6. YOU CAN RUN BUT YOU CAN’T TIDE: Sometimes the beach ain’t all sand and shine…
Based on The Shadow Over Innsmouth, this may have American director Stuart Gordon and writer Dennis Paoli, but this is a Spanish production. It starts with Paul Marsh (Ezra Godden) dreaming of mermaids before a shipwreck separates him and his girlfriend, Barbara (Raquel Meroño), from their friends Vicki (Birgit Bofarull) and Howard (Brendan Price). Before you know it, Howard is skinned alive, fish people come up from the water, Vicki gets knocked up by the god Dagon, and we learn that a fisherman, Ezequiel (Francisco Rabal), is the last man in town who isn’t a merman.
Captain Orpheus Cambarro (Alfredo Villa) talked the entire place into worshipping Dagon, a fish god, instead of God. He also sacrificed a bunch of people and, of course, had his way with the women, creating the fish people we now see. This leads to face-ripping, suicidal pregnant women and the film going from eh to holy shit; this thing is amazing. We’re talking naked women writhing, bodies being torn apart, people setting themselves on fire, and all manner of weirdness, like Paul learning about the mermaid of his dreams, Uxia (Macarena Gómez) and how he has been predestined to come back and become a merman, even if he does set himself ablaze.
This was almost a Full Moon movie, but Charles Band said, “We were unable to get The Shadow over Innsmouth because the budget on it was too high. It didn’t fit into your horror movie niche; it was a bigger project, and it was so strange. People kept telling us that if it were about vampires or werewolves, you would have no problem here, but since this is about people turning into fish, it is a little too weird for us to put this kind of money into the project. Well, to me, that’s what makes this interesting. You haven’t seen this before.”
What’s the deal with Dagon? He’s in the Judeo-Christian Bible and is a half-fish/half-man deity and the father of Baal. What a surprising, weird little film!
You can watch this on Tubi.
