In this demented and very likely LSD-influenced classic, which featured in its English version the insufferably catchy song "Save the Earth!", Hedorâ, a space spore, settles in Tokyo Bay like a kind of invasive algae and starts feeding on the pollution there. Billions of little Hedorâs eating oceanic pollution might sound like a great idea, but the little buggers merge into a series of different, larger forms: a giant sludge tadpole, a kind of humanoid that takes hits off of smokestacks the way Harold and Kumar take hits off of bongs and a stingray-shaped flying thing that mists the city with sulfuric acid and dissolves tens of thousands of people. The big monster also spits out a corrosive, toxic goop like something pulled from a well sunk into Love Canal. It's up to Godzilla to kick some polluted butt in an infamously campy and protracted battle atop Mount Fuji. Noted for playing on a double bill with the also-eco-themed wildlife-run-amok movie Frogs.
2. The Day the Fish Came Out (1967)
The respected and internationally lauded Greek filmmaker who'd previously directed Irene Papas in Electra and Anthony Quinn in Zorba cranked out this bizarre only-in-the-'60s chimera of social satire and eco-horror. NATO warplane pilots Tom Courtenay and Colin Blakely dump the highly radioactive "Container Q" near a small Greek island. The pilots and a separate NATO recovery team headed by Sam Wannamaker search for the radioactive Pandora's box, but Container Q is first found by a dimwitted peasant, who wails on the thing with tools ranging from an ax to a stolen acetylene torch, convinced that the Geiger-happy box holds treasure. Finding not gold but fissionable material, the guy dumps the stuff in the sea, poisoning the island's water supply and sending hundreds of thousands of fish to the surface belly-up. With jabs taken at tourist culture, the generation gap (via a 21-year-old Candice Bergen in mescaline- and Carnaby-Street-influenced couture) and the Cold War, the flick is supposed to be some kind of end-of-the-world bacchanal.
3. Spring Break Shark Attack (2005)
As Hostel, Touristas, Live Feed, The Ruins and this made-for-TV programmer prove, there's an audience out there for young pretty people on vacation getting messed up real good. The creation of a new artificial reef by greedy developers (is there any other kind?) throws off the ecological balance near a beach in Florida, leading to the tiger shark population becoming more aggressive toward sea turtles and eventually toward a bunch of drunken brats too uninteresting to make it on The Real Cancun. Now, what is really throwing off the ecological balance of the sea? That artificial reef? Or the presence of hundreds of bipedal mammals with no business in the sea bobbing in the surf among apex predators? Wouldn't a bunch of sharks eating those people be a correction of an ecological imbalance? I dunno, chum ... you tell me! The flick is noteworthy for a totally useless pad-out-the-running-time subplot involving roofies and a climax featuring a guy parasailing right down a shark's gullet.
4. Peter Benchley's The Beast (1996)
In this TV miniseries/thematic follow up to Jaws, a big ol' giant squid lunges up from the depths to start eating people near a fishing community. It seems the practice of trap fishing--setting bait in wire mesh traps, so that trapped fish die and act as bait for other fish that get trapped, die and act as bait--has thrown the whole local food chain off, causing the giant squid to hunt closer to the surface and reach for human McNuggets. This calamari calamity features long and frequent rants against cage fishing by a post-Manhunter and pre-CSI William Peterson, who seems to be profiling the squid at certain points. The climax, alas, doesn't feature the protracted use of "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida." The late Benchley, the author of the original novel and the executive producer of the miniseries, was a member of the National Council of Environmental Defense and was spokesman for their Oceans Program.
5. It Came From Beneath the Sea (1955)
Great Old Skool Cold War SF with killer special effects by Ray Harryhausen. In this monster mash, co-written by Them! scribe George Worthing Yates, atomic testing in the Pacific rouses a giant, ship-and-sub-crushing octopus, which, due to budget constraints, famously has only six tentacles. 1950s SF stalwarts Kenneth Tobey (sub commander) and Faith Domergue (beautiful lady scientist) are recruited to combat the menacing mollusk, which, in an iconic moment of Saturday matinee hysteria, crunches the Golden Gate Bridge with its bare tentacles and heaves itself half out of the water to attack the San Francisco waterfront (unfortunately without eating any of the really annoying mimes that congregate there). Army guys with flamethrowers come to the temporary rescue. While many "Great Big Radioactive Things Attacking the U.S." movies of the time warn of the dangers of the A-bomb, this one feels a bit more eco-centric than others, as the octopus becomes a menace only once its normal habitat is contaminated.
