Indie Squid Kid

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?

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.)