Humanoids from the Deep

Humanoids from the Deep (1980) was directed by Barbara Peeters and financed by Roger Corman. I think about this crazy film every time I see someone post something about being surprised at how much of our fish diet now depends on farm raised product. They are stunned to learn how this food is produced, what it eats, how it affects their health and the environment. They are just flabbergasted that aquaculture has become such an enormous ever expanding industry.

Fish farmers are expanding as fast as they can. The whole world seems to love to eat flesh and fish is a staple of many diets and becoming more popular through cheap feeds at franchise joints all over the globe. Or your ever ubiquitous 69 cent can of tuna in your local supermarket. But the farmers know that need outweighs nature and when the oceans are completely fished out they will have even a larger market to service.

Anyone who has seen The Cove, Darwin's Nightmare or End of the Line can witness the end of fish in nature. The blue fin tuna may be extinct in ten years. Cod off the coast of New England has been wiped out. Drag lines are destroying significant portions of all sea life.

So plans are being made. Need blue fin on your plate? We can do it for you genetically. You'll never tell the difference.

Cut to Humanoids. Here the plan is to increase the size of salmon by genetically enhancing the fish before releasing them into the wild. But once released they are eaten by coleacanths (a fish that goes back 65 million years and was rediscovered in 1938) and the result is a horde of creatures that go on land and look a lot like cheap versions of the Creature from the Black Lagoon. But it's 1980 so we get graphic murders, rapes, big fires at carnivals and the bone tossed to eco-issue and American Indian rights. Plus a surprise ending inspired by Alien.