Creatures From the Abyss, Nudity and Terror from Italy

Ever since seeing "Creature From the Black Lagoon," I have been enthralled with movies which have sea creatures.  Italian made "Creatures From the Abyss" from 1994, delivers lots of creepy monsters attacking and raping bikini clad (or nude) young women and their beaus. Though set in Miami (or off the coast of Miami), the acting and ornate sets ooze Italy.  This work also features a luxury state of the art bathroom which includes a video image of a beautiful woman encouraging whoever is showering to play with themselves, and a talking fish clock that insults anyone who passes by.

The plot: Margarith, Dorothy, and Julie (see above picture) and their boyfriends Mike and Bobby take a motorized dinghy straight into the Atlantic and run out of gas.  As a storm hits the girls panic and the guys spot a yacht in the distance.  As they paddle to this ship, they pass a half eaten crew member and realize the ship is named "Oceanographic Research Institute." Our quintet boards this derelict vessel and find it has been abandoned...or so they think.  In addition to discovering labs with experiments featuring toothy fish from the depths of the Atlantic, they find luxurious staterooms, suitable for premarital sex, and psychedelic furnished living areas.  Lots to do:  Julie (Ann Wolf) and Bobby (Michael Bon) want sex, and so does Dorothy (Laurie DiPalma).  Mike (Clay Rogers) and Margarith (Sharon Twomey) are the more clean-cut type.  Fortunately, Mike took a biology class in college, and pieces together the mystery behind the experiments in the labs.  When the girls fix dinner, the carnage begins.  Unfortunately the fish were contaminated with radioactive plankton. When the fish came back to life after being fried, the girls did not see this as a hint to make sandwiches instead.  Oh yes, the photo below, I challenge you to find anything remotely similar to it in cinematic history, and yes...that is a polar bear.

Dorothy gets really sick and vomits beetles an miniature sea creatures.  Bobby finds what he thinks is cocaine (radioactive plankton) and snorts it.  Meanwhile Mike discovers that the radioactive plankton make the toothy fish really horny rapists and the scientists, who are missing, were having sex with the fish.  If you have seen a lot of Roger Corman movies, you can probably guess what happens to the babes in this film.  As Mike figures out the mystery, he knows he must destroy the ship so as not to allow the experiments to reach Miami.  As the combination of their own libidos and deadly creatures doom some of the quintet, we are treated to some really gory and ambitious kills.

This film has some classic lines.  When one of the gals meets a horrible death, her boyfriend attempts to revive her.  He is then told, "Leave her alone, there is more p***y on the planet."  The acting is as you'd expect from a low-budget Italian horror film.  The creatures are imaginative and menacing.  Will Mike save the world?  Are the fates of the women in this film metamorphic of how an Italian masculine society treats it's females?  Did the polar bear, or that elongated statue have a vital role in that scene pictured above?  The answers to those questions will only be answered after you see "Creatures From the Abyss."