A seven-time Oscar winner built this 1971 octopus monster

Octaman was made in 1971 by Harry Essex, a screenwriter who had co-written Creature from the Black Lagoon, and it is a monster film whose rubber costume was built by Rick Baker, then at the start of his career. Baker went on to win a record seven Academy Awards for makeup, but this was one of his first jobs.

The story is a small expedition gone wrong. Rick Torres, a marine biologist, finds a new kind of octopus in a remote Mexican fishing area. A carnival showman named Johnny Caruso pays for a hunt after villagers report something larger: a humanoid octopus that walks out of the water. When the crew tries to capture it, the creature fixates on Torres's fiancée, Susanna.

Who made it, and what had he written before?

Essex co-wrote the screenplay of Creature from the Black Lagoon in 1954 with Arthur Ross, and wrote It Came from Outer Space in 1953. Both were Universal science-fiction films of the mid-century. Octaman and The Cremators in 1972 were the only two genre films he directed, according to the critic Richard Scheib.

Scheib traces Octaman's plot to Black Lagoon: scientists hunt a creature in a river, it turns on them, and it fixates on the expedition's female lead. It is an older kind of monster story arriving in 1971, on a smaller scale and in another country. The AFI Catalog, the American Film Institute's record of US films, lists it as a Mexico and United States production.

Who built the monster?

Baker and a colleague, Doug Beswick, built the costume. A film blog's account of an interview with Baker says the creature's design was not his: he worked from sketches that existed before he was hired. The same account says the producers first wanted stop-motion animation, then judged it too expensive and ordered a suit instead.

What came next is the reason the suit matters. Baker later assisted the makeup artist Dick Smith on The Exorcist in 1973. His first Oscar came for An American Werewolf in London, awarded in 1982, the first year the Academy gave a competitive award for makeup. By 2011 he had seven, the most any makeup artist has won, including Ed Wood, Men in Black and The Wolfman.

Scheib gave the film one star and found it dull. He also called the costume cheesy but the best thing in it. That judgment is his, and the costume is the reason to look closely.

Who else is in it?

Pier Angeli, an Italian actress and the twin sister of actress Marisa Pavan, plays Susanna. She had appeared in Teresa in 1951. Octaman is the last title in her filmography. She died on 10 September 1971 at 39.

Kerwin Mathews plays Torres. He was best known as the hero of The 7th Voyage of Sinbad in 1958, a fantasy with creature effects by Ray Harryhausen, the stop-motion animator.

How it came back

Octaman found a second audience. On 18 April 2019, Michael J. Nelson, Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett, comedians from Mystery Science Theater 3000, ran a live riffing show of it in US cinemas through Fathom Events and RiffTrax.

Where it sits on Relay

Relay lists 122 creature features and kaiju films, among them this one, a late echo of the atomic-age creature film and an early piece of work by a makeup artist who changed the field.

The film suits viewers who like practical monster effects, anyone curious where a famous makeup career began, and people who want a 1971 B movie with a rubber octopus in a river.

Horror