Drink to Me, Continued...
But when it came to deep-sea Romeos, the Humanoids and Gill-Man were aquatic versions of Antonio Banderas and Brad Pitt when compared to a pre-Three's Company Don Knotts as the blubber-lipped cartoon man-fish in The Incredible Mr. Limpet. You can still catch this vintage fish-tale every now and then on those cable channels that show old family-fare movies.
Don Knotts has played some fairly funny roles over the years, but he's never been anyone's idea of a Hollywood heart-throb. So to take his rubbery features and plop them onto a cartoon fish, nerdy little wire-rimmed spectacles and all--sorry, folks, but that's Just Wrong. In the movie Pink Flamingos, I saw the late three-hundred-pound transvestite Divine, done up with enough make-up to adorn two circus clowns, give head to a gap-toothed hippy and even eat dog poop. But I bet even that corpulent crossdresser would have drawn the line at smooching a fish with the face of Don Knotts. A girl's gotta have her standards.
But ya know, the fact that Divine actually does have celluloid oral sex with that scrawny hippy in Pink Flamingos just goes to show... It's a big world, and there's someone out there for everyone. Aaaawww. Kind of makes you feel all warm and toasty, doesn't it?
What a pity Divine passed away before ever being given a chance to star in a new installment of Humanoids. Divine would have happily returned all the fishy affection of the Humanoids... and then, when it came time to dispatch the fearsome finned fiends, they'd have provided Big D. with a sushi feast fit for a queen.
Like Divine, the ocean is huge and insatiable, an unstoppable force of Nature. Perhaps that is why some people find the ocean so formidable. All that raw power. Utterly ruthless. That power was used to dramatic advantage in the Stephen King anthology film, Creepshow, in the segment called "Something to Tide You Over." A deranged husband buries his unfaithful wife and her lover up to their necks in beach sand, and slowly the tide approaches them, wave after advancing wave. They are helpless: you can't argue or bargain with the sea. It can't hear your pleas and will totally ignore any screams for help. The juggernaut just doesn't care. It doesn't have a mind to allow it to care.
Fortunately for our doomed lovers, their story is set in a cinematic universe based on the old EC Comics, where dark justice is delivered Old-Testament style ... an eye for an eye, etc. And so the drowned lovers are allowed to have their hideous undead vengeance. The bubbly, gurgling voices of the avenging water-logged corpses are appropriately loathsome.
Other movie manifestations of oceanic power can be found in Moby Dick, Jaws, and any number of movies where giant squids and octopi roam the world's waterways in search of tasty humans to squeeze and tease and crunch and munch. Life can grow awfully big and terribly strong out in those big ol' oceans. There are fish and other critters out there that haven't changed a whole lot since the dinosaur days. For all we know, maybe there are still a few dinosaurs left out there, and not just in the Seven Seas... After all, the verdict's still not in on the identity of the Loch Ness Monster.
Ocean life-forms can be pretty disturbing even when they aren't being taken seriously. Just look at that capering cartoon kook, SpongeBob SquarePants. Parts break off of his body and he doesn't even care. He's a giggling protean monster who can regrow limbs and other chunks, re-configure himself with ease and withstand practically any injury... That's a little creepy for a cartoon character. But the fact that he acts like a cheerful, sugar-coated goofball takes the edge off his bizarre physical properties.
Speaking of kids' shows... I remember when I was young, I once saw an episode of the old Batman TV show with Adam West, where one of the villains threatened to feed young Robin to a giant clam. That was enough to set my pre-teen mind racing. What would happen once those oversized clam-shells came together, enclosing the Boy Wonder in their oystery cloister? Clams don't have teeth, but perhaps they're filled with strong digestive juices ... one never knows when it comes to gigantic sea-creatures.
I pictured the shells flying open after having digested Robin, to reveal an acid-bleached skeleton, still wearing partially disintegrated tatters of his hokey costume. Coooool!
Actually, the clam never got to devour Robin, thus depriving viewers of what could have been one of TV's greatest moments.
The fact that sea-creatures are so disturbing may be why some hearty folks really love digging into a cooked lobster. "Ha ha, Mr. Monster!" such diners might be thinking. "You used to be so fearsome, so grotesque, so menacing with your big pincers and multiple legs. But now you are merely a helpless morsel on my pretty plate! Soon you shall be digested by my supreme human stomach! Hurray for bipeds, masters of everything!"
The ocean's power also has more mystical interpretations. The fairly recent movies Dead Waters and Dagon feature supernatural themes based on deep-sea terror. In both, good-natured land-dwellers find themselves stranded in foreign locales where the natives are still very much in touch with ancient powers. We realize the ocean depths may hold shocking life-forms... but to then learn there may be people out there who adore those creatures and wish to advance their status on our planet... Well, that's quite a different kettle of fish, so to speak.
Pulp-era horror-writer H.P. Lovecraft used oceanic settings and alien gods in many of his stories, and Dead Waters and Dagon have very Lovecraftian themes. In fact, Dagon is based on his work. Lovecraft is today considered much more than just a pulp magazine writer, and many consider him just as good as Poe. Personally, I think his otherworldly extravaganzas are more entertaining than a lot of the suburban horror stories being written today.
Lovecraft's story "The Call of Cthulhu" is probably one of the greatest stories of sea-faring horror ever written, and if you haven't read it, you're really missing out on an amazing literary adventure. It concerns an unspeakable island that rises from the depths of the Pacific to drive folks all over the world quite mad ... for on that island is a vicious, alien, godlike creature whose blasphemous thoughts can seep into people's dreams. That sounds a lot wilder than any old Freddy Krueger plotline, doesn't it? Freddy only ever targeted a few kids in one town, but that Cthulhu, he has bigger fish to fry. He wants to drive all of humanity into a huge, blood-soaked orgy of mayhem, bloodshed, destruction and ravenous delight. How do you suppose the Incredible Mr. Limpet would have responded to such a spectacle? That would have steamed his little horn-rimmed glasses... even underwater.
But back to Dead Waters and Dagon: both of them also embrace a sense of dark eroticism, and I suggest watching them back to back. What a pity there aren't that many drive-ins around these days. They'd have made a great double-feature. Between the two, the drive-in owner could have shown an episode of the old TV adventure Flipper for comic relief. (For those of you too young to remember Flipper, he was a friendly dolphin who just loved helping humans, especially kids. Aaaawww, I bet that makes you feel all warm and toasty, too, just like my earlier Divine reference. For the record, Divine and Flipper never worked together).
Those movies deal with the gods that dwell in the sea, but perhaps the sea is more of a god in itself. All life originally came out of it, and we are all made, if not in its image, certainly out of its ingredients. Like I said, we're all just moving skinbags of salt-water. Brine-bots, that's what we are.
Like the seas, sometimes we're calm, sometimes we're stormy... and there's always something going on under the surface. We're a turbulent bunch, both as individuals and as a society. And because we are so turbulent, we have to learn to go with the flow and not rock the boat.
Maybe it's just as well that many of us fear the sea. It's older than us, bigger than us, and will still be here long after we're gone. It keeps us humble! Oh sure, humans have conquered the land, but there are vast depths of ocean out there where the slimy things still hold sway, and we are definitely not welcome.
No air.
Lots of predators.
Welcome to the ocean floor. Allow me to seat you in the no-breathing section. Your waiter this evening will be a great white shark. And today's specialty of the house... is you.
END
