Don’t you just love it when you stand on the beach of an ocean or large lake and listen to the waves crashing on the shore? That sense of calm coupled with the beauty of the water and the waves puts you at ease with the world and makes you forget all your troubles. The oceans are some of the last places on earth that have yet to be dominated by mankind. Teeming with all forms of life near the surface and towards the unimaginable depths, the variety of species and plant life far exceeds our capacity to discover and count them. However, if certain movies are to be believed, these dark depths are home to some of the most unimaginable terrors yet to be encountered. The movies that I’m talking about today are some of my favorite monster movies that take place either in the oceans or in gigantic lakes. So….hold on for dear life, because there’s no escaping the terrors of the deep.
Jaws
Yeah, I’m going to start off with the best of the bunch, because I want to get it out of the way. Jaws is easily the greatest shark movie in cinematic history. This was the film that not only put Steven Spielberg on the map as a director, but it became the world’s first summer blockbuster film. It was intended to be a bit of a b-movie, but it ended up being one of the greatest thrillers of all time. Featuring a stellar cast including Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw and Richard Dreyfuss, Jaws was not only a very strong horror movie, but it also featured some amazing characters and white-knuckle tension. The greatest thing about the film? You only see maybe 5 minutes worth of shark. Due to technical difficulties with the prop, Spielberg was forced to use other methods to “show” the shark, by not showing it. Instead, he opted to use John Williams’s iconic music to tell the audience when the shark is coming. This is an absolute brilliant piece of film-making. No other movie before or since can come close to the masterpiece that is Jaws.
Piranha(1978)
Whenever a big movie becomes successful, it doesn’t take very long for people to start trying to copy the success of the film. Jaws was no different. After the film became a major hit, Jaws was inundated with a huge amount of knock-offs and spoofs. One of the more successful ones was 1978’s Piranha. Directed by notable horror film director Joe Dante and produced by legendary b-movie schlock jock, Roger Corman, Piranha takes the threat of underwater predators and throws them into a river during a wild celebration. Instead of a Great White Shark, you have hundreds of flesh-eating piranha tearing people to shreds. What makes this movie so fun, is the fact that it knows that it’s a rip-off and just goes with it. It plays out very much the same way that Jaws did and even features some of the same kinds of characters. It’s just a lot of fun from beginning to end.
Deep Star Six
While Jaws scared most people, including my mom, out of the ocean, it didn’t really scare me that much. The one movie that scared the hell out of me when I was a kid though, was Deep Star Six. This was a very claustrophobic film that takes place on the bottom of the ocean where a group of scientists mistakenly unleash a cave-dwelling monster that terrorizes the group. While this fucker gave me nightmares as a kid, I still come back to it, because I enjoy the hell out of it. There is a real sense of isolation and claustrophobia that permeates the entire film. While Deep Star Six is more of an Alien rip-off, it still manages to entertain with some really strong performances from Greg Evigan, Miguel Ferrer, and Matt McCoy. This is one of those films that I wish Shout! Factory or Lionsgate Studios would get a hold of it and give it a high-definition Blu-Ray release.
Leviathan
1989 featured three movies that were set underwater. One of them was James Cameron’s The Abyss, which was a PG-13 adventure film, and was a pretty solid movie. At the same time, Sean S. Cunningham(director of Friday The 13th) released his own underwater feature, Deep Star Six that I mentioned above. The film that actually did the worst at the box-office and yet is probably regarded as the best of the three is Leviathan. Like Deep Star Six, Leviathan takes place at the bottom of the ocean. Instead of scientists, we’ve got miners lead by Peter Weller’s Beck. Honestly, this one feels more like an Alien film than Deep Star. The creature effects by Stan Winston are gruesome and fantastic. You have strong performances by Peter Weller, Amanda Pays, Richard Crenna as well as a surprisingly serious turn from Daniel Stern. The musical score by Jerry Goldsmith is absolutely wonderful and gives this film a serious b-movie vibe that makes it work.
Deep Rising
Deep Rising is so much fun, I can’t believe why it didn’t do well at the box-office. It was one of the few R-rated monster movies to be released during the late 90s. It definitely earned its R-rating. It was gory, it was intense, and it was surprisingly funny at times. This was a film that really knew what it was and what it wanted to be, and it fired on all cylinders. It was basically Jaws meets Tremors with a fairly unique and interesting monster. While the final reveal of the beast was not very impressive, the visual and practical effects were. This was 1998, so the CGI was very impressive, and Stephen Sommers(who would direct The Mummy with Brendan Fraser)proved that he could deliver a solid b-movie thrill-ride. Treat Williams, Famke Janssen, Wes Studi, Kevin J. O’Connor, Anthony Heald and others helped elevate would could’ve been a run-of-the-mill monster movie. It’s action-packed, gruesome and an absolute blast from beginning to end.
Piranha(2010)
Wait a second here. Didn’t I already mention Piranha? Oh, yeah, that was the 1978 film. This it the 2010 re-make from horror director Alexandre Aja. Instead of dealing with genetically altered piranha like in the original film, the ones we deal with here are over 2 million years old. While I definitely credit the original Piranha for being a really fun knock-off of Jaws, the re-make is the superior film in many ways. For the one, the effects were done by the KNB Effects Group which really specializes in realistic gore effects for horror movies. Boy, this film is gory. While some of the CGI and 3d effects are not overly impressive, the film still succeeds by delivering one of the bloodiest beach scenes I’ve ever seen. That’s an accomplishment for what is a mainstream horror film. Instead of going the super serious route of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre or Saw, Piranha opts for a more hilarious approach, as evidenced by the inclusion of such charactor actors like Jerry O’Connell and Christopher Lloyd. This movie is absolutely bonkers and it’s all the better for it. This is one of the rare occasions where the re-make is better than the original film.
Deep Blue Sea
Never genetically modify sharks. Ever. That’s a lesson that the scientist characters from Deep Blue Sea never learned and the whole thing gets turned upside down. I like it. Instead of a Great White Shark terrorizing people, you’ve got a group of folks stuck in an underwater structure being hunted by a group of genetically modified sharks. How many movies have seen where one of the main characters delivers an inspirational speech and suddenly gets eaten by a shark? Not many, I gather, and certainly not ones that star Samuel L. Jackson. Deep Blue Sea isn’t a great movie and feels very cliche at times, but I’ll be damned if it wasn’t fun. It takes itself seriously enough to be intense, but it loosens up enough to let the audience’s guard down. It’s a goofy b-level shark movie. It doesn’t pretend to be anything more than that.
While there are other movies out there like these, these are the ones that I remember loving the most. They’re a lot of fun, don’t take themselves too seriously and are just worth the price of admission. So, yeah. That’s my list for the Best Underwater Creature Features. Always remember: Whenever you swim in the ocean, you are no longer the top of the food chain. There may be something lurking in the depths below that may think you are a tasty treat. Have fun!