Invaderbank The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

BelSports This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Brainsbell The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

Erica Derrick By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

dmayo-911-597432 Critics who deign to notice this movie at all have nothing good to say about it, and what they do say runs to far fewer words than you're about to read if you bear with me. Reviewing a thing like this is for people who can see a glass as half full even when it's nearly bone dry. I am such a one.Consider that the stars are Hugh Herbert and Allen Jenkins. Jenkins was an iconic supporting player: the tough-sounding but easygoing, nasal-voiced, weary-eyed New York working man or minor crook. His spirit lives on in the type, even for those who have somehow missed his own performances. However, a movie in which he's a star is bound to be small beer.The other star, Hugh Herbert, is a study in the fleeting nature of fame. Once he must have had quite a strong presence in moviegoers' minds, for his unidentified caricature appears in a Disney cartoon, "Mother Goose Goes Hollywood" (1938), along with those of the Marx Brothers, Charles Laughton, W. C. Fields, and other enduring stars (but also others like himself who have not endured). Today, it's unlikely that anything about him would ring a bell with most non-buffs. He seems to exist not only in the past, but in a parallel past of secret fame. One would like to think that this fate was visited on him as punishment for his tedious trademark: saying "woo-woo" at crucial junctures.The opening scene of Sh! The Octopus finds Herbert and Jenkins in their star vehicle, a police car, driving along a lonely country road on a stormy night. So you see, the glass is going to appear half full if only you're in the mood. This is a burlesque of spooky-house mysteries. It goes beyond parody -- well, beneath it -- and revels in zany riffs.The ultimate setting, which we reach after a few more minutes on the country road, is a deserted lighthouse with as many sliding panels as one finds in the better sort of ancestral mansion. The riffs are played not only on the hackneyed situations of the genre, but also on the stock characters who turn up in it. These include the vulnerable but determined young woman with a missing inventor stepfather who screams just like Fay Wray (the young woman, not the stepfather) and the suave young man who may or may not be deceiving her.Then there's the not-so-young woman with something to hide, the straitlaced but comforting old nanny, the gentle old salt, and the jeering old salt for good measure. The usual bumbling, bickering police detectives are played by the stars.The metropolitan police are beleaguered by a crime network called the Octopus. The lighthouse is beleaguered by a real octopus. The missing stepfather is presumably of interest to the first of these. When asked who he is, the young woman promptly replies, "He's the inventor of a radium ray so powerful that anyone who controls it controls the world."Though it's a stormy night and the lighthouse is on an island three miles from shore, characters (including the nanny) keep arriving with no apparent difficulty. Such blithe staginess, along with the assembly of types, gives this little film the feeling of an extended revue skit. For most of its length, it's only a mind-clearing diversion. Then, when a certain performance shifts into high gear, it becomes a night to remember. To say more about that would be spoiling too much.As silly as this film is, it leaves us with something of value: a renewed understanding of what it means to be a journeyman actor. Even though we think we're watching plays or films intelligently, a well-executed type can tempt us to believe that the actor hasn't much else to offer. There's usually nothing to pull us back from that temptation. When characters in an Agatha Christie mystery reveal hidden identities, the revelations come as nothing more than new information about the same people. But here, where no semblance of reality is required, the actors can drop their types and take on utterly different personalities. Several do so before the story ends, and one of these is granted the chance for a bravura turn. You may never get it out of your head, but that's all right. It will make your head a better, more freakish place.The five-star rating I've given this movie does not mean I'm dissatisfied with it. I'd call that a high mark for a minor romp. As part of a double feature, it's worth half the price of a ticket.

mark.waltz A spooky lighthouse is the setting for this enjoyable but mindless nonsense about two wacky detectives (Hugh Herbert and Allen Jenkins) on the search for a criminal mastermind known simply as the Octopus. Yes, there is a real octopus present (one of the silliest looking ever on-screen until Bela Lugosi went up against one in "Bride of the Monster"), and it never is made clear whether or not the octopus tentacles which keep appearing mysteriously are actually those of the one who gets Herbert in his grip or some man-made contraption. There's all sorts of wacky characters including a sinister looking man known as "hook" the sinister villain whose face changes upon their revelation. That sequence alone is frightening enough but funny and is straight out of the exit given to the Wicked Witch of the West in "The Wizard of Oz". Jenkins and Herbert together are pretty much Warner Brothers' version of the Two Stooges. George Rosener and Elspeth Dugeon are among those who stand out among the supporting cast. Still, with all the excitement in the film's short running time, the conclusion is a major let-down, making it seem like an extended short rather than a feature which obviously played on the bottom of a double bill.

Maliejandra Kay Sh! The Octopus was recommended to me by a friend who bought a few lobby cards from the film. I wondered why he had such an interest in a movie that I had never heard of. He told me he was afraid to tell me too much because it might spoil the fun, but that I should definitely see if I had the chance.My time arrived.The story begins with a sea-faring man selling the deed to a lighthouse to a polished-looking gentleman in a suit. In comes Captain Hook (that's right- Captain Hook!), a crazy sailor who goes insane at the sound of a ticking clock. Cut to two cops, Kelly (Hugh Herbert) and Dempsey (Allen Jenkins), who are racing to the hospital on a rainy night because Kelly's wife is having a baby. But they get a flat tire, and in the midst of their struggle to fix it, a woman comes tearing through the woods at them, begging for help. She has just seen her step-father's dead body in the lighthouse! The plot is laughable, and thankfully the actors and the director seem to be in on how ridiculous the story is, because it is presented as a comedy. Therefore, we're allowed to laugh at how silly it is that the villain is a murderous octopus with tentacles that creep in through doorways. And it is okay to laugh at the exaggerated plights of the characters and their overzealous performances. And we're expected to giggle at the constant twists and turns that often make no sense.So why do I rate this movie so highly? Simply for the amount of fun I had watching it! It is packed with hilarious bits, by two comics who are generally relegated to being the 2nd or 3rd banana. Now, they're the leads, and they pull it off quite nicely. Jenkins is a great blend of comic and straight-man. He's too stupid to be taken seriously, but he is tame compared to his partner. Herbert, who often rubs people the wrong way with his giddiness, contributes nicely to the show.

Joe Stemme A couple of years ago, a 35MM print of this was resurrected for the Boston Science Fiction Film Festival and Marathon (bostonsci-fi.com). Not truly SF, but it was so rare the organizers couldn't resist the opportunity to show it. It moves briskly along and the comedy is amusing enough to carry through the somewhat muddled 'mystery'. The ending, as others have noted, has that incredible pre-CGI morphing effect. Everybody who I talked to after the screening was truly impressed to see how well it was done 50+ years before CGI! In fact, its so seamless, I think it more effective than many a morph effect (for one thing, you feel that it truly IS happening before your eyes, not just some digital bits being manipulated by a computer). I noticed that SH! was playing on TCM this weekend and made a point to DVR the ending of it to watch that effect again. And again. Many times. Slow motion. Frame by Frame. It's still pretty darn amazing!SPECIAL EFFECTS SPOILER:As noted, I agree that it is a variation on the Makeup Effect used in the classic 1932 Rouben Mamoulian version of DR.JEYKLL AND MR. HYDE. Basically, it's done with trick makeup combined with colored lenses and lighting. It's all done "live" on the set. That's why there's no 'seam' where you see an optical dissolve (like those used in the WOLFMAN or THE INVISIBLE MAN). It's possible, that some post-production tinkering was done, but doubtful. It's still an astonishing illusion! The makeup is extremely well done, a wart seems to 'grow' on her nose, teeth get blackened and her whole complexion changes. The only 'give-away' I could detect was that the patterns on her dress get darker and harder to see when the light/filters are switched.Thing is, that one effect is so amazing, that I had completely forgotten about the 'twist' ending...and oh, those freaky offspring!