One of the weirdest and most entertaining movies in the entire series so far for me.
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When I think of this film, I often think of how the writers use adjectives to make these people seem to be really fascinated by sea life.
- “The sea was marvelous.”
- “the cells are reproducing at an incredible rate! It’s a fantastic spectacle!”
However, I do often think of Bob’s bi-polar reactions to things. From a toast of “up the shark’s @$$,” to being in tears when his monstrosity swims away (“come back, baby!”), and then getting rather horny in an Italian way when it returns (“what did I tell you! He’s come back to me!”).
Though one element I still try to decipher, is why Peter’s girlfriend likes to repeat his insults to her. I can’t tell if she loves it when he puts her down, or she does so so she won’t make the same mistakes again,
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“PETER FRAMPTON!”
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“Man, the Staten Island Ferry is way off course.”
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“Hey, Temp-Workers.”
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“What do you guys want? I got beer, beer. Oh hey, look. There’s a beer.”
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"Sorry about that Electrician crack earlier. My father’s village was attacked by Electricians.
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I think she’s supposed to be a teenager and so she’s sassing him back like a teen would. Also, she’s not really his girlfriend. More like his plaything/assistant.
[shudder] Yep, another great MST3K “hero.”
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She wasn’t even allowed a death scene, and even after she’s killed, Peter never has a second thought about her.
Heck, he told her at the start he was going on vacation to sleep around, and she seems perfectly okay with that.
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I can’t believe I directed a movie Ebert hated hated…
There might have been a death scene in the uncut version. I’m fine with not checking into that, though. 
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I found a non-riffed copy, and there’s no death scene.
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Another thing I was just thinking about, was Bob’s abject hatred of Dr West.
Bob calls West a “pig” and mentions how seemingly power-hungry he is, yet there’s nothing about West that ever backs up Bob’s stance. Every time we see him, West seems pretty calm and collected. If the filmmaker wanted us to suspect him, they did a pretty poor job of it.
Btw, when did the “but I can’t, I’m going on vacation” sub storyline die out? I’ve seen this used in a few other MST films (Bart Fargo is about to go on vacation when he’s tasked with finding the death ray!).
Also, after seeing this film and Danger: Diabolik, why do Italian-made films have a guy dubbing a character that makes him sound like a frog?
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OMG. That never occurred to me! 
Layers! This things got layers… of stupidity!
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@optiMSTie Your autopsy of Devil Fish (1984)? A late night relaxation show? A sleeper episode? Or somewhat forgotten?
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Hmmm… good question, that! This one feels too 80s and has a bit too much excitement and intrigue to be a late night relaxation episode for me. (Although, granted, this entire SERIES is a late night relaxation episode kinda thing, so tastes would vary, and folks could find this to be just the thing at the end of a long day.)
Also working against it being a pure relaxation episode is that it’s a very visually awkward movie that kinda jars ya. There are more than a few editing jokes here to that effect, such as Servo pointing out that “just because you CAN edit doesn’t mean that you SHOULD” and Crow acknowledging that it’s “still a better edited movie than Batman & Robin.” You also have that weirdly and shoddily edited love sequence on the beach that has Mike pondering: “So, there’s a huge giant couple making out behind them?”
As for the quality itself… I put this as another quality middle-tier episode, a few notches above Season 9’s The Deadly Bees and The Space Children.
This is a weird movie, no? It doesn’t give us any particularly vivid characters, but moments, like beery Bob channeling J. Peterman from Seinfeld with his “I KNOOOOOOOOOOW!” stinger moment. There’s also that brawny security guard guy whose major quality is that… he’s a brawny security guard guy? And that craggy villain guy, who Servo identifies as that “bastard Lou Reed” and Crow advises to "buy something ugly, who… looks kinda mean? And that skinny scientist who talks about her backstory which, accordingly to Servo, was “before she was skinny”?
Vague characters, is what I’m saying. That means the heart of the movie has to come from the STUFF, the ACTION, the THINGS that fill the time. When those things are haphazardly shot and crummily edited, that makes the movie a challenge and not inherently enjoyable on its own.
But that’s where MST3K comes in, and thankfully, the jokes are great! And it’s something considerable that the gang can lift this movie as high as they can with their riffing material. This movie is packed with weirdness, like the slams on anteaters electricians out of nowhere, the hopelessly antiquated tech that would be right at home alongside the DeVry equipment in Being from Another Planet, and SO MUCH DRINKING (Crow: “That’s six degrees off the port beer, I mean, bow!”)
Like… I don’t think I could describe what the Devil Fish LOOKS like if pressed to do so, but that doesn’t stop Crow from bringing hilarious observations like “I’m made of ground chuck and lava!” And the action SURROUNDING the hunt for the Devil Fish is a hoot, too, causing Servo to confide in Mike: “This is how I like to fish, Mike, a flashlight and a flamethrower.”
But there’s plenty of action elsewhere, too, and a fistfight leads to one of my favorite pop cultural references from this era, as Mike channels the PlayStation game Parappa the Rapper: “Kick, punch, it’s all in the mind!”
All that to say this: I’d regard this episode a lot higher if the movie stuck out in mind more and had more going for it. I know, I know, this is MST3K we’re talking about, the movies HAVE to be bad, but the movie seems mostly technically bad as opposed to HEAD-OVER-HEELS WHAT THE ACTUAL HELL HAPPENED HERE bad. But the guys move Heaven and Earth to make these circumstances hilarious, so it’s firmly on middle ground. Or as you’d say, a sleeper episode (although it may not be the most conducive episode for actual sleep).
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For me, the host segments here are an ABSOLUTE SCREAM and totally lift this episode much higher.
I especially love where Pearl wants to follow through with a scheme to convince a couple of tourists (Beez McKeever and Patrick Brantseg, once again turning in some fun guest spots) that Castle Forrester is a cruise ship. It reminds me a lot of Dr. F and Frank turning Deep 13 into Auntie McFrank’s Tangleberry Inn in The Amazing Transparent Man, and in both cases, I’m scream-laughing at the shadiness of it all. The end bit where Bobo just wants to eat cereal and doesn’t go along with the scheme, and has to be tranquilized after Pearl hits him the cereal box one too many times (with the tranq rifle being tossed to Pearl by Observer channeling Isaac from The Love Boat)? AMAZING.
And the part where Pearl tries to cut down on the tourists’ confusion over the host segments by turning the SOL into Italians with camera filters that range from “VAGUE STEREOTYPES” to “BROAD STEREOTYPES” to “ETHNIC SLURS”? Deliriously funny!
The sketches where Mike and the Bots draw the ire of (on separate occasions) a dolphin and an electrician, causing warships to rain down hell on them? Solid stuff, although not quite as god-tier as the bamboozle-the-tourists storyline, the real A+ material.
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♫ The more things change, the more they stay the same… ♫
(Love both moments, just had to point out the freeze frame credits laughter!)
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Ever stop and think how a lot of character motivation in this makes no dang sense?
It’s never fully explained just how many people worked on “Project Seakiller,” though it stands to reason that Dr Davis and West’s cheating wife Sonja knew, with the one woman named Florinda who helped.
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We see Florinda noticing Davis and Sonja talking, and for some reason, she takes this as a sign that she needs to leave town immediately…but why? As far as she knows, the seakiller has been released to the local waters for a number of months. And for that matter, why does Davis send frog-voiced henchman to kill her? Is it just that he thinks she’ll tattle to Dr Davis, even though it seems he already suspects his wife of having an affair?
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Frog-voiced henchman is also assigned to destroy the device Stella tells Peter that Bob needs for tracking the creature. However, this seems totally separate from what Dr Davis should be concerned with. It almost seems like he doesn’t want anyone to find out about the creature. It then gets even more ridiculous when it seems that Peter’s girl Sandra also knows frog-voice, and gave him access to the shop.
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Plus, in one scene, Stella seems to have no idea who Peter is, and a few minutes later, she rides up and the two are talking as if they have known each other for some time.
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