Sh! The Octopus (1937)

Police detectives Kelly (Hugh Herbert) and Dempsey (Allen Jenkins) were fixing a flat tire in a rainstorm when they were interrupted by Vesta (Marcia Ralston), a hysterical woman in distress, who reports that her stepfather has been killed in a lighthouse. They race to the spot to find it occupied by an artist (John Eldredge), who’s just bought it from the government. The lighthouse quickly fills with an array of odd characters, including deranged Captain Hook (George Rosener), relatively stable Captain Cobb (Brandon Tynan), completely dry shipwreck victim Polly (Margaret Irving), and Vesta’s Nanny (Elspeth Dudgeon). The lighthouse may also be the headquarters for The Octopus, a nefarious criminal, as well as under attack from an actual, giant octopus. The two detectives must deal with a fake corpse, poison gas, a submarine, ominous proclamations from an bodiless voice, glowing eyes, a hag, a death ray, and no one ever telling them the truth, that’s assuming there is something called the truth..

If you can have an Old Dark House film, why not an Old Dark Lighthouse film?

It amazes me how many of these ‘30s mystery horror films were stage plays first. That amazement is magnified in this case. The play, Sh, The Octopus, ran for 2 months in New York in 1928, and was a parody not of first generation Old Dark House mystery plays, but of the parodies of those plays. So we’ve got a parody of a parody. Credit is also given to the author of the play, The Gorilla, though any direct connection to that play seems to have vanished in rewrites. The Gorilla made its own way into film three time, first in 1927, then in 1930 (now lost), and finally in 1939. I have no doubt that Sh, The Octopus was an odd play as Sh! The Octopus is an odd movie.

Hugh Herbert and Allen Jenkins play pretty much the same characters they were known for in all their pictures, with Herbert making strange “whooping” sounds at the end of his sentences and Jenkins being eternally frustrated. I’m not a fan of Herbert’s—too vaudeville for me, which makes sense as that’s where he came from—but have frequently enjoyed Jenkins in third banana roles. Here they are all comedy, and their jokes doesn’t work for me. Mistaking being told to look for a painter’s palette for being told to look at the roof of a guy’s mouth is the height of their comedy.

However, the rest of it works for me (almost…). Everyone else is in some kind of absurdist philosophical work, or are just confused. The result is less of a narrative, and more what I’d expect from an improv troop. Characters switch personalities almost as often as identities. Few setups have payoffs and most comments lead nowhere. Things just happen. Why are there glowing eyes? What’s the submarine doing? Why was a body hung from the roof? Why does everyone have matching wallets? Nothing matters and nothing makes sense, and it is kind of refreshing, perhaps because at under an hour it doesn’t give you time to become frustrated.

There’s an attempt at an explanation, and it’s horrible, going to the cheapest trick in storytelling, and it doesn’t even work since it doesn’t explain the scene before we meet our two leads. I suggest you turn off the movie two minutes before the end (you’ll know when) and just bask in the ridiculousness of life.