My Top Ten Favorite Giant Cephalopod Movies

I’d always assumed there were dozens of movies that feature giant squids and octopuses (OK, octopi). But there really aren’t very many giant cephalopod movies. Here are my ten favorites.

1. It Came from Beneath the Sea (1955) – Hydrogen bomb tests make a really big octopus from the Mindanao Deep head towards San Francisco. Low-budget but effective and entertaining movie. Special effects by the famous Ray Harryhausen.

2. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954) – Rather loose adaptation of Jules Verne’s 19th-century novel. Captain Nemo and the crew of the submarine Nautilius try to stop war by sinking warships. From Disney. An excellent film in every respect and the battle with the giant squid during a storm was a highlight.

3. Mysterious Island (1961) – Another Jules Verne adaptation. Captain Nemo saves shipwrecked Civil War soldiers on an island that has large animals. The crew of the Nautilius encounters a giant unfriendly chambered nautilus. Special effects by Ray Harryhausen.

4. The Fellowship of the Ring (2002) – A huge octopus-like creature, the Watcher in the Water, guards the entrance to Moria. Gandalf comments, “There are older and fouler things than orcs in the deep places of the world.” The scene was filmed with so little light, it’s very difficult to see the creature.

5. Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1961) – A giant squid attacks divers from the submarine Seaview while they’re on a mission to save the Earth. And then later in the movie, a giant octopus attacks the submarine. A double cephalopod bonanza. This movie gave rise to a 1960s TV series of the same name. In the season-one TV episode “The Village of Guilt”, a giant octopus attacks the Seaview. The episode has footage of a couple of clips from “It Came from Beneath the Sea” (1955).

Scene from the movie where a giant squid attacks divers. This footage was also used in the first episode of the TV series “Eleven Days to Zero” (1964).

Scene from the movie where a giant octopus attacks the Seaview but is repelled by electricity.

6. Deep Rising (1998) – This movie is more or less a remake of “Alien” on a cruise ship instead of a spaceship. The monster is like a huge octopus with nasty sharp teeth. Most reviewers didn’t like this movie but I think it’s pretty good — it scared me.

7. The Lost Continent (1968) – This is a strange British film where a tramp steamer becomes disabled in fog-enshrouded carnivorous seaweed. There’s a colony of descendants of pirates and a giant one-green-eyed octopus. One of my favorite movies of the 1960s.

8. The Beast (1996) – This movie is similar to “Jaws” (1975) but with a giant squid instead of a giant shark. It was actually a made-for-TV film. This movie got terrible reviews but I think it’s OK, if a bit long. Based on a novel by Peter Benchley, who also wrote “Jaws”.

9. Tentacles (1977) – The title pretty much tells you what you need to know. Giant octopus on a rampage. Intended to capitalize on the huge success of “Jaws” (1975) two years earlier. The film had big stars (John Huston, Shelley Winters, Henry Fonda) who were nearing the ends of their careers. Not a good movie but it makes my top ten.

10. Reap the Wild Wind (1942) – Starring John Wayne and directed by Cecil B. DeMille. Set in the 1840s, the story is about marine salvage operations. Wayne is a diver exploring a wreck when he is attacked by a giant squid.

Honorable Mention

The Meg (2018) – A giant squid makes a very brief appearance when it attacks a minisub — and then the squid is promptly eaten by the megalodon shark.

Wake of the Red Witch (1948) – John Wayne (again!) battles a big octopus (or it might be a squid) for a chest of pearls.

Monster from the Ocean Floor (1954) – Biologists battle a giant one-eyed alien octopus off the Mexico coast.

Pearl of the South Pacific (1955) – Black pearls are stored underwater by natives in a lagoon guarded by a giant octopus.

Bride of the Monster (1955) – A mad scientist has a pet killer octopus.

Sh! The Octopus (1937) – The title is not a typo. A comedy-mystery film that’s rather famous among fans (all three of us) of giant octopus movies.

King Kong vs. Godzilla (1962) – The ape battles a giant octopus on an island in the South Pacific.

War of the Gargantuas (1966) – There is a bad big green gargantua (a hairy giant man) and a good big brown gargantua. The good one fights a giant octopus that looks a lot like the octopus in “King Kong vs. Godzilla” from a few years earlier.

The Rift (1990) – Also known as “Endless Descent”. A team of scientists descends into a deep marine trench in a medium size yellow submarine. The sub is briefly attacked by what looks like a giant marine nudibranch or flatworm. OK, so it’s not a cephalopod but it’s an invertebrate so it’s close. This movie has very good monsters and very bad acting.

Warlords of Atlantis (1978) – In the early 1900s some explorers are attacked by a giant octopus guarding Atlantis named The Sentinel. A pretty good movie.

The Road to Bali (1952) – This is a comedy starring Bob Hope and Bing Crosby. Hope goes underwater to retrieve a chest of treasure that is guarded by a giant squid. Of course Hope and Crosby get the treasure, but just Crosby gets the girl (Dorothy Lamour). I think this is the same squid that appeared in “Reap the Wild Wind” (1942) — both films were produced by Paramount Pictures.

The Incredible Petrified World (1959) – The poster for this movie suggests that there’s a giant, or at least very large, octopus. “Horror of Undersea Monsters!” But there isn’t. Just some stock footage of an ordinary octopus.

Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus (2009) – A direct-to-video-TV film that doesn’t take itself seriously.

Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet (1965) and Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women (1968) were U.S. films made from footage in the Russian Planeta Bur (1962) – In an underwater scene on Venus, Cosmonauts/Astronauts see an alien octopus that isn’t giant but it’s pretty cool so I put it on this list.

Eye of the Beast (2007) – A made-for-TV movie.

Kraken: Tentacles of the Deep (2006) – A direct-to-video movie.

Gamera vs. Viras (1968) – Also known as “Destroy All Planets” (not to be confused with “Destroy All Monsters”). Gamera is a giant flying turtle. Viras is sort of a giant squid from outer space that can fly, walk, and swim.

The 7 Adventures of Sinbad (2010) – In this direct-to-video movie, a modern-day descendant of Sinbad has several adventures, including being rescued by a good giant squid.

Don’t Give Up the Ship (1959) – In this comedy starring Jerry Lewis, Lewis dives to a sunken ship to recover the ship’s bell. He encounters a giant octopus. Not a very good octopus. Not a very good movie (unless you’re a fan of Lewis-style slapstick comedy).

30,000 Leagues Under the Sea (2007) – A modern-day Captain Nemo creates giant robotic squids (called sentinels) and uses them to keep intruders away from his underwater headquarters (Atlantis). A classic example of a movie that’s so bad you have to keep watching to see if it can get any worse, and so paradoxically the movie is entertaining.

The Wild Wild West was a TV series that ran from 1965-1969. It featured agents James West and sidekick Artemis Gordon in the 1870s. The series had elements of science fiction. In the episode “The Night of the Kraken”, West and Gordon run into a giant squid, but alas (for this blog post), the squid is just an air-powered fake created by the villain to keep people away from his underwater headquarters.

In The Goonies (1985), a group of young teens follow a treasure map and eventually find an old pirate ship in an underground lagoon. The movie has a big cult following. For many years there was a legend that there was a scene with a giant octopus. It turns out that such a scene was filmed but was deleted from the final release of the movie. Somebody eventually found the deleted scene and posted it online.

The Meg 2: The Trench (2023) is a big-budget sort-of sequel to “The Meg” (2018). Researchers dive deep and find giant sharks and a giant octopus. I got to see an early release via a friend in the industry (entertainment industry that is, not the giant octopus industry). Pretty good movie but as expected, the emphasis is on over-the-top action rather than plot and characterization, and it was slightly too long for me at 2 hours.

The opening scenes of Citizen Kane (1941) feature a newsreel obituary of Kane and describe his huge Xanadu mansion and estate with its own private zoo, complete with, apparently, a giant octopus. What the Hey?!

In Kong: Skull Island (2017) the famous ape has a brief encounter with a giant octopus in a shallow lagoon. Kong quickly tears the octopus apart, literally. This movie got pretty good reviews but was a box office flop. I speculate that many people, including me, have reached a King Kong saturation.

In Drums of Fu Manchu (1943), the main hero Alan Parker gets the drop on Fu Manchu in his hideout. But Parker is standing on a secret trap door and gets dropped into a tank containing a very large octopus. Parker is rescued in the nick of time by Nayland Smith and Dr. Petrie. This movie was put together from a 1940 serial with 15 chapters. The octopus isn’t very convincing but the movie is pretty good if you’re a fan of old serials like I am.

One morning at 3:00 AM, I was doing some coding and noticed that a TV show called Baywatch from the 1990s was scheduled to show an episode titled “Tentacles: Part 1” (season 4, episode 6, 1993). I couldn’t resist. Two lifeguards and their friend paddle into a cave to retrieve a lost surfboard and are attacked by a giant octopus. I had heard of “Baywatch” before but had never seen it. I was stunned by a.) how bad the show was, but b.) how addictive it was — I couldn’t turn away.

The poster for Manfish (1956) shows a scuba diver being attacked by what appears to be a giant squid or octopus. I found this (very strange) movie on the Internet and watched it three times. There are no squids or octopuses (yeah, yeah, “octopi”) in this movie at all, giant or otherwise. Grrr.

Flash Gordon (1936) is a 12-part serial (about 20 minutes each). One episode per week was shown in a theater, before the week’s main feature movie. In Episode 4, “Battling the Sea Beast”, Flash is on Planet Mongo. He is captured by the evil Kala, the leader of the Shark Men and thrown into a water tank containing an “octosak” — a giant (well, very large anyway) alien kind-of-octopus. Things look very bad for Flash but Princess Aura, the daughter of Ming the Merciless, has a crush on Flash and forces Kala at ray gun point to empty the tank.

Nautilus (2024) is a made-for-streaming series of episodes that tells a warped version of Captain Nemo and his amazing submarine. A giant squid attacks the Nautilus early in the series. Over all, the special effects of the series are very good, but the squid attack is very poor. The story and acting are poor too, so the good effects are wasted in this series.