Indie Squid Kid

As Movie Week draws to a close, it’s time to come full circle with another Disney movie. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest is the second installment of the trilogy based the popular theme park attraction. Even if you are not a fan, you have to admit that they’re pretty good for movies based on a 40 year old ride! Personally, I thought the first was thoroughly entertaining, the second was fun, but hard to follow, and the third made almost no sense at all. Dead Man’s Chest is the topic of today’s post because, of course, it features not one, but two cephalopod-based characters: Davy Jones, the film’s central villain, and the monstrous Kraken.

Davy Jones is an immortal mariner and captain of the infamous Flying Dutchman. He was originally tasked by the sea goddess Calypso to ferry souls of those who perish at sea to the afterlife. His subsequent betrayal of the goddess and dereliction of duty brought a curse upon him, transforming him into something resembling the Cthuloid spawn of an octopus and a lobster.  He has a roughly human face, but his entire head seems to be made up several octopi stacked on top of each other—their tentacles forming a writhing facsimile of the pirate’s original hair and beard. The index finger on his right hand has become a single winding tentacle. He has no nose but instead seems to breath through a siphon protruding from the side of his face.

Davy Jones is apparently the ruler of the ocean, and seems to spend most of his time attacking ships and forcing sailors to join his mutant aquarium crew. He locked his still beating heart away in a chest (the Dead Man’s Chest of the title), for reasons that are unclear but seem to be critically important to the movie’s plot. He commands the mighty Kraken (see below), which he sends to hunt down Captain Jack Sparrow (played by Johnny Depp, of course) who owes Jones his soul…or something like that.

Davy Jones was played by the fantastic Bill Nighy, and Industrial Light and Magic created his CGI “costume” via motion capture.

The Kraken, as you can see in this clip, is an enormous tentacled beast capable of not just sinking a ship, but literally ripping it apart. Davy Jones summons the beast to do his bidding using a device that sends out shock waves into the water. In this scene, we see it attack and destroy the Edinburgh Trader. Why does it do this? I think it has something do to with Will Turner (played by Orlando Bloom) and the key to the box that contains Davy Jone’s heart. Like I said, the story was kind of hard to follow.

Little of the Kraken’s body is seen in the movie, apart from it’s giant arms, two of which appear to be larger than the rest. This would be consistent with the monster being some type of squid, although these tentacles lack the characteristic club ends. At the end of Dead Man’s Chest, the Kraken has finally caught up with Captain Jack, and we get a clear view of the monster’s mouth. Instead of a beak, it has a circular maw with multiple rows of conical teeth. In this way, the Kraken resembles the Sarlacc from Return of the Jedi more than it does a giant squid. Like Davy Jones, the Kraken was entirely CGI, and ILM won the 2006 Acedemy Award for Best Visual Effects for their work on Dead Man’s Chest.

Not a squid.

Davy Jones and the Kraken return in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, the final part of the trilogy, although the Kraken only has a brief appearance. It seems Davy Jones’ new master (who has the box that contains his heart and therefore the power to kill Jones. I think?) has commanded ol’ squid face to kill his former pet. We do finally get a look at the body of the Kraken when Jack Sparrow finds its massive corpse washed up on a beach. (A scene that we are apparently supposed to find very poignant and symbolic.) It has a pair of enormous eyes and a long mantle with two rear stabilizing fins—all very squid-like. The book Pirates of the Caribbean: The Complete Visual Guide (Dorling Kindersley, 2007), states that the Kraken was 1400 feet long (the length of ten ships) and the accompanying illustration shows its body being at least twice as long as its arms, making the Kraken more like a cuttlefish than a squid.

We’re almost at the end of Movie Week! Tomorrow, for the final installment, I’ll take a look at the cephalopod movie hall of shame.

Toho Company Ltd. is a Japanese independent film studio founded in 1932. It has produced the films of legendary director Akira Kurosawa and the animated features of Studio Ghibli, but it is best known for daikaiju eiga (giant monster movies) like Godzilla (1954), Rodan (1956), Mothra (1961), and Destroy All Monsters (1968). Toho monster movies are full of mutant dinosaurs, giant insects, aliens, robots, dragons, and, of course, the occasional cephalopod.

King Kong vs Godzilla (1962)

This is the third movie appearance for each of the title monsters and the first time that either appeared in color. At the time, King Kong was considered the more popular monster, and so the giant ape is the primary focus of the film. The plot centers around a Japanese pharmaceutical company that hatches the clearly awesome idea of sending an expedition to Faro Island to capture King Kong so they can use the monster in an advertising campaign. At the same time, an American submarine accidentally releases Godzilla from an iceberg, and the atomic dinosaur proceeds to go on his customary rampage.

Back on Faro Island, a native village is attacked by Oodako, the giant octopus. Interestingly, Toho used a live octopus for these scenes, an oddity in daikaiju movies where models and rubber suits are the norm. Kong fights and defeats the octopus, and then proceeds to get drunk on berry juice. As you do.

Long story short, the intoxicated ape gets captured and transported to Japan. He escapes, fights Godzilla (who sets his crotch on fire), and gets captured again after the military hits him with a missile filled with the same narcotic berry juice. Stoned and unconscious, King Kong is then tied to a bunch of balloons and dropped by the military on the top of Mt. Fuji so he can fight Godzilla again. Their battle ends in the ocean, and Kong appears to be victorious. He is last seen swimming back to his island.

King Kong vs Oodako

Oodako the octopus would later have cameo appearances in Frankenstein Conquerors the World (1965) and War of the Gargantuas (1966).

Space Amoeba (1970) — a.k.a. Yog-Monster From Space

Yog is an alien energy being that invades a space probe on its return trip to Earth. When the ship crashes down in the South Pacific, the alien enters the body of a cuttlefish, transforming it into the giant Gezora. Gezora can walk on the land and emit extreme cold from its tentacles. It is vulnerable to fire, a fact discovered and utilized by inhabitants of the island that the giant cephalopod was terrorizing. After suffering a fiery defeat, Yog leaves to possess two other sea creatures (seemingly simultaneously): Ganime, a monstrous crab, and Kamoebas, a giant turtle. Through the use of bat sonar (which Yog seems hate), the two monsters are made to fight. They end up falling in a volcano, and Yog is destroyed.

Gezora the cuttlefish is a classic example of Toho “suitmation” (in other words, the monster was played buy a guy in a rubber squid suit). It’s only other appearance was in stock footage used in Godzilla: Final Wars (2004).

So here’s the thing. I am a giant Tolkien nerd. I mean it’s not as though I can read Elvish or recite the lineage of Númenorian kings, but I know the ancient language of the Elves is called Quenya and I understand why Aragorn was such a big deal. Anyway, ever since my mother first read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy to me as a child, I have been utterly fascinated with J.R.R. Tolkien’s densely layered fantasy world filled with his meticulously crafted cultures and histories.

I also absolutely love Peter Jackson’s movie adaptations, a fact that probably hurts my Tolkien nerd cred a little bit. Sure, I wish Jackson had included Radagast the Brown and the Scourging of the Shire, but I also feel that he produced a cinematic masterpiece like nothing else I’ve seen in my lifetime. And the things he got right FAR outweigh the things he got wrong.

All of which brings us to the topic of today’s Movie Week post: the Watcher in the Water from Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (New Line Cinema, 2001).

©New Line Cinema

The Watcher is a multi-tentacled beast that lurks at the bottom of a fetid lake on the edge of the western gate of Moria–the ancient realm of the Dwarves. It appears in one memorable scene about half way through the movie. (On the Extended Edition DVD, you can find it on disc 2, scene 33: “Moria.” ) The Fellowship, having failed to travel over the mountains, reluctantly decide their only remaining option is to go through the mines, but they are stymied by the Doors of Durin. While Gandalf tries in vain to puzzle it out, Hobbits Merry and Pippin attempt to amuse themselves by throwing stones into the lake, but Aragorn stops them with the warning “Do not disturb the water!” A smart guy, that Aragorn…

When smarty-pants Frodo figures out the riddle before Gandalf does, they both fail to notice that the rest of their party is getting increasingly nervous about disturbances in the water. Entering the cave, they quickly realize that they are surrounded by the corpses of slain Dwarves, and everyone starts to lose their shit. But before they can mount a full-scale retreat, a tentacle grabs Frodo and pulls him toward the lake. The ever dependable Sam hacks the tentacle loose, and it slithers back into the water. But then all hell breaks loose. Frodo is hoisted into the air, and we see the horrible visage of the Watcher for the first time. Aragorn and Boromir hack at its tentacles while Legolas shoots arrows into its face. They manage to rescue Frodo and keep the beast at bay long enough to retreat back into the cave. The last we see of the Watcher, it lunges up onto the shore and tears down the stone doors and much of the entry passage, blocking the way out. The  Fellowship now has no choice but to proceed through the “long dark of Moria.”

©John Howe

With a few minor exceptions, this scene is fairly close to the original text, although it has been expanded for dramatic effect. (You can read it for yourself in The Fellowship of the Ring, Book II, Chapter IV: “A Journey In the Dark”). The Watcher in the Water is one of the few denizens of Middle-earth about which Tolkien says very little. Its tentacles are described as “pale green and luminous and wet” as well as “fingered.” It has a foul stench. When Frodo asks Gandalf if it was one creature or many (more than 20 tentacles had emerged from the water, but no more of the creature was seen), the Wizard replies, “I do not know, but the arms were all guided by one purpose. Something has crept, or has been driven out of the dark waters under the mountains. There are older and fouler things than Orcs in the deep places of the world.”

So what type of creature is the Watcher? In A Tolkien Bestiary (Gramercy Books, 1979), David Day refers to it as a Kraken (although this is not a term Tolkien ever used) and speculates that it was the remnant of beings spawned by the evil god Melkor in the ancient past. Many artistic renderings over the years depict it as a monstrous octopus or squid. Peter Jackson’s version is clearly cephalopod-inspired (conceptual drawings show several versions of a very octopus-like Watcher), but its toothed maw and three-fingered tentacles place it firmly in the realm of fantasy.

The Watcher in the Water also appeared in Ralph Bakshi’s animated film J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings (Universal Artists, 1979). I’ve only seen part of this movie (ages ago), and all I really remember are the strange rotoscoped live action sequences.

Lastly, I want to direct your attention to Amazon’s Omnivoracious blog, where guest blogger China Miéville (one of my favorite contemporary fantasy authors—I’m currently reading The City & The City, and it is amazing!) mentions the Watcher in the Water in his list of Five Reasons Tolkien Rocks.

El Ray, originally uploaded by Potatojunkie

The career of Ray Harryhausen, the master of stop motion animation, has spanned eight decades. His memorable creations include Mighty Joe Young (1949), the cyclops form The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958), the warrior skeletons of Jason and the Argonauts (1963), the dinosaurs of The Valley of Gwangi (1969), and Bubo, the mechanical owl from Clash of the Titans (1981). He is also responsible for two memorable movie cephalopds.

It Came From Beneath The Sea (Columbia Pictures, 1955)

This black and white film tells the story of a rampaging giant octopus, “blasted loose from the depths of the Pacific” by a hydrogen bomb. It terrorizes Pacific shipping lanes before turning it baleful gaze on San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge. It takes the United States Navy, an atomic torpedo, and a whole bunch of flame throwers, but the monster is eventually destroyed. (Ooops…Spoiler Alert!)

This may very well be the largest cephalopod in movie history (with one possible exception?), but it is hard to gauge exactly how big this octopus is supposed to be.  Judging by its size relative to the Golden Gate Bridge, a single arm could be almost 500 ft long, which would make it something like 30 times the size of the largest reported living octopus.

Mysterious Island (Columbia Pictures, 1961)

This adaptation of Jules Verne’s sequel to 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea features a number of Harryhausen classics: a giant crab, a Phorusrhacos (a type of prehistoric flightless bird), giant bees, and, the reason we’re here, the giant ammonite. I haven’t seen this movie in ages, but if I recall, the ammonite encounter occurs near the end of the film during an underwater salvage operation. With the island literally falling down around them, the American castaways (with the help of Captain Nemo’s men) attempt to use their hot air balloon to raise a sunken ship to the surface.

Ammonites are an extinct variety of cephalopod known for their distinctive coiled shells. They lived throughout the Mesozoic Era (251 to 65.5 million years ago) and were wiped out in the same event that ended the dinosaurs. Most are believed to have lived in the open ocean, and the largest known species (Parapuzosia seppenradensis of Late Cretaceous Germany) had a shell 6.5 feet in diameter. The movie ammonite is obviously a tad unrealistic, but that’s the whole point isn’t it?

I didn’t originally anticipate needing to spend two posts discussing Disney’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, but it turns out I have more to say! In fact, without the two things covered here, Indie Squid Kid probably wouldn’t exist!

Walt Disney Presents the Story of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (Disneyland Records, 1963)

I wouldn’t say that this record is single-handedly responsible for my life-long squid obsession, but it definitely made quite an impression on my young mind. Here we see the giant squid, hate radiating from its enormous (and oddly human) red eye, as it is about to try to crush the oncoming Nautilus in it’s mighty tentacles. The fact that things didn’t happen quite this way in the movie is completely besides the point—this cover is AWESOME.

The record is an abridged version of the movie, and it uses a different (and uncredited) voice cast. Ned Land is the narrator (instead of Arronax), and his signature sea shanty, “Whale of a Tale,” has at least one different verse than the original film. Wikipedia tells me that this record was produced in 1963 to coincide with the first theatrical re-release of the movie. Herein lies a bit of a mystery. My copy of the record is also dated 1963, but I know I got it sometime in the early 80s. Were these LPs kept in print with the original copyright date, or did my parents pick it up second-hand? (It’s in pretty good shape for a 46 year old record.)

Story records like this were the DVDs of their day. I probably only saw 20,000 Leagues a few times on TV over the years (I doubt I ever saw it in the movie theater, and my family didn’t own a VCR until the late 80s), but I knew the story backwards and forwards because of this record.

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea: Submarine Voyage

I also wanted to mention the long gone (and sorely missed) 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea submarine ride from Disney World Magic Kingdom. The ride was open from 1971 to 1994 as part of Fantasyland. It was a near-exact copy of Disneyland’s Submarine Voyage ride, except the passenger vehicles were modeled to look like the Nautilus. The ride narration was rerecorded with a Captain Nemo sound-alike, and the script was tweaked to reference events from the film. Both rides culminate with a simulated giant squid attack.

I grew up in California, and visited Disneyland a few times in the late 70s and early 80s. It should be no surprise that the Submarine Voyage was my favorite ride (the Jungle Cruise was a close second). Sadly, I never got a chance to ride the Magic Kingdom’s 20,000 Leagues ride.

Incidentally, the original Submarine Voyage ride (which was open from 1959-1998), was reborn in 2007 as the Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage. There is no longer a squid attack sequence, and that is a damn shame.

Welcome to Movie Week! Every day this week, I will profile various cephalopods that have appeared in film—both famous and obscure.

I can’t think of a better place to start than with the greatest movie cephalopod of all time—the giant squid from Disney’s landmark 1954 adaptation of Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.

The squid appears during a climactic sequence about three-quarters of the way through the movie (1:35:42–about 95 minutes in). The Nautilus has just been ambushed by an American warship, and the damaged submarine has sunk to a depth of 5,000 feet, which, according to Captain Nemo (played by James Mason), is “deeper now than Man has ever been before.” Naturally, this seems to royally piss off a passing Architeuthis. Nemo tries to repel the squid using the Nautilus’s electrified hull (a technique which he had just successfully used to defend the sub from a tribe of vicious cannibals), but to no avail. Bringing his vessel to the surface, Nemo leads his crew into armed combat with the squid that now has the Nautilus firmly in its embrace, warning them that the giant squid is “the most tenacious of all sea beasts.” Nemo soon finds himself in the grip of a massive tentacle, his doom assured. Fortunately, Ned Land (played by Kirk Douglas) breaks out of the brig just in time to save Nemo with an expertly thrown harpoon—hitting the squid directly between the eyes (which Nemo mentioned earlier was the beast’s “only vital spot”).

The special effects in this sequence hold up surprisingly well after 55 years. The model used in the underwater scenes is quite realistic (the strange edits in the above video notwithstanding), even if some of the details are off. It even releases a cloud of ink when Nemo tries to electrocute it, which is a nice touch. Sure, the battle with the squid on the surface ratchets up the cheese factor a bit, with big, rubbery arms flailing all over the place, but in this blogger’s humble opinion, the Disney Architeuthis is more convincing overall than some recent attempts I could mention.

Disney’s version of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea remains the definitive interpretation of the Jules Verne classic. While steampunk traces its modern literary genesis back to the late 1980s/early 1990s, I think it could be easily argued that the popular sub-genre owes much of it’s visual aesthetic to the riveted opulence of Harper Goff’s Nautilus.

Let’s face it, this IS what the Nautilus looks like. Period.

This is a real movie. I shit you not.

Released direct to DVD on May 19, 2009, it “stars” Lorenzo Lamas and Debbie Gibson (yes, that Debbie Gibson). The basic premise seems to be that the titular prehistoric giants were frozen mid-battle in an iceberg only to be released from their suspended animation ten million years later when a pod of confused whales collides with said iceberg after being driven off course by the detonation of an experimental sonic weapon by the military. The unthawed sea monsters resume their fight, obviously, and God help any submarine, airplane, or suspension bridge that gets in their way. Debbie…I’m sorry, Deborah Gibson plays the plucky oceanographer who somehow saves the day.

At least I think that’s what this movie is about, but does it really matter? A Carcharodon megalodon fights a gigantic octopus!

(p.s. the octopus would totally win.)