around neat 1970s mishmash decor gets a 7, and not higher because it wasn't planned but was just there to be used. I mean just look at that hotel, with a 1960s angular pointy diner roof and greco-roman columns holding it up!

Surfacing recently on a popular streaming service, Up From The Depths is a sorry-assed sub-aquatic horror from the golden age of Jaws rip-offs. The hokey plot sees underwater seismic activity forcing a huge, ravenous deep-sea fish to the surface where it proceeds to snack on the guests at a Hawaiian resort. Prime viewing it ain't.

Most of the attacks are a flurry of briefly glimpsed shots of the fish and bubbles, while the gore is limited to blood in the water and a chewed off limb. The rest of the film is semi-comedic nonsense featuring a neurotic hotel owner, a couple of dodgy local fishermen types, a drunken pair of holidaymakers, a scientist hoping to catch the fish, and, best of all, an English fashion model who is doing a photoshoot at the resort (the lady providing the film with some topless nudity before becoming fish-food).

The abysmal acting, dismal overdubbing (the dialogue is horribly stilted as a result), dreadful direction, crappy monster and terrible action make for a truly horrible experience, with the dumbest moment seeing panicking people running for their lives on dry land despite the fact that it's a fish they're scared of. I'm not sure, but at this point the film-makers were surely treating the whole thing as a joke. I certainly was, but I didn't find it that funny.

On the isolated Hawaiian island of Mahu, there are problems. The only resort is busy as usual, run by the jerk manager Forbes (Kedric Wolfe). He must contend with Greg (Sam Bottoms) and Greg's uncle Earl (Virgil Frye). These two rascals like to bilk tourists by taking them out to an old wreck and making the dumb mainlanders believe treasure can be found there. Greg is also dating the resort's perky PR gal Rachel (Susanne Reed). Also prowling the waters is a Doctor Whiting (Charles Howerton), whose research assistant is eaten by an unseen underwater animal in the opening segment of the film. The jerk harbor master does not seem terribly worried about sudden bodies and grue floating in the surf, and still does not worry after Rachel sees a French writer get pulled under (to a ripoff of John Williams' "Jaws" theme). Earl and Greg, those rapscallions, take one couple, plus the eccentric Holland (Ken Metcalf), out to a combed-over wreck, and find real treasure before the creature strikes again. We are eventually shown a giant monster fish is doing all the murdering, and the audience is taken aback by the sheer weakness of the effect. After the fish eats a topless model, Forbes offers a thousand dollars, a case of rum, and a week's stay at the hotel for anyone who kills the fish. Greg and Rachel pile into Whiting's boat to catch the giant fish for study. The entire hotel clientele invade the convenient sporting goods store in the lobby, and float out into the lagoon, and everyone tries to be the first to kill the fish- and I think you know how this turns out.

Sam Bottoms, wondering what happened to his career after "The Last Picture Show," is lost here. So is the rest of the cast. The reason? There are no characters here. Sure, actors run around and are called by character names, but no one performs. No one changes over the course of the film. No one does anything that shows any resemblance to normal human behavior. These are caricatures from other movies, presented to make a quick buck and milk better films. Director Griffith cannot stage any sort of suspense. Scenes are thrown together without regard for pacing or coherence. His special effects fish is a joke, in some scenes you can see the string that opens its mouth and moves it through the water. Characters are introduced, then dropped. Watch for the reporter from Honolulu, who has no purpose in the film. Even the fish is unexplained. We assume it is ancient, and came "up from the depths," but the audience is given nothing else to go on. You can forget about seeing it swim, too. Holland talks about how clear the ocean is off of Mahu, yet the fish is filmed in a dark, murky swimming pool somewhere. Finally, a special word about the location sound department's recording- there isn't any. The film's dialogue is dubbed- all of it. Everyone talks or yells, even in the quietest of scenes. The words never synch with what the actors' mouths are doing, either. The whole auditory mess is headache inducing, and my ears are still ringing. Let "Up from the Depths" go, and watch it sink like a stone. I do not recommend it.

This movie begins with two people out in a boat with one of them diving into the ocean off the coast of Hawaii. As it so happens the diver encounters something gigantic under water and her blood is all that the person in the boat can see. In any case, when the person reports the incident the matter is kept quiet from the police mainly because the news might endanger tourist activity on the island. But it doesn't stop there as one similar incident after the other takes place which is followed by the same reluctance to disclose the event by those with their own personal agendas. Needless to say, the refusal to acknowledge the severity of the situation leads to disastrous consequences which eventually requires a response by everyone on the island. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that, even though this same plot has been used countless times in the past, this particular film suffers in comparison due in large part to the basic script and the dreadful acting. Quite frankly, about the only good thing about this film was the presence of Susanne Reed (as "Rachel McNamara") but even then there wasn't much she could do to save this film from being a total disaster and I have rated it accordingly.

A lot of people have already commented, but I will too. The best thing about this film is the poster as it features a prehistoric looking shark and a woman that appears to be terrified. If I had seen that poster in the theater back in the day, I would have jumped at the chance to watch this film. Unfortunately, back then, posters were done in a more artistic manner and oftentimes what was depicted on the poster was a lot better than the actual film. They were also misleading a lot of times too as it looks like a hardcore shark film! Couple that with the fact this one is rated R and you just know the shark action is going to be gory because even Jaws was rated PG! Well, when the film started you might think this is going to be cool, but as it plays out you would become increasingly frustrated by said film. For one thing, the shark on the poster looks nothing like the shark in the movie. In fact, the shark in the movie looks almost like a whale and they didn't even bother giving it really big teeth! Granted, you may miss said shark because when it is attacking you are treated with so many jump cuts and shot changes if you blink you will miss the shark in many instances! The film also tries to be funny and it is not. At first the comedic touches are light, but by the end it is almost pure comedy and makes the scene with the scientist dying seem almost out of place! Nothing about the poster suggests this film is a comedy! So after the credits roll, if you had sat through this entire film you would probably be rather angry because what was on that poster did not depict what you got!

The story in this one features a girl going down into the water to set some sort of equipment up while a scientist type guy sits in a boat. There is an earthquake or something and soon the woman is attacked and blood rushes from the area onto the surface. Best scene in the film as from there you are sent to a resort where the horrific comedy begins! The manager of the resort gets angry as a shark head washes ashore and blames a couple of local fisherman who take tourists on trips and thinks he is sabotaging their hotel which makes perfect sense for them to do because if the resort closes their business would dry up. It also makes another later scene make no sense as the resort manager starts saying, "There are no sharks in this area" when he saw a dead shark! So we have a few shark attacks, everyone of the unlikable characters try to cover it up or get rich and then at the end everyone rushes into the water to kill the shark when only the previous day they were running out of the water and continued running in a panic when they were on land! As for the shark in the poster, there is a very small one that fits in a bucket that looks like the one in the poster...

This film just missed the mark, but it is sort of understandable. "Jaws" had a big budget and even they could not really show the shark much because of the problems shooting water scenes presents. However, this film had an R rating and the attack scenes of the shark were less graphic than the PG rated "Jaws"! Every attack is watching someone swimming backward and a bunch of flashes of this and that and some red water! The only reason this film was most likely rated R is there is a scene where this supermodel goes topless and perhaps a few more curse words here and there. Seriously, you're making a "Jaws" ripoff movie the only way to go is to heap on the gore and violence. Instead, we get comedy that isn't funny and a very small topless scene! They also missed a golden opportunity for a memorable kill where the topless model is in a fishing net dangled over the water. They could have had the shark rise up and snatch her, instead she goes into the water and gets killed in the same fashion as everyone else in the film.

So this film is bad, pure and simple, but then again most shark films that are not the original "Jaws" are pretty bad. A lot of people even consider "Jaws II" bad, but I rather liked that one myself. I even liked the third film, as I found it cheesy fun. This one though is not fun. Why bother making an R rated shark film if you are not going to attempt to make the kills look good? Corman had a hand in this film, which is not surprising as he made so many of these ripoff films back in the day; however, he also had a hand in that piranha film in the 70's that is also kind of a take on "Jaws", but it was actually pretty good as it had good kills and a lot better story. This one was just a bunch of humor that fell flat and occasionally a shark attacks and then turns into almost all comedy and feels like the ending of a Hal Needham film as the cast goes out to fight the shark.

of course this film is not Oscar worthy, it's meant to be seen while under the influence of miller highlife and columbian gold! this kind of movie is that made going to the drive-in so much damn fun back in my youth.roger corman should have just taken each ticket holder out behind the theater and robbed them at gunpoint. he is the p.t. barnum of our time. i remember seeing the awesome poster back in high school and i was there opening night. sure the poster was way more exciting than the actual film but it's bad in a very fun way un-like straight to video junk of today. i laughed my butt off at this film then and still enjoy the hell out of it now that in my forties. fire up your DVD player( and a fatty wouldn't hurt) and prepare for a blast!!!

Right, well I decided to sit down and watch the 1979 movie "Up from the Depths" in mid-2019. I had a suspicion that I might be finding myself in for a movie that was cashing in on the success of the 1975 movie "Jaws".

And right I was. "Up from the Depths" from director Charles B. Griffith and writer Alfred M. Sweeney was indeed such a movie. It was actually doing fair enough on its own in most aspects, but believe you me, this was no "Jaws".

The movie is riddled with some fairly pointless characters that were just milling about doing nothing much of any importance, and it made the movie feel somewhat unserious.

There was also a comical sense permeating the movie, which made it feel goofy at times throughout the course of the movie. Many of the characters were the source of this goofiness, for better or worse. Sadly, the comedy wasn't made to the point where you would find yourself laughing. It was just sort of bland.

"Up from the Depths" also feature a very young R. Lee Ermey, which was a nice surprise, though his role was small.

This was an adequate movie, but no contender for "Jaws" in any way. It makes for a slightly less than mediocre entertainment. But it, where "Jaws" can be seen again and again, "Up from the Depths" just doesn't possess that quality, and it is a movie you watch once and never again.