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 There is a "prehistoric fish" that shows up on the campus of Dunsfield
University. This is the kind of college where there are "seemingly tranquil
halls," but "fear stalks" those halls with this fish hanging around. Anything
that comes into contact with the "finned relic" suffers from some "monstrous
mutations." 1958, 77 minutes, VHS
This movie about a big, dead, smelly fish has the kind of pedigree that would
make you think it was one of those big, dead, smelly fish movies from the 1950s
that was really good. You've got Jack Arnold directing the action (he directed
the likes of Creature From The Black Lagoon and The Incredible Shrinking Man ) and you have Daniel Duncan writing the script (he wrote the script for The Time Machine , a superior effort). There's even Joanna Cook Moore as the female lead. She
was Tatum O'Neal's mommy. Instead of an interesting rampaging monster epic,
you have a movie, that is hampered not by the performances or anything
technical with the movie, but by its silly premise. It's one of the premises,
that the more the professor in charge of puking forth the theory talks, the
more ridiculous it gets. Another beef I had with this movie was that the
monster hardly rampaged at all, making only a few off screen appearances until
the very end when a guy in caveman make up starting running around the woods,
chucking axes at park rangers and causing purty gals to faint dead away. The
dumb idea behind all this low-level mayhem, combined with lackluster monster
robbed the movie of most of the entertainment value you would expect from a
movie that had
both the words "monster" and "campus" in the title. When I heard there was a
monster on the loose on some campus, I naturally assumed that there would be
raids
on sorority houses and that this monster would show up and disrupt the
homecoming football game, possibly even getting to go in for a few plays. All
I got was a bland professor that constantly babbles on about how humans could
probably revert back to savagery if something as simple as say, um, I don't
know, a big, smelly, dead fish bit you or something. On the plus side, this is
another movie to feature a giant dragonfly (see also Godzilla vs. Megaguirus).  Dunsfield University is one of those decent types of colleges where people like
the clean cut and handsome Troy Donahue go to school and helps out his
professor unloading giant fish, while walking their dogs. You're not going to
find any of those long-haired punks that run this country down with their
commie talk about pot and free speech and nude dancing, like we do in these
colleges today. Did you know that at some schools now, they actually have
courses on rock and roll? It's true! That's the kind of bizarre stuff that
must
have originated out on the east coast or California or somewhere where they
hate America. What's with this giant fish stuff though? Professor Donald
Blake has somehow managed to get Dunsfield U to spring for the purchase of a
big, prehistoric fish from Madagascar. This fish is the coelacanth (I cringed
as soon as I heard that name, thinking about how I was going to have learn how
to spell "coelacanth" to write this). It's famous for being a "living fossil"
because it is thought to have not really evolved over the course of its 400
million year history (similar to Strom Thurmond). In fact it was thought
extinct until some yokel caught one with his Zebco back in 1938. I wasn't real
sure what Blake wanted this fish for, but he apparently studied evolutionary
stuff (as evidenced by his collection of busts representing the changing faces
of what would eventually become homo sapiens). The fish is packed in ice and
some of it melts leaving a bloody mess on the ground, which Troy's dog Sampson
promptly licks up. The next thing you know, Sampson is trying to lick up
Blake's girlfriend, Madeline and so Troy and Blake tackle the dog with a
blanket and haul it off to the vet. The dog also bites Blake, but no one is
worried about rabies, because Sampson was really into drinking up bloody fish
water and everyone knows that dogs that have rabies don't like bloody fish
water. Sampson is kept in the lab for observation and Blake observes that
Sampson has grown really big teeth, making him a sabre-tooth German shepherd.
He thinks this is odd, but he never stops to wonder if he himself will soon be
growing those really bitchin' fangs.  Even though Blake has himself a fiancee, the vet's assistant hits on him pretty
hard while they're in the lab with Sampson. He politely declines, but does get
her to help him move the coelacanth into the fridge (just put it next to the
potato salad!). While he's loading it back into its carrying case, he gets bit
by it. Actually he sticks his hand in its mouth and cuts it on the thing's
teeth. Then he puts his wounded hand into the bloody water that still remains
in the tub he's hauling this thing around in. Now, instead of acting like a
disinfectant as you might expect bloody fish water to do, it actually has a
different effect. It makes Blake a little warm, a little weak, and a whole lot
primitive! This woman, Nurse Molly, sees that there is something wrong with
Blake, so she suggests that they go out to her car because she has a first aid
kit there. Where's that? In your girdle, sister? They somehow end up at
Blake's place, he turns into a monster, busts up the joint and the next thing
we know, Blake's girlfriend is bringing the law down on his place because she
finds him out back with the corpse of Nurse Molly. The cops suspect Blake, but
the physical evidence is confusing because instead of the business card with
Blake's name laying across the dead girl, they find big fingerprints and big
nasty footprints. They also find Blake's tie clasp, but no one pays that too
much mind and immediately settle on the whole "someone is trying to kill Blake
and/or frame him for murder" gag. With hands and feet prints like that, I
would have put out an APB on Rondo Hatton. Once all the hoo-haw about finding
a nurse dead (the M.E. said she died from fright) on his property has died
down, his
girlfriend asks the doctor the question all you guys knew was coming sooner or
later.
"Donnie, where you pumping that nurse that was just found dead in your
backyard?" Donald comes back with this: "Well, she was very attractive, but
nothing happened." Huh? Dude, the correct answer is "Her? You must be crazy!
That girl looks like somebody put out a fire on her face with a cheese grater!
Really, dollface, sometimes you just crack me up!" Since this was the fifties
and women didn't expect much out of their mad scientist boyfriends, the whole
"very attractive" take sufficed to reassure her that even though he's hanging
out with nurses that he admits are super-sex-ay, the fact that he said nothing
happened was good enough for her. Yeah, that and the fact that she's stone
dead. 
With the fuzz off his back and the little lady back in line, Donald can
concentrate on playing with his fish some more. It turns out that the heat
isn't completely off his case though, because they assign him a bodyguard in
case this maniac comes back and tries to take out Donald. Of course, no one
has ever established any motive for why someone would want to kill Donald
(other than his old lady), but this town probably has extra cops anyways. In
the lab, Donald finds out something cool about the make up of the blood. The
bacteria is frozen or the platelets are blue or it contains Olestra or
something dazzling, so he boogies over to the vet or doctor or whomever it was
that checked out the dog and him the last time they had a rassling match. The
blood is back to normal by the time he gets there and the doctor pretty much
makes fun of him, so Donnie leaves in a huff. At some point the cop disappears
to check in (why he couldn't check in over the phone in Donnie's office is
beyond me, but it probably has something to do with the cop really wanting to
check in with some hookers or something). Meanwhile Troy and his girlfriend
are hanging out on campus making out behind a tree and they eventually hear a
strange buzzing. They think it sounds like a model airplane, but that would be
crazy to hear at that time of night on campus. The only thing you should be
hearing at that hour is the muffled screams of sorority girls and the grunting
of their drunk frat-boy boyfriends. They then notice that the loud humming is
coming from a gigantic dragonfly! This is probably the same dragonfly that
was sucking the blood from the dead fish in the lab a little while back. The
dragonfly chases them across campus right to Donnie's lab. Donnie realizes
what's going on and he opens the window to let the dragonfly in (He wants to
study it you know.)! They catch this thing in a net and stab it to death and
Donnie pronounces it a mega-something or other, just like the guy did in that
Godzilla movie. I checked it out for you and it turns out there really was a
prehistoric dragonfly named mega-something or other (I learned how to spell
"coelacanth," and I'm not learning no more today!) and it had a wingspan of
something like 29 inches. Man, that's something a toddler could ride on. He
swears them to secrecy about what they've seen and no one notices that some
blood from the dragonfly drips into this drip's pipe. At this point in time,
we would have to issue a Monster Watch. Later it turns into a warning as
Donnie goes ape and kills off the cop that was finally coming back from
"checking in." The movie really then begins to reek like the fish it's obsessed with. There
is a
sequence involving Donnie calling Madagascar and the head of the university
being outraged that he has spent all this department money on a long distance
phone call. Something about a seventy-five minute phone call at five bucks a
minute. Why doesn't he use that deal that that Carrottop retard pushes
incessantly on TV? It's one thing for nurses and cops to turn up dead all
around this professor, but running up the long distance bill? You are out of
there buddy boy! The Dean stomps over to see Donnie and there's a big pow wow
where Donnie goes on and on about how something in the plasma of the fish
causes evolutionary regression and that it affects the person doing all the
killing because the fish was treated with gamma rays to preserve it. This all
quite stupid when you stop to consider that the amazing thing about the
coelacanth is that it has survived in spite of its primitive nature, not
because of it. In fact, it actually has evolved to some extent in that it now
gives birth to live pups, not lays eggs (I looked that up too!). The idea that
something in the blood
of this fish could make another species regress makes absolutely no sense, but
since gamma rays were mentioned who knows what could happen, right? Dubious
scientific analysis aside, the movie completely tanks at the end (though I did
like that dude getting an axe in the face) when Donnie goes up to the mountains
to study the effects of the fish blood on him. He injects himself once, goes
on a rampage killing the park ranger and harassing his girlfriend, then when
the cops show up, he's back to normal and injects himself again so that the
monster can be destroyed. What? Here's a idea, Donnie: if you never inject
yourself again with this slop, you won't ever turn into the monster again. And
he had a way out, too. His girlfriend was already lying to the police about
how he had killed the monster when he pipes in that he didn't kill nothing
(except a park ranger, sexy nurse, and lazy cop). Then he runs off with the
cops and turns into the monster and they shoot him dead. A completely
ludicrous ending that one suspects was done merely because all these monster on
the loose movies end like that. They wanted it to be one of those The Wolf Man endings, where the decent guy has to be killed to stop the monster. That
makes it so much more emotional involving for the audience, plus allows you to
explore all that "man is really a beast deep down" stuff. The problem here is
that since the guy transformed first by accident and then again for no good
reason other than to see if it could be done and then again so that he could be
shot, all that Wolf Man sympathy and pathos is non-existent and you're left
with a monster movie that craps out big time in the end. Hewing too close to
the man-into-monster formula, while not getting the details right, prevented
this movie from being much of anything other than a very brief and not too
accurate educational lesson about ancient bugs and fish.
Reviews © 2004
MonsterHunter
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