Humanoids from the Deep (1980)

"I'll use your law."

This film is also known as Monster but there was no way I wasn't going with Humanoids from the Deep. I set about watching this Roger Corman-produced monster flick starring a rather old-looking Doug McClure expecting a bit of silly lightweight fluff and ended up getting exactly that; it's not a good film, exactly, but it's watchable enough in its highly predictable way. Except... it's more than a little uncomfortably rapey. You can sort of tell that just from the poster.

The first part of the film wisely keeps the monsters hidden, but even early on it's obvious that we're just looking at men in rubber suits. There's a nice subtext about corporate greed and racism against the token Native American in the early scenes but, after enough people (and dogs) have been picked off by the beasts it's time for our hero Jim (McClure, naturally) and his gang to go a-monster hunting.

The scientific explanation for the monsters- products of scientific experiments to speed up evolution getting accidentally applied to coelacanths- is cobblers, of course; evolution is  not a movement towards becoming intelligent, bipedal humanoids but natural selection of whatever characteristics are likely to increase survival. Plus coelacanths are not native to the coastlines of the USA. Oh, and apparently they all want to rape women because they are like humans and want to mate with us. Er, right. Are there no female monsters or something? Essentially we have the rather silly monster movie you might expect from the title but with a not-very-subtle misogynistic subtext. Only for hardcore Doug McClure fans, if such people exist.