Filmmaker from the Ocean Floor: Roger Corman’s Aquatic Origins
by Anders Runestad
If there’s one sure metaphor for life, it is water.
Our bodies are largely composed of water, we have to consume it, and its uses are endless. Most of the planet Earth is below sea level, and humanity has always had a natural fascination with the liquid molecule of two hydrogen atoms with one oxygen. But water stories have often dwelt on the fact that water is also destructive and downright scary. The oceans are a staple of danger and horror, from ancient myths of sea monsters and sirens, to the more prosaic fears of isolation, madness, sharks, and shipwrecks.
That the beautiful ocean is also a monster is an idea that Roger Corman no doubt understood when he put together a film called Monster from the Ocean Floor, known as The Sea Demon while in production, and released to theaters in spring 1954. It wasn’t quite Corman’s first movie, as he had already co-scripted what was released that January as Highway Dragnet, but it very much launched his career. And appropriately so, given that he rose from unknown depths to make a name for himself with one monster film after another, especially in conjunction with American International Pictures.
Corman had found a good hook to hang his own low-budget production on, a solo submarine that he read about in a newspaper. Suitably impressed, he secured its use for his film, raised a budget and found collaborators, including one billed as Jack Hayes, who would become one of Corman’s most reliable players as Jonathan Haze. (Dick Miller, Jonathan Haze’s main Corman counterpart, did not show up until 1955’s Apache Woman.) And along with Oscar-winning cinematographer Floyd Crosby onboard, Corman had added to this mix a first-time director and one of his most unique collaborators, Wyott Ordung.
In 1953, Ordung got his distinctive name onscreen when director Phil Tucker’s ambitious Robot Monster did solid business against an ultra-low budget. There’s reason to believe that Ordung didn’t intend the film’s most infamous elements (like the alien invader being played by gorilla suit actor George Barrows with a space helmet over his head), though he was credited for writing the script. He acted in early TV programs like Biff Baker, U.S.A. and the Dick Tracy series that brought star Ralph Byrd from the silver screen over to TV, and his wartime Army experiences were no doubt fuel for creativity. He appeared in Samuel Fuller’s Korean War story Fixed Bayonets! (1951), and scripted Combat Squad (1953), though he had more than one sci-fi credit as the 1950s wore on. When later interviewed on his movie career by Johnny Legend (Fangoria, 1984), he discussed not only writing, directing and acting, but such other things as his intense fear of birds and a belief in reincarnation.
Ordung contributed his own funds to the production, along with playing a supporting role and directing the film. Given his relative wealth of movie experience he was a logical choice for the job, but this was one case where Corman did not retain a collaborator into the future. He later recalled in his 1990 autobiography an incident where Ordung wouldn’t help him carry equipment, and that may have been definitive in Ordung not joining the ranks of Haze, Miller, Ed Nelson and other Corman regulars. While Ordung would continue to rack up some scattered credits, he only directed one more feature, Walk the Dark Street (1956), a solid, unorthodox little noir thriller with Chuck Connors very effectively cast against type.
Even if Corman and Ordung were never meant to remain a team, they did exploit the planet’s most alien environment to good effect in Monster from the Ocean Floor, and created an outstanding model for how to make a low-budget film. Whether it’s more thanks to them or screenwriter Bill Danch, the finished product combines all the right elements: an interesting location, footage of wild sea animals, a steady but unhurried pace, well-defined characters, inter- and intra-personal conflicts, a hint of romance, scares, and of course a monster. Best of all, it throws in some novel and unexpected elements that give it a unique identity, and make it more than the sum of its parts.
If Corman didn’t already know how to make movies for maximum audience interest relative to minimal financial investment, he must have learned it here. The film begins with ocean, gets its main characters onscreen right away, and establishes a potential love interest between sojourning artist Julie (Anne Kimbell) and scientist Steve (Stuart Wade). We know soon that headstrong Julie is the main character and will follow her interest in a sea monster legend whether Steve approves or not, and while the film doesn’t rush, something is always happening. Julie spends plenty of time underwater, meets locals who fear the alleged monster, enjoys a musical serenade from Steve, and in general gets in more and more danger until the end. Along the way the excellent beach and ocean locations are always front and center, as you can’t build a set for money better than what nature has already provided for free.
But what gives Monster from the Ocean Floor an edge over other minimalist monster movies is a combination of curiosities. The submarine that sparked the project in the first place gets plenty of time onscreen, which must have been a nifty piece of equipment in its time. More interestingly, the sea creature dovetails with the other, more famous movie monsters of the time when Julie wonders if a giant sea monster could have been the result of atom bomb testing. Great minds apparently do think alike, because The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms appeared in 1953 and Godzilla would make his first onscreen appearance the next year. In the midst of all the monster stuff is Ordung the director onscreen as the film’s most conflicted character, and he’s never boring to watch. While low-budget actors often just get it over with, Ordung is animated and doesn’t hold back. And in a neat, dreamlike sequence, our heroine Julie walks on a lonely beach, sleeps, and awakens—all to miss seeing the gossamer sea creature when it appears, then to wake up and puzzle over what it left behind. It’s quietly unearthly and a bit like something out of Carnival of Souls, minus any ghouls.
Monster from the Ocean Floor remains a testament to Roger Corman’s ability to make something out-of-the-ordinary from bits of the everyday. He may have created more distinctive movies with further experience, but the pattern he would follow is present here at what is essentially the beginning. It works because all the little details raise it out of the ordinary, while it’s the atmospheric location that makes the largest difference in the end. For whatever happens onscreen, the omnipresent, awesome sound of the ocean crashing on the land—something deep and primordial, a sustainer of life and a destroyer all in one—is never far away. And if that isn’t a monster, what is?
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