While on maneuvers in the Pacific, an “atom powered submarine” captained by Kenneth Tobey is attacked by something of unknown origin. The sub manages to free itself and dry docks in Pearl Harbor, where some type of animal tissue is discovered jammed in its propellers.

Working with marine biologists Professor Joyce (Faith Domergue) and Professor Carter (Donald Curtis), Tobey identifies the tissue belonging to an octopus of gigantic proportions. The eggheads theorize that hydrogen bomb testing has radiated the giant octopus, scaring away its natural food supply. Now it’s on the move looking for something to eat. Naval Intelligence, for some reason, remains skeptical.

After tracking the beast to the Oregon coast, Tobey develops a torpedo capable of penetrating the octopus’ brain. It surfaces next in San Francisco, where it tears down the Golden Gate Bridge and flattens fleeing crowds in Embarcadero, before Tobey and Curtis can don wetsuits and save the Bay Area from the giant octopus.

Directed by Robert Gordon, from a screenplay by George Worthing Yates and Hal Smith, It Came From Beneath The Sea was so low budget, the filmmakers opted to give the octopus only six arms to save money. It was released with Creature With The Atom Brain playing on the bottom half of the bill. That says pretty much everything you need to know.

It’s the “technical effects” on the stop-motion octopus by Ray Harryhausen that landed the movie on my Greencine queue. As opposed to the effects in recent puppet-only films like A Nightmare Before Christmas or Wallace & Gromit, Harryhausen developed revolutionary techniques to have his stop motion creations interact with live actors, starting with Mighty Joe Young in 1949 all the way up to Clash of the Titans in 1981.

It Came From Beneath The Sea is hilariously cheap, but still kind of fun. There’s the presence of an ominous narrator at various points in the film, issuing warnings like, “The mind of man had thought of everything … except that which was beyond his comprehension!” The script, which was commissioned to showcase a giant octopus attacking the Golden Gate Bridge and little else, is indeed woeful (a love triangle between the characters is strictly cornball). The casting of the great Kenneth Tobey is barely a saving grace among the wooden cast.

Highlights: the octopus pulling a merchant vessel under the waves, a yokel sheriff screaming in terror when he meets the beast on a beach in Oregon, and panic stricken men being squashed by a giant tentacle in San Francisco. These are things you see as an 8-year-old and never really forget, and the reason is Harryhausen’s wonderful, dreamlike effects work.