Like any good movie (or any good Steven Spielberg movie) Jaws inspired a lot of wannabes and imitations. Up From The Depths is one such imitator. It tries (oh God how it tries) to be like its big budget inspiration/predecessor. It fails miserably, but at least it tries.

We begin in Hawaii where our marine biologist, Dr. Whiting, who can't act (Charles Howerton if anyone knows who that is) and his perky assistant (who can't act ether) are out on a boat. She goes diving and is promptly eaten up on by and unseen creature. Remind you of anything?

After that one bit of action we are treated to 50 minuets of what is suppose to be chracter development, punctuated by scenes of the unseen monster chowing down on various people. Since the "fish eating people" scenes take about 10 seconds we are treated to long periods of ZERO action. Instead we get lots of scenes where people talk about stuff. Snore.

Those people are beach bum Greg Oliver (Sam Bottoms) who watched someone get eaten by the fish, public relations woman Rachel (Susanna Reed) who watched someone get eaten by the fish, Greg's uncle, Earl the Pirate, a vacationing couple that whine about everything (including each other) and local hotel owner Forbs (Kendric Wolfe) who will deign that anyone is getting eaten by a fish. That is, until the fish shows up at his beach and starts to chomp on tourists. Once that happens Forbs does the only logical thing he can think of: he puts a bounty on the fish's head. "And you can bring it to me in as may pieces as you like," he says.

This inspires lots of scenes dealing with tourists renting boats and going out on to the water with various implements of death and destruction. These scenes are, unfortunately, comic relief. I don't think I've warned you how bad comic relief can be when poorly handled. I'll give you the skinny on that after the plot synopsis is done.

Most of the movie fallows Greg, Rachel and Dr. Whiting's attempts to capture and/or destroy the fish. Whiting, being the only scientist in the movie, wants to capture it for study (of course. Is there one giant monster movie in which the scientist doesn't want to capture the dangerous creature for study?). He dies for his trouble. Sort of.

Greg, while diving, gets his spotter munched on by the Fishy. He seams to be on some sort of revenge quest thingie, but since Sam Bottoms plays his chracter with all the emotion of a lava rock its hard to tell.

Rachael, being the woman, is useless. She gets her boyfriend munched on during the 50 minuet chunk of ZERO action. But she gets over it pretty darn quick and seams to have a thing for Greg by the end of the movie. But then, Susanna Reed has all the acting skill of a coconut so this is all speculation.

These three go out in Earl the Pirate's boat with the rest of the tourists and, since they are the main characters (at least the ones with the most screen time) they get to be the ones to kill the fishy. Whiting dies. . .I think. His suit isn't torn up. I don't think its even ripped. But when Greg opens it up it looks like someone has poured red paint all over his chest.

Because no one on Earl the Pirate's boat thought to bring bait Greg does the only logical thing: he wires Whiting's dead body with explosives and trails Whiting behind the boat until the fish eats him. Fishy swallows the explosive body and blows up from the inside in a scene that looks EXACTLY like the ending of Jaws.

That's another thing: most of this movie is a carbon copy of Jaws, but with one difference: Jaws had good actors. This movie couldn't find good actors if it were standing in front of a production of the royal Shakespearean Theater. For the first half of the movie I got a good laugh from comparing the two "man-eating-fish-eats-people" movies but there's just so damn many of them! I can only laugh at the same joke for so long!

Now, since this is a pseudo-daikaiju movie (the creature is about 20 feet long so its on the cusp) I must describe the monster. From what I can see of it that is. The movies box shows this really cool looking, spiky, prehistoric mega shark thingie. Never judge a movie by its cover. What the monster really looks is. . .well. . .a fish. Think of a giant, brown trout with the head of a cat fish. Oooo. . .scary.

But that's not the worse part. The worse part is that, although this movie has a high body count (we see a lot of people killed on screen that is) they scenes of Fishy eating people are all the same. I'm not just saying they look the same, I'm saying they are the same. Its the same scene used over and over again, albeit with different degrees of editing. You see a shot of Fishy, a shot of some poor smuck thrashing about in typical "oh-my-god-the-fish-is-about-to-eat-me" fashion, and red paint is released into the water, fade to black.

And now gather round children, for you shall hear the tail of the  comic relief. Let me start by saying that, in the right hands, comic relief can be a good thing. Unfortunately when you have no good actors or good scripting it is simply odious. And it makes me hate this movie. Since there is about 50 minuets (that feels like 2 hours, even if the movie is only 85 minuets long) of no creature that 50 minuets is filled with comic relief. We see Forbs wandering around the hotel and acting stupid, just making sure all is couture and no one was munched on by Fishy. This chracter (if one could call him that) is not appealing in the least. Why the director (one Mr. Charles B. Griffith, writer of Little Shop of Horrors, oh how the mighty have fallen) thought this guy deserved as much screen time as he is given is beyond me.

There's also some sub plot about a super model with no brain (and I mean NOOO brain, I think the plastic fish is more intelligent then her) coming to the islands. She walks around, provides us with "the obligatory tit shot", and becomes choice cut beef. Why was this chracter necessary? Me thinks it was just to drive up the body count, or (since her killing ushers in the creatures first appearance at a public beach) to wake up those who had fallen asleep.

But you know what really surprises me? I can't hate this movie. And I've tried (and tried) but this movie just has to many missed opportunities to be worth my hatred. If only some one more creative then Anne Dyer and Alfred Sweeny had been writing the script. Of cores, if they had bothered to hire actual actors it might have helped too.

As it stands Up From the Depths sinks to the bottom of the ocean. The cast is wooden, the monster is plastic, and I'm just plain bored.

RATING(OUT OF A POSSIBLE FIVE)

SO MUCH FOR THE "FISH EATS MAN" GENRE

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