Kraken: Tentacles of the Deep (2006)

Starring Jack Scalia, Victoria Pratt and Charlie O’Connell

Written by Nicholas Garland, Sean Keller and Brian D. Young

Directed by Tibor Takács

Thanks to the wonders of TiVo, I was able to sit down and watch Kraken: Tentacles of the Deep Saturday afternoon. The movie, which stars Jack Scalia, Charlie O’Connell (Sliders) and Victoria Pratt (Mutant X), was originally titled Deadly Water until The SciFi Channel held a contest to rename it. ¹Despite the title, the featured creature is never referred to as a “kraken” by any of the characters.

Archaeologist Nicole (Victoria Pratt) is not Indiana Jones, but she’d like to be. ²At one point, Nicole declares that an artifact “belongs in a museum.” She’s traveled to Desolation Passage in search of an ancient bronze mask she hopes will lead her to a legendary opal. She is dogged in her quest by Maxwell Odemus (Scalia), who plans to secure the opal in order to regain favor with his family back in Greece.

Dashing marine photographer and all-around nice guy Ray (O’Connell) offers to help Nicole after the skipper of her boat is killed by a giant squid. Unbeknownst to Nicole and her crew, Ray has his own agenda: his parents were killed by a giant squid in Desolation Passage over a decade ago, and Ray’s got a taste for calamari with a side of revenge.

As SciFi originals go, Kraken: Tentacles of the Deep is pretty mediocre. Apart from the obvious Indiana Jones ripoff (sorry, homage) and the low-grade computer-generated sea critter that changes size from scene to scene, the story is just generally weak. For instance, Nicole maintains that the squid may be the embodiment of Scylla, a figure from Greek mythology. Scylla was a beautiful nymph transformed into a hideous sea creature by the sorceress, Circe. Nicole adds the element of the opal to the myth, claiming that anyone who possessed the giant gem was ultimately slain at sea by a giant squid. This explains why the squid attacks Nicole and her crew when they’re exploring the sunken Chinese freighter (which was also attacked by a giant squid) that contains both the mask and the opal, and it certainly makes sense that the squid would attack Odemus’ men when they attempt to recover the opal after blowing up Nicole’s boat.

Even the hapless teenagers who are attacked halfway through the movie have managed to earn the squid’s ire: they inadvertently stumble on the remains of Nicole’s nosy underwater camera, the very thing that awakened the cantankerous cephalopod in the first place.

But why attack Ray’s parents at the beginning of the movie? They didn’t possess the opal, nor were they attempting to find it or even in danger of accidentally stumbling upon it. It’s just a random attack on some innocent people who are trying to enjoy their vacation. Of course, it gives Ray a reason to want the squid dead, but it’s one of those annoying inconsistencies that turns a passable story into a bad one.

In the end, the bad guys are all killed, a couple of the good guys manage to escape, and the opal sinks back to the bottom of the passage, where a host of tiny squid swim around it in preparation for Kraken 2: Deeper, Tentacles, Deeper!. ³SciFi Channel’s first original hentai movie.