Tentacles

Having ripped off The Exorcist with Devil Within Her, Oliver Hellman here does a follow-up Italian job on Jaws. Taking Tentacles to the lab for analysis would reveal many similarities to its finny predecessor, with the following exceptions: wit, imagination, storytelling skill. Huston is grotesque as the type of grizzled investigative journalist who wears his nightdress on the porch. Winters is worse in yet another of her fat flustered parts, and Fonda must have needed the few days' work as 'Mr Whitehead', whose drilling company sends the octopus mad with its vibrations. One scene Jaws doesn't have, thankfully, is ichthyologist Bo Hopkins addressing his killer whales as though they were long-lost buddies from 'the streets' whence he came. They duly dispatch the monster, which incidentally seems of quite normal size, as in Grizzly.