This movie, made back in 1954, presents a little bit of a dichotomy for us. First, we love dive movies and have a real soft spot for the 50's Sci-Fi variety of them. At the same time, this was Roger Corman's first production, and, for the most part, we're not real fans. True to form, Monster from the Ocean Floor is pretty bad.

From what we can gather, the story is set somewhere along Mexico's Pacific coast, in a cove where an inordinate number of fishermen have been mysteriously disappearing. A vacationing scuba diver hears a few sob stories from family members left behind and decides to go down and investigate herself. Here she runs into a marine biologist tooling around in a self-propelled wet sub. The two naturally fall in love. He, however, doesn't believe in sea monsters, leaving her to continue her quest alone.

Why she's doing this is a mystery. On her first dive, she comes face to face with an octopus, which sends her into convulsions of panic. Later, she faints when she sees a cow standing on the beach! You can imagine how she reacts when she finally meets the monster. Even with her litany of cowardly lion-like reactions, though, we truly expected her to break out laughing when she sees him. He is spectacularly ridiculous -- a giant cycloptic octopus. True to form, though, she loses it. Fortunately, her

From a purely diving perspective, there are just over 15 mminutes of underwater footage and it's not bad, most of it being shot in and around a kelp forest. And we have to admit that the sub is pretty cool -- we want one. It's not enough though. Don't waste your time with this one. Monster from the Ocean Floor is available on DVD although it contains no extras or special features.