Blood Tide

Director - Richard Jefferies (Living Hell)
Starring - James Earl Jones (Conan the Barbarian), Jose Ferrer (Hitler's S.S.: Portrait in Evil), and Lila Kedrova (The Night Child)
Release Date - 1982
Genre - Horror
Tagline - "It feeds on human flesh" "Evil lurks in the ocean depths" and "The myth is alive"
Format - DVD (Personal Collection) (15 Horror Movies Volume 1)

Rating (out of 5):

     After watching I Bury the Living I was excited to see what other hidden gems was in this little box set.  The film on disc 2 was Blood Tide starring James Earl Jones.  This was another one I was unaware of.  When I saw that it starred James Earl Jones I was skeptical.  Why would a horror film starring an actor of that caliber so unknown and obscure and why was a movie released in the 80's already in public domain status?  My love for 80's films and curiosity forced me to throw it in to see how it was.

     A young man and his young bride travel to an island in Greece to find his lost sister.  He finds her with a treasure hunter (Jones) and his blonde fuck buddy.  The treasure hunter, Frye, has been blasting underwater caves and caverns in hopes of finding gold.  Instead, Frye accidentally unleashes an ancient beast.  The locals sacrificed virgins to the bloodthirsty sea beast centuries ago and it has laid dormant ever since.  The beast makes a snack out of Frye's lady and the locals try to sacrifice the young man's sister to the beast to subdue it.  Frye swoops in the save the day and sacrifices himself to kill the ancient beast.
     I often find films and wonder why I have never heard of them before and after watching I quickly find out why.  This movie is no exception to that.  After 20 or so minutes I knew this one was a complete dud.  When I first started the film I got the vibe that I was watching a 70's Italian horror flick but that quickly faded and the film's true colors shown.  The acting is great and Jones was funny during his scenes.  Though the humor was unintentional, he was still a joy to watch.  The story was flat and not that interesting at all.  Treasure hunter awakens sea beat and then sacrifices himself to kill said beast.  Nothing special or groundbreaking there.  Also, the movie plays out very slowly and was a chore to watch.  Some scenes was crammed so full of pointless dialogue that I caught myself browsing amazon.com for more movies to buy instead of paying attention to the film.  Now I am going to talk about the biggest disappointment in film history.  The main focus of a sea monster movie should be the damn sea monster not a shirtless James Earl Jones.  Therefore, the sea monster needs to look fucking amazing.  Instead, the team behind this one offered up James Earl Jones, shiny bod and all, instead of giving us a great looking sea monster.  The monster is the worst looking creature in cinema history and makes the killer elves in Elves look like a fucking masterpiece.  The beast looks like an underwater shaved dog with wrinkly duck bill for a snout.  Words can not describe how bad this damn thing looks.  I tried for 20 minutes to get a decent screen shot of the beast but the creature was not in the film long enough for me to get a decent one.  Overall, this is a very poor movie that falls just under being mildly entertaining.  The film, though simple, had some potential but fell short.  Avoid this one.