Directors and writers have incorporated animals as part of their plots throughout film history. The octopus – or anything with tentacles – remains the most intricate of the myriad monsters and beasts we’ve seen on TV. A tentacled behemoth’s carnivorous viewpoint drives the narrative, but that’s not all; they also reflect notions that are more essential to mankind.
The shape of oftentacles is said to have sinister implications. For example, in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, there is an evil organisation called HYDRA that has Nazi undertones, and its emblem is an octopus with a human skull.
Furthermore, before becoming a part of movies, tentacled creatures were used in art and literature. The use of octopuses in art dates back to 1814, when the Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai painted The Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife.
After the government placed censorship on any portrayal of male and female reproduction in Japan, the use of these monsters became more common. Artists and filmmakers devised a method of circumventing the prohibition by imitating such visuals with tentacles. This newfound trend for hedonistic theatrics and narrative spread its tentacles over the globe.
Possession (1981)
Anna is seeking a divorce from Mark, who has recently returned from a work vacation. Mark is taken aback by this request because he thought his marriage was going well. The couple begins to argue with one another, which quickly escalates from verbal to violent.
Bob, their young kid, is caught in the middle of the marital squabble. Mark suspects Anna of having an illicit affair and employs a private investigator to investigate. While Mark works to salvage his marriage, he develops a tangled relationship with Bob’s teacher Helen, a doppelganger of Anna.
Later on, Mark discovers that Anna is indeed in a relationship. Her partner, however, is a tentacled beast, much to his amazement. Not only does Annasustain the creature, she also makes love to it.
Polish director AndrzejZulawski gives the film’s title a dual meaning. On the one hand, it is a film about a woman making love to a dreadful creature, which leads to the end of her marriage.On the other hand, it is a film about the pursuit of pleasure and subsequent overconsumption.
The Cannes award winning performance by Isabelle Adjani, who plays Anna, is visually striking and extremely brave and bold. In the minutes she spends with the tentacled beast, the French beauty exudes grace, yet she doesn’t overlook the repeated themes of unmet wants, dominance, and isolation.
The beast Zulawski has created for the audience is horrifying, terrifying, and profanely nasty. It has a tremendous amount of penetration, not only physically but also emotionally and mentally. Sam Neil, who plays Mark in the film, has previously stated that Possession is his favourite of all the films in which he has appeared.
The Untamed (2016)
Alejandra is dissatisfied with her marriage to Angel, who is secretly gay. Fabian, Alejandra’s brother, is having an affair with Angel. Their small Mexican community is largely conservative, and homosexuality and self-indulgence are taboo topics.
Fabian meets Veronica at the hospital where he works as a nurse, and he breaks up with Angel as a result. When Veronica meets Alejandra, she tells her about a couple who live deep in the woods and are home to an alien creature who can solve all of Alejandra’s problems.
Fabian is soon found dead, and Alejandra learns about her husband’s previous romance with her brother. As Alejandra fulfills her desires and enjoys her body with the alien, more bodies start piling up.We have to understand that the alien is not so simple. It is as complicated as its tentacled body.
The Cannes winning director Amat Escalante helmed this artistically and visually rich movie. The story is essentially that of a woman’s crumbling marriage, with an added omnipresent science fiction element.
Ruth Ramos plays Alejandra,a woman who efficiently carries out her duties as a mother and wife, but has an unloving husband. To fulfill her romantic desires, she meets and mates with an alien who dropped on Earth in a meteor. This gargantuan, promiscuous, alien loveoctopus is a beast that gets its bed-mates to reach prime satisfaction.
It emits energy that attracts other species, as shown in a scene in which animals are feverishly copulating in the crater caused by the meteor. The alien’s face has a strange intelligence about it, almost as if it recognises that it is more evolved than the beings with whom it is mating. It becomes clear that the alien provides you with both healing and damaging pleasure.
Deep Rising (1998)
Captain Finnegan is hired by Hanover and his mercenary gang to rob the vault and the wealthy passengers on the luxury cruise liner Argo Nautica. The mercenaries plan to sink the ship with torpedoes after looting it.
When they arrive at the ship, they discover bloodied skeletons of people and nearly no one alive. The gang is soon attacked by a huge sea creature with spiked tentacles or jaws.
Finnegan encounters Trillian, a thief who has been imprisoned. With its tentacles pursuing anyone living, the beast takes over the ship. Trillian and Finnigan discover an island a few nautical miles distant, which appears to be their only hope of escaping this seamonster. The last scene of the film has an exciting revelation.
Another grand luxury cruise ship went down, but this time there’s no fatal wrong turn into an iceberg, and rather an elephantine monstrous creature with spiky tentacles that loves to suck human bodily fluids and spit out the skeleton.
The film was directed by Stephen Sommers and stars Treat Williams, Famke Janssen, Djimon Hounsou, Kevin J. O’Connor, and Anthony Heald in essential roles. Somers mixes the horror genre with science fiction in Deep Rising and gives effect to this heterogenous theme,with abundant CGI use.
The sea monster spreads its tentacles throughout the ship, devouring all living creatures in its path. The bloodbath is just enough to keep the audience engaged without becoming disturbing or gory.
There’s also some good humour in the movie, especially when O’Connor is on screen. Trillian and Finnegan uncover a remote island that turns out to be Skull Island from the King Kong universe.
Sommers was planned to make a King Kong movie, using Deep Rising as a prequel, but the project never got off the ground. This information is provided so that you may see how the extraterrestrial species depicted here compares to Kong or even Godzilla.
Harbinger Down (2015)
A Soviet moonlander crashed into the Bering Sea in 1982, only to be discovered by biology students Sadie and Ronelle and their professor Stephen. When the trio discovered the submerged and frozen moonlander, which contained human bodies, they were researching the effects of global warming on whales.
Sadie begins her investigation of the cosmonaut’s body and discovers stardigrades, which are extremophiles or extremely hardy organisms that can withstand severe temperatures and even cosmic radiation.
Stephen accuses Sadie of hijacking the amazing find when the cosmonaut’s body goes missing, resulting in a stressful situation. They later realize that these organisms survived the radiation, but developed a mutation that now allows them to shape-shift and infect other living organisms.
The infected people transform into savage creatures with tentacles, who brutally kill or infect others. The ship becomes ground zero of a small alien invasion.
In 2011, Amalgamated Dynamics or ADI, who specialise in animatronics and prosthetic make-up, were hired to make The Thing. In the end, the producers chose to go ahead and use CGI instead, and so ADI were left with many unused monsters.
Alec Gillis crowdfunded the money for this movie, making it around these monsters. Despite the sloppy writing and shoddy direction, if you’re in the mood for a creature picture, you’ll have a good time with this one. The film features some terrifying visuals of alien animals with razor-sharp fangs and tentacles hell-bent on killing the ship’s crew.
They’re incredibly stunning and disturbing, and they fully support the horror and science fiction genres of the film. We recommend this film since the aliens are created using practical effects rather than CGI.
Void (2016)
A young man is seen burning a woman alive, and a wounded drug addict is seen fleeing into the woods. Officer Carter notices him and takes him to the hospital where Allison works as a nurse.
Allison and Carter had a relationship that ended after one of their children died. The hospital is understaffed, dark, and home to only a few strange patients. Soon after, we see Beverly, a nurse, murder a patient before being shot down by Officer Carter.
He has a seizure as soon as he shoots her, and sees cosmic and supernatural pictures of a dystopian society with a massive black pyramid floating in the sky. Carter gains consciousness only to find that cloaked figures have surrounded the hospital, and Beverly has turned into a tentacled ghostlybeast. The beastly Beverly is then attacked with fire axes.
Meanwhile, Dr. Powell, who is the senior doctor of the hospital, is killed, but his body goes missing. Allison is also nowhere to be found, so Carter searches for her and finds a secret staircase that leads into a large dark room filled with undead creatures of all kinds.
Meanwhile, a pregnant patient starts to have contractions. This is all a part of an elaborate plan by one of the characters to bring someone back to life and bridge the gap between the dead and the living.
This picture, directed by Jeremy Gillespie and Steven Kostanski, defies expectations in terms of gruesome horror flicks dominated by visual effects. Lovecraftian cosmic themes are combined with a Fulci-style of direction and script in this picture.
Having said that, the film’s story is both unique and captivating. Beverly changes into a horrific tentacled beast with decaying flesh lumping out of her body, and she has grown tentacles that pierce the eyes and lips of another character in one scene. This beast’s brain breaks through its skull as it tries to kill by penetration.
The undead monsters become more gruesome and nasty as this film approaches its end. The arteries, veins, and yellowish flesh of the creatures tears the skin away, laying the insides bare in the open. The Void is undoubtedly going to give you a few chills.
Grabbers (2012)
As an object drops down from the sky near a fishing vessel, a male and female alien arrive in a small Irish island community. One of the members of the crew is sucked into the water. This is followed by mysterious disappearances among the villagers, as well as the discovery of dead whales on the coastlines.
Officers Ciarán O’Shea and Lisa Nolan enlist the assistance of a few villagers as well as Dr. Smith, a marine ecologist. These aliens are black, large, and have numerous tentacles that are extremely nimble. The police learn that the aliens have come to Earth to populate themselves, and that the only weapon they have against them is…
well, we’ll let you figure things out for yourself. Although, we’ll tell you it is awkwardly funny and the film revolves around it. The female has laid many eggs and the male is on a killing spree. Our protagonists make some desperate attempts to save the village, though a permanent solution has to be found.
Grabbers is a sci-fi horror comedy with some disturbing blood-sucking Lovecraftian aliens. The film’s tone is set pretty early in the film when Lisa quotes, The film is filled with comic scenes and some nasty slashings perpetrated by the aliens.
We don’t see the alien until the end of the film, but when it does, Director Jon Wright gives us a full-length visceral shot. Its tooth-filled circular mouth and tentacles that spread out in all directions are a visual delight.
The male creature is substantially larger than the female and is responsible for the majority of the murders. The picture is entertaining, but it never gets away from its basic idea of a creature feature. If that’s what you’re searching for in a movie, this is the one to watch.
Slither (2006)
The movie starts with a meteor entering the Earth’s atmosphere and crashing into the tranquil village of Wheelsy. A aggressive and intelligent parasite emerges from this, infecting Grant. Grant’s mind and body are taken over by the parasite, who develops an insatiable appetite for raw meat.
He eventually develops rashes and pus-filled swellings on his skin, and tentacles grow out of his body, converting him into a monster that will eat anything that moves. Grant impregnates a local woman named Brenda, who becomes a parasitic alien breeder.
Brenda’s body turns into a giant sphere that explodes, with slug-like larvae infecting all the residents except Grant’s wife Starla, Police Chief Bill, Mayor Jack MacReady, and one Kylie Strutemyer. Grant later takes the matured form of the alien and is able to control hundreds of infected residents. His ultimate goal is to consume all living organisms on Earth.
This is the debut film of legendary director James Gunn. The film did not fare well at the box office but received mostly positive reviews from the critics. Gunn has graciously used both special effects and visual effects in this horror-comedy.
Despite the fact that the premise isn’t fully innovative, Gunn does a fantastic job of keeping the audience entertained with a lot of witty banter and a spectacular alien parasite with tentacles that can control the minds of its hosts.
Grant’s tentacles become much stronger and longer as the primary host matures by sucking the innards of others. The intelligent monster’s main weapon is its tentacles. Despite the fact that Slither is a horror film, Gunn establishes a close relationship with his audience, and he provides much more than blood and guts.
Tokyo Ghoul (2017)
The film is set in Tokyo, where mankind live in constant fear of Ghouls who consume human flesh. Ken Kaneki dates KamishiroRize, a bashful girl who assaults him because she is a ghoul. He tries to run, but soon transforms into a ghoul. He opts for a peaceful existence among fellow pacifist ghouls.
However, Ken’s life is not easy because two police officers intend to exterminate all ghouls from the city, and Ken will have to live his ghoulish existence while concealing his actual identity from the human world.
Ghouls recognise each other by the tentacle-like projections known as kagune that protrude from their backs – essential organs that only protrude when the ghoul wants to feed or fight. Ken has a hard time concealing them, and by extension, his double existence as a ghoul.
When Ken tries to eat conventional food but fails, the audience can empathise with him. It’s both heartbreaking and irritating. The picture is dramatic and scary, featuring a great deal of gore and a number of visceral scenes. The narrative and music bring this spectacular Japanese film to a close.
From Beyond (1986)
Crawford Tillinghast and Dr. Edward Pretorius are scientists that invented the Resonator, a contraption that activates the pineal gland in the brain to stimulate the sixth sense in humans.
When Crawford activates the machine, he sees creatures from another world. Hee then goes to Dr. Pretorius to shut it down, but Pretorius refuses and is killed as a result, and Crawford is brought to a mental institution on suspicion of schizophrenia. Dr. Katherine McMichaels removes Crawford from the nasty Dr. Roberta Bloch in the asylum, and Detective Bubba joins them. They work together to re-start the machine.
We see Dr. Pretorius coming back to life in the form of an ugly Frankenstein – styled tentacled beast who is determined to kill people. In the struggle to stop Dr. Pretorius, Crawford undergoes a similar transformation.
He then has a pineal gland protruding out of his forehead in the form of a worm-shaped tentacle, having been turned into a monster that eats brains. The climax is genuinely grotesque and savage, where two brain-eating tentacled beasts fight each other.
The story for this film was written by H. P. Lovecraft, also known as the maestro of the macabre. Extra-dimensional animals hover all about us but are invisible, according to director Stuart Gordon, who revised the plot while keeping the primary idea. Dr. Pretorius is named after the protagonist of Bride of Frankenstein, while Dr. Roberta Bloch is named after Psycho’s creator.
These titles are representative of the feature’s themes of ugliness and psychology. In the movie, Dr. Pretorius quotes, He achieves this apparently higher form of sensual pleasure from everyone he can wrap a tentacle around.
The Mist (2007)
After a storm knocks out power in the city, David Drayton and his son Billy travel to the local grocery to get groceries. Soon, an eerie mist blankets the entire town, including the grocery. Police sirens and the town’s emergency sirens warn shoppers at the store. Extraterrestrials begin to come out of nowhere.
People are being killed by huge bugs, spiders, and dinosaur-sized tentacled beasts. All of this was caused by an out-of-control military operation that established a portal for aliens to enter.
The population inside the supermarket is divided into two groups, with David and Mrs. Carmody as their respective leaders. David attempts to work out plans to save everyone while Mrs. Carmody gathers the more conservative followers by telling them that it is an apocalypse and the town is paying for its sins.
She even goes so far as to suggest they make sacrifices. The trapped people will have to find a way to fight the monsters outside the supermarket and also the ones within.
The Mist, based on a Stephen King novel and directed by the acclaimed Frank Darabont, depicts the narrative of humanity’s flaws. Darabont has made the tentacled aliens appear as threatening as humanity’s errors, but we won’t dive into the satire in this video.
The entire town is covered in mist, and the viewer is made aware of the monsters’ lethal natures by their long and powerful tentacles, as the name suggests. These tentacles cut and drag individuals, entering their bodies. The film has a startlingly sad and gripping finale. We recommend that you watch it for yourself to see what we mean.
The Faculty (1998)
Casey Connor is the school photographer for the Harrington High School newspaper in Ohio. When Connor discovers a new form of parasite that is water-dependent, the teachers begin to act strangely, leading Connor to believe that they are concealing something. To investigate, he teamed up with Delilah Profitt.
They discover that an alien parasitic species is enslaving the school faculty, manipulating their thoughts and bodies one by one. The aliens are water-dependent, body-snatching, shape-shifting animals with tentacles in places you can’t comprehend.
Among all this, there is also a new girl in the school named Marybeth Louise who is trying to become a part of the school’s social circle. Casey and Delilah use the help of other students to fight the invasive species that has taken over the school and the town’s authorities, but will they succeed?
The Faculty is another film that combines elements of horror, science fiction, and humour. Tentacles protrude from the wicked aliens from an all-oceanic world, penetrating eye sockets and hurling several large lockers towards people.
The parasites have stretched their tentacles throughout the school, both literally and symbolically, and will stop at nothing. Jordana Brewster, Salma Hayek, Famke Janssen, Robert Patrick, and Elijah Wood, among others, star in this aesthetically fascinating picture by Robert Rodriguez. Kevin Williamson wrote the screenplay,using his trademark approach – penning a situation that sees a few teenagers fight against all odds to survive.
Urotsukidoji, Legend of the Overfiend (1989)
There are two additional races on the face of the Earth, in addition to human civilisation. One is the Juujinkai, a half-human, half-beast race, and the other is the Makai, a race of demons.
Legend has it that every three thousand years, the Choujinor Overfiend, a supremely powerful entity, is born and gives balance to the three races. After generations of seeking, a Jujinkai named Amano Jyaku discovers that the Overfiend is Tatsuo Nagumo, a high school student. Tatsuo, the Makai believe, is not the Overfiend, but a demonic force bent on destroying Earth. Is this the start of a new age or the start of the end?
This is a Japanese erotic manga, a graphic novel written by Toshio Maeda. The manga is graphic in terms of its explicitly gratifying scenes and violations. The notorious scene where an unwilling victim is abused with a phallus-shaped tentacle of a beast comes early in the film and takes its inspiration from the famous woodblock painting called The Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife.
A similar tone is set in HP Lovecraft horror stories which glorify tentacled gods and aliens. This animated film sets the bar for blending intimacy and obscenity with extreme violence and brutality; we are not afraid to call it one of the classics of a socially unacceptable kind of horror.
Underwater (2020)
Norah is a member of a group working at a mile-deep underwater research location. On the oceanfloor, life is boring and dark, with little light or activity, but then disaster strikes.
The site’s hull breaks during an earthquake, killing nearly all of the personnel. Those who survive will have to traverse a mile on the ocean floor to another location and discover emergency escape pods. As the few survivors set out on their quest, they quickly discover that they are not alone in the ocean’s depths.
Director William Eubank takes his audience on a claustrophobic thrill-ride that is a part disaster movie and part monster creature feature. It’s a big-budget production with excellent visual effects.
The marine creatures that appear like the child of a Kraken and a big squid are bound to make your flesh crawl, even if the narrative falls short. Norah, who is a mechanical engineer, is played by Kristen Stewart in the film.
She gives a thorough and precise performance, portraying fright and fear while yet being adamant about seeing the light of day. In this extravaganza, the remaining crew battles a scarcity of oxygen and terrifying aquatic monsters, showcasing some stunning SFX and VFX.