A 1980 Sci-Fi Horror directed by Barbara Peeters and produced by Roger Corman's New World Pictures. Humanoid creatures are attacking a fishing town, and it's up to the residents and a biologist (Ann Turkel) to stop them.
The movie stars Doug Mc Clure, Vic Morrow, Anthony Pena, Denise Galik, Lynn Schiller, David Strassman, Greg Travis, and Linda Shayne.
It was released on May 16, 1980. It was later remade in 1996.
Tropes for the film:
- Ankle Drag: Jerry is pulled away by his ankles by a monster hiding under the water. The monsters similarly drag Peggy to their lair shortly afterwards.
- Attack of the Town Festival: The big fishman attack occurs at the town festival.
- Black Comedy Rape: Several women are raped by Fish People; the film seems unsure about whether it's black comedy or serious horror.
- Blood Is Squicker in Water: The fish monsters kill Jackie, Jerry, and several other people after pulling them underwater. When they do, large clouds of blood can be seen in the water.
- Chest Burster: The women impregnated by the Humanoids die horribly as the babies rip out of their bellies.
- Face Full of Alien Wing-Wong: The movie features the "unsubtle, Gratuitous Rape" variation, complete with Chest Burster, though the titular Humanoids are mutant fish rather than aliens.
- Fish People: The monsters are a bunch of fish people who want to come ashore and, well, knock up the local gals. Oddly enough, this is something of a running theme in fish people-related horror stories, though this is a more explicitly rapey example than usual.
- Gone Horribly Wrong: The monsters are the result of an experiment intended to accelerate the growth of salmon. The salmon escaped, and mutations in fish that ate the salmon led to the evolution of the fish people.
- Monster Misogyny: The plot takes everything the 1950s horror movie monsters hinted at when monsters kidnapped young women and updated it for 1980s exploitation sensibilities
by showing monster-on-girl rape scenes. Quite infamous for its misogyny, despite being directed by a woman. She claims Roger Corman added more explicit rape footage later; he confirmed this in an interview on The Last Drive-In with Joe Bob Briggs in 2021. For his part, felt that she had turned in footage far tamer than what she had originally agreed to shoot. - Pet the Dog: Slattery is a racist Jerkass, but during the attack on the festival he risks his life to save a little girl from the monsters.
