The Bourne Cephalopod

Two weeks ago, myself and my former college roomates ( I was living with them at the time) settled down to watch Super Gator, another original movie from one of the three gnomes that writes all of the stuff on the SciFi channel. While it was a semi-awesome, semi-softcore picture staring Judi Dench lookalike Kelly McGillis and Brad Johnson from Left Behind I and II, it was typical SciFi fare. However, what it led to was one of the boldest openings to a B-beast picture I've ever seen.

Octopus (the First Hour)
OK, so after the lady of the house turned in, CTC and I started watching Octopus, pretty much expecting a re-hash of Super Gator, Frankenfish, etc. We were wrong, my friends. The first like five minutes of the movie is all in Russian, and then we're led through a Bourne/Munich style chase through vaguely European streets as a young CIA analyst and his old field agent mentor pursue a Russian spy (thank God that stereotype is returning). The spy bombs emabassies or something. More importantly, he's dressed like an old woman weaving his way in and out as extras who clearly don't know they're in a movie stare directly at the cameras. The young analyst is too much of a pussy to kill the spy, and this leads to the old mentor getting killed, but not before he blows up the spy's getaway car. In an honorable moment of cowardice, the analyst saves the spy. Now, there are all kinds of Russians (most of them attractive, scantily clad women) who want to rescue this spy, so the only way to transport him back to the US is via a submarine that's helmed by a crazy captain who might just go off the deep end at any moment.

The analyst and the spy arrive on the sub. Strip poker is played, and the analyst bunks with a hot marine biologist who's studying the sea from the sub or something while its “on maneuvers” off the coast of somewhere. There's more talk of "maneuvers," some bad flirting, a valiant escape attempt from the spy, and then the Octopus shows up. OK, once the octopus show up, it's all down hill. I actually bailed as the film morphed into the bad Jaws/Orca rip-off we all knew it was destined to be. However, the fact that it took an hour for the mighty Kraken to show, and the fact that it totally played like a bad political thriller until that moment is bold as pants. That said, I give the first hour of Octopus 3 ½-Griecos. Once the Octopus shows up, go to bed. Or, if you haven't aged 20 years in the last five months like I have, enjoy an evening of frolic.