The depressed California fishing village of Noyo is about to be revitalised by the arrival of a major corporation.
The town has been struggling with a declining fish population but the company has made a promise to reverse it.
What they have not told the locals is that their experiments have led to the mutation and evolution of a new species - one that walks like a man, and has its eyes on moving up the food chain…
It falls to fisherman Jim Hill (Doug McClure), first nations activist Johnny Eagle (Anthony Pena) and scientist Dr. Susan Drake (Ann Turkel) to convince the suspicious locals, including bigoted thug Hank Slattery (Vic Morrow), of the danger coming for the community.
When you are watching an exploitation movie, you expect the movie to include certain things that would not appear in something from a major studio.
There is something ironic about an exploitation movie in which the text is about the exploitation of the environment and indigenous people, where it feels like the film itself has been exploited.
Humanoids of the Deep feels like an exploitation movie eating its own tail. Like the community in the film, Humanoids feels polluted by external forces.
It is hard not to write about Humanoids from the Deep without bringing up the film’s most controversial elements - the scenes of the titular creatures assaulting women.
The original director, Barbara Peeters, had shot the film with these acts offscreen. Believing that subtext would not equal dollar signs, producer Roger Corman mandated inserts showing the titular monsters attacking their naked female victims to increase the film’s nudity.
These added scenes add to Humanoids’ overall meaner vibe.
If Piranha was all sunshine and fun, Humanoids is its dark, autumnal twin.
Like a lot of smaller budget, independent genre movies, Humanoids from the Deep tries to balance its crasser elements with a dollop of social commentary - Piranha takes digs at the US military’s never-ending readiness for war and the inhumanity of commercialism.
But whereas Piranha felt like the filmmakers were able to strike that balance, Humanoids from the Deep feels like the film being pulled away from those goals back to basic carnie populism - what is the lowest, most base way we can get punters to give us their money?
Shot in misty, rain-soaked northern California, the film looks great. There is some good use of b-roll of found incidents - fishermen preparing to ship out, local dogs, old musicians practising for a local show - that make the place feel lived-in.
There is a sense of specificity to the community that adds dimension to a fairly straightforward, unambitious script.
James Horner offers an eerie, although occasionally obtrusive, score, and while the creature effects are a little clunky, they are effective. And the final action sequences are terrific.
There are a lot of strong elements to Humanoids… but this is exploitation cinema at its most pure and rancid.
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