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5.5/10
Senior Film Conservator
A definitive 5.5/10 rating for a film that redefined the boundaries of cult cinema. Sh! The Octopus remains a cornerstone of transgressive art.
Look, if you’re looking for a tight, logical mystery, stay far away. But if you have a soft spot for movies that feel like they were written on a napkin during a hurricane, Sh! The Octopus is a weird little trip. It’s for the folks who love old, dusty black-and-white comedies where people just scream at each other for no reason.
If you need your plot to make sense, you will probably hate this. It moves at a frantic, head-spinning pace that feels like the director was trying to outrun the budget.
Sort of. Mostly, it’s a bunch of shadows and some very 1930s-style practical effects that look like a giant rubber puppet from a nightmare. The lighthouse setting is genuinely creepy at first, but then it turns into a stage play where people keep walking into rooms and acting surprised for the tenth time.
Hugh Herbert is doing a lot of work here. He plays one of the detectives with this high-pitched, stuttering energy that makes you wonder if he’s ever seen a human being before. It’s exhausting, but honestly? Kind of impressive in a car-crash way.
It’s nowhere near as polished as something like Is Everybody Happy?, but it has that frantic, unhinged energy that those older studio films sometimes accidentally stumbled into. There’s a scene where they’re all trapped in the basement, and the lighting gets weirdly moody—almost like it belongs in a different, better movie.
Then someone shouts, and the mood is totally ruined. Classic.
I found myself thinking about The Fatal Wedding for no reason, maybe just because these old ensemble mysteries all feel like they share the same DNA, even if this one is just a little bit more cracked than the rest. It’s not great art. It’s barely even a coherent story. But it’s got a weird, salty charm that stuck with me after the credits rolled. 🐙