United States

• Humanoids from the Deep

The canning company wanted salmon that grew faster and larger. So it tinkered with the fish's genetic structure. But something went wrong. And soon the tiny fishing town of Noyo, until now a sleepy village, confronts the ultimate modern ecological horror: sea beasts half-man, half-fish - obsessed with destroying the men and carrying off its young women to bear the monstrous offspring of their unnatural mating. No one, least of all the lovers on the local beaches, is safe from these humanoids from the deep. Together, Jim Hill (Doug McClure) and the beautiful young scientist who started it all, Susan Drake (Ann Turkel), fight to defeat the inhuman monsters. Battling alongside them are Hank Slattery (Vic Morrow), who wanted tho town to have the cannery at any cost, and Johnny Eagle (Anthony Penya), the Indian trying to save his land from just such ecological devastation. In the end it is Drake who is left to confront the progeny of her experiments, their ultimate outrage. Monster grafts this modern ecological fable onto a traditional monster movie plot, a grimly sexual descendant of Creature from the Black Lagoon, which is very much in the spirit of producer Roger Corman's other underwater horror classics (Attack of the Crab Monsters, Creature from the Haunted Sea).