Okay, that's enough exposing of my "lack of literary class" and my "ignorance of Lovecraft's true brilliance", because I really do enjoy the byproducts of Lovecraft's works (i.e. the movies, the Necronomicon, Jeffrey Combs' career and, of course, the dark lord and personal drinkin' buddy o' mine: Cthulhu) and despite the aforementioned heaviness of his stories, the man's had lots of interesting ideas and he was also insane, which I can understand all too well and will therefore give my regards to the man's memory and legacy... besides, I've said it many times before and will say it many times on the witness stand in the future: movies and the review of said movies are my specialties, not books, so all you poindexters can go blow your grannies, cuz I gots me work to do! Speaking of which, back to Dagon, Stuart Gordon's been trying to get this project past the planning stages for over a decade-and-a-half before finally succeeding. Though it never received the widespread theatrical release he (and I'm sure his many legions of pale skinned, unwashed fans like myself) was hoping for, it did get a short limited release before making it's way to video shelves around the country. Hey, what do you expect when there are such other "quality" flicks for Hollywood to fill the theaters with like Ballistic: Ecks Vs. Sever and Sweet Home Alabama...

After one of those wacky "hero has a reoccurring nightmare that will no doubt map out events later to happen in the film" openings, we meet said hallucinating hero, young Paul Marsh who's made a substantial fortune for himself and beyond fucktastic girlfriend Barbara like any young go-getter in modern society: the stock market. Yes, Paul's one of those twenty-somethings who sit around at their desktop all day in sweatpants and a worn out t-shirt tossing their virtual money around and making mucho dinero... that, or he's one of those young geniuses who invented some kind of amazing new computer component that downloads porn off the internet 1000 times faster... who cares, as all we need to know is he's rollin' in the dough and Barb's way too hot to be bending over for a feeb like Paul, let alone clawing at him and having to practically beg him for a ticket on Mr. Toad's Wild Ride. Once more movie reality kicks my reality's ass.

Paul and Barb are currently cruising the coasts of Spain on holiday with an older couple, Howard and Vicki, who I'm guessing are friends of our main couple or financial supporters of whatever the Hell it is that Paul's making money from. How and Vick are your standard rich older couple, the kind where the husband's always making light of his wife's role as the leach on his money vein while she's too busy fantasizing about every guy half her age (i.e. Paul) to notice. When the group's yacht comes under fire from mother nature in the form of a minor squall that generates immediately from thin air, their rich folks tub gets hung up on some rocks... whose bright idea was it to put big rocks in the MIDDLE of the ocean? Seriously, who ever built those rocks there should have their head examined... no, I'm not really that stupid kids, I'm just playing along... So, anyway, as I was saying, out of the entire Atlantic, these schmucks have to get tossed on an unfortunately placed rock bed, not only taking a healthy chunk out of their hull, but also trapping Vicki's foot in the lower levels of the cabin, injured and unable to escape. With the only other option being to lob off the broad's foot at the ankle, Paul and Barb offer to take the lifeboat to a nearby fishing village and find some help. Were it me, I would've just put on my steel chewin' dentures and gnawed my way through Vicki's ankle myself, but I wasn't there to save these people from themselves, plus that would've ruined the entire story, so let's just watch on and see how this all sorts itself out...

At the boat, Vicki's spilled plasma attracts something evil that pollutes the water with a thick ink, clouding the area and making it impossible to see what exactly it is that's down there. Whatever it is it's carnivorous and this isn't going to end well for either Howard or his wife. It's not ending well for yours truly either, because those underwater CGI shots are sad and beg me to ponder if it's true that even the great Stuart Gordon isn't willing to work for his shots anymore. Is it really so hard to have a couple guys throw on their wet suits and drag some aquatic cameras down there to film the bottom of the yacht?! Apparently, yes, it is. Hey, Stuart, fly me out to your next movie and I'll do all the hard shots ya need me to!... well, except shots to the mouth or to my ass, that's not copacetic with me, even for you. Meanwhile, Paul and Barbara make their way to town despite a leak in their rubber raft, where they're confronted by the local clergyman who seems eager to help out, but that doesn't make him any less creepy or freakish.

Everyone in the small town of Imboca (which translates into English as "In Mouth", as opposed to the New England town of Innsmouth, over which Lovecraft's "Shadow" loomed) is very shy and reserved, with incredibly slimy and pale skin and few making eye contact or conversation with the couple. While in town, Paul sees a church baring an eye-like symbol that strangely resembles, yes, another eyeball insignia from his nightmares. With more immediate subjects the concern, Paul and a group of the locals (who seem really pale for living on the shores and wear sunglasses in the middle of a typhoon) hop a tugboat and chugger on out to the yacht to save Howard and Vicki while Barb makes way to a local hotel to find shelter for affordable rates and talk to the local police. But, neither one finds what they're looking for, cuz How and Vick are gone with only blood and wet towels in their place and Barb gets abducted by the big-eyed, web fingered priest... it's one of those "Wow, this vacation sucks!" kind of trips.

Upon return to Imboca, Paul's told that Barbara's taken a car to nearby Santiago to file a police report, since there apparently are no cops in Imboca... note to self: pillage Imboca next summer with a small group of ex-Marines and become rich as Nazis. Until she "returns", Paul's advised to crash at the Hotel (with it's snazzy neon sign), where I'm not so sure the desk clerk isn't a cigar store Indian in disguise as he stands stanch and says nothing while Paul proceeds to carry a conversation with himself. The guy does have gills though, so is anyone else reminded of the first Necronomicon story as I am? Lovecraft and his fish fetishes... The room Paul gets is the worst dump I've seen since my last apartment, and he comes under fire by the ugliest mob of angry locals I've seen since my last honeymoon, as the Imbocites gather and start banging on our hero's door, held back thanx to Paul's quick thinking back to episodes of "This Old House", as he takes the bolt lock from the bathroom door and relocates it to the room door, where it's held steadfast by two loose screws... Imboca people must be unbelievably weak, cuz 2 kids kicking at the door would've knocked Paul's shabby workmanship off with ease!

While the group howls like circus seals and flail their fishy appendages around in anger at their inability to open a door (damn fins and tentacles!), Paul takes the backdoor, jumping out a window and falling a good 25 feet or more into a shack next door. Inside the shack it appears the Sawyer Family has a special art show going on in Imboca, visiting from Texas, as Paul finds displays of human flesh stretched over frames, including Howard's. Yes, for those of you who always laughed when I told you Leatherface was a true artist, this'll show ya! So, the mob finds Paul in their smokehouse, but he turns the situation into a good ol' fashioned fish fry and slips out in the ensuing chaos. In his escape, Paul hides out and meets an old drunken sea dog named Ezequiel. The gruff talking old lunk whips out some exposition for Paul and the audience, slipping into a flashback as to the origin of Imboca and why everything smells so fishy there... what, you couldn't see that joke coming from a mile off in a snow storm?

Long ago (I'm guessing about the early 1920s based on Ezeq's approximate age), Ezequiel and his parents lived in Imboca as part of their fishing community. But, the supply of aquatic meals on fins began thinning out heavily, hurting Imboca's already meager economy and leaving many in the threat of starvation and poverty. So, it's no surprise that the villagers welcomed the presumably Egyptian (that, or he puts his eyeliner on without a mirror to visually aid him) Captain Combarro with open arms when he promised them all the fish and gold they could ever dream of! Of course nothing that good comes without it's own "it'll cost more in the end that it will benefit" type of price. In this case, the people must forsake their current Christian belief structure and submit themselves to the tentacles of the Deep God Dagon. Shit, I'd forsake Christianity for a ham salad sandwich and a can of Mellow Yellow, so you can imagine how quickly I'd be jumping at the chance to smash statues of saints and tear up churches in favor of tons of gold and seafood!

Then comes the whole "high cost of living" clause: to keep up his generosity, Dagon demanded human sacrifices to himself/herself/itself, including some sacrificial puntang through which he would create a race of super fish! Uhm, given the mostly crippled and homely state of the current generation of Imbocanians, I'd say Dagon's "favor" isn't as good as Captain Combarro made it out to be. Then again, the decidedly slimy flesh of the freaks would seem to make it easier on the women giving birth... As for Ezeq's mom and dad, dad was killed in Dagon's name and his mom became the first of many two-legged mammalian to bare the half-breed spawn of the Lord of the Deep. Somehow Ezeq fell under the radar of the mutant Imbocanians and they just let him live, getting drunk every day and stumbling around as the village idiot for the rest of his life. Speaking of being an old drunken lump, you might want to pick up the Dagon DVD and switch on your English subtitles from here on out, cuz Ezeq's English is bad enough, but when his throat sounds like it's been crushed and his stomach's full of "nature's goodness", it's downright impossible to process through your brain pan. Yes, thank Dagon for the subtitles function!

Obsessed with finding Barbara (give her up man, there's a million European models with that accent just waiting to get their lips around some dork's long green!), Paul gets pushy with Ezeq, threatening the old coot with his lethal little Swiss Army knife like it were a machete if he doesn't help him find her. As if it weren't hilarious enough that Paul thinks his dinky little glad could do anything other than uncork a wine bottle, tighten screws, pick his teeth and cut pudding, it's even funnier that he insists Ezequiel's story is little more than the insane ramblings of a drunk, especially since he's seen these sushi demons first hand. Okay then Paul, if they're not to half-breed spawn of a mad ocean God, then where's they come from? Were they the result of toxic waste dumping into the ocean? Are they aliens from Pluto who happen to breathe our atmosphere and adapt to our salty seas with ease? Are they simply the Bleeders-esque result of centuries of inbreeding due to Imboca's inescapable island locale? Paul, just shut your fuckin' word hole and get on with your hero antics, okay? There's a good boy.

To escape, Paul needs a car to drive somewhere for help. Unless that car has inflatable tires and can drive on water, I wouldn't be bothering, but then again Paul refuses to believe that he's being chased by fish mutants, so maybe he also refuses to believe that he's trapped on an island or that car's can't fly him to safety. Either way he forces Ezeq to lead him to the estate of Xavier Combarro, Captain Comborra's gilled grandson who's also one of the more "evolved" of the townsfolk. Being of the bloodline of the man who brought Dagon to Imboca, Xavier's a local celeb, meaning he's also got the only means of transportation in town that isn't tentacle or flipper powered. While Ezeq runs interference with his typical drunken antics, Paul, despite all his brains, attempts hot wiring the fishmobile and fails miserably. When Xavier's goons figure out what's going on, Paul's forced to beat feet for a hasty retreat into Xavier's palatial digs, where he finds himself in the bedroom of the fishman's daughter Uxia.

Viewers will find no shock that Uxia looks strangely familiar, say, as the razor-fanged mermaid that's become an integral part of Paul's piscatorial nightmares as of late. Xavier himself comes around to check on his daughter in the wake of this "normal"s attack on the homestead, to which she assures daddy she's perfectly okie-dokie and she hasn't seen anyone sans blowhole or sucker cups, so daddy leaves. Somehow our hero feels drawn to her, compelled to jump into her bed and start making out with her, deep tonguing that babe while his weak little nerd hands explore elsewhere... like the big gill slits she'd got on her abdomen... uggh. Yes, she's just like all the others, and somehow Paul seems surprised by that more than by the fact that Uxia's been mentally projecting those dreams to Paul all this time in an attempt to lure him here for his true purpose... a purpose that will have to go unrevealed for the time being, as Paul makes like a communal crack whore and blows this joint, not ready to delve into the frightening land of piscatorial love, much to Uxia's dismay.

Throttling the living fish shit out of Xavier's chauffeur, Paul grabs the keys this time and drives off in the fishmobile. After bowling over a group of fishpeople like slippery bowling pins with appendages, he's forced to pull over when one of the monsters he tried to pancake instead winds up wrapped in the axle, fucking up the car. The mob convenes on him once more, but Paul fights his way out of it with a hubcap (why else do you think they put those on cars?) and escapes yet again, this time to a small family house where he's screamed at by some Spanish gurgling fishboy and gets a swirly by the kid's dad: a large goon with big ass tentacle arms. Paul triumphs when he cracks the dude over the head with a toilet lid, breaking the thick chunk of the porcelain God and leaving the monster face down unconscious. After fishing his specs from the toilet bowl like Henry Kissinger, hero nerd exits the house and the big mouth fish lad, only to be netted in a fishnet of irony, captured and subdued finally by the pale amphibians that have been chasing him so needlessly long.

When he wakes up, Paul finds himself confined with none other than Barb, Ezeq and Vicki! But then, I guess there probably aren't a whole lot of other groups of human prisoners Paul could've been locked up with, let's not all act so surprised, ok? The happy reunion ain't so happy though, because it seems Vicki now knows how those mini-skirt wearing school girls in hentai movies feel, as she's been "given" to Dagon and now carries one of his seed (or maybe even more) inside her. As if that weren't enough of a downer for the situation, now Barb's half terrified out of her coconut that she'll wind up in the proverbial "5 year old Asian girl getting plowed by Kareem Abdul-Jabar" position, getting far more stuffed into her Thanksgiving turkey than she can handle. This also leaves Paul in an awkward situation, as he's expected to kill Barb if she winds up a bride of the fish demon... the price you pay for dating a hot chick I guess.

Unwilling to find out what it's like to give birth to something with tentacles, fangs and suction cups, Vicki takes the easy way out and guts herself, yes, like a fish. As for Barb, she's carried off to be prepared for Dagon's deep sea lovin' (guess giant amphibious demon gods are particular about how the bodies look on the holes they rape) while the men are taken to a shack to be filleted for finger-foods for the post-rape wrap party. Though Ezeq is killed and his face peeled like an apple, Paul's spared a similar fate when Uxia stops by to order his release into her custody. Always remember boys and girls, if you're ever trapped in a society of man-beasts planning to kill and/or eat you, always try to make good with the ugly son or daughter of the group's alpha male or queen, that why they'll think they've found love while you've just screwed your way to freedom and a cushy job as prince/princess of the fish people!

Though he's supposed to be Uxia's new boy toy, as soon as he's free he takes full advantage of his diplomatic immunity and guts his captors from stem to sternum with their own gold filleting utensils! After getting his hands nice and dirty with blood and fish liver oil, Paul heads for the church o' Dagon to stop the Spring seeding of his girlfriend. Our hero turns the ceremony into a Long John Silvers riot, as a cadre of fish people in masks of human flesh are set ablaze and the air of the whole island will no doubt be making mouths water for weeks. Mr. Marsh's fish fry comes too late though, as by the time he gets to her side, Barb's been dipped into the inky water pit of Dagon and violated by the CGI Deep God, and then dragged back into the depths by the beast in his split second appearance... he's the title character, we've been waiting to see him this entire time, and all we get to see of his is a "don't blink or you'll miss it" cameo that isn't even at a good enough angle where we can see him in all his glory?! Why do I bother...

After losing his beloved, Paul then gets his ass handed to him playground style, until Uxia and Xavier stop the mob to drop a bombshell: Paul is Xavier's son... not only does this mean that his recent stomach pains as of late are actually him going through fishy puberty, but it also means he was making out with his half-sister earlier. Now he's got one of those "2 choices" situations he's been eluding to for the last hour-and-a-half: live the rest of his life with his true family as Uxia's brother/lover or take the easy way out and kill himself. He tries #2, but he doesn't try something as simple and immediate as a gunshot in the head or impalement on a flagpole, instead he opts to burn himself alive... once more, this guy who's supposed to be so damn smart and quick thinking makes the stupidest decision. His premature demise is canceled early though, as Uxia drags him into the sea, extinguishing the flame and convincing Paul to now consider spending the rest of his eternity as a half-baked fishstick banging his half-sister... well, at least she's hot...

Gordon's original intentions for casting of the movie centralized around the fresh faced b-movie monster he himself created, Jeffrey Combs, to play the lead role of Paul Marsh. But, since the role was for a young genius type, Jeffrey was now passed over since he, like all of us, has a tendency to let his cellular structure age over a 15 year period... unless he was a member of Dick Clark's Hollywood vampire clan, which he's not, so that's out of the kwestion. With the need for a replacement for his leading role, Mr. Gordon came to cast young Ezra Godden, whose previous experience includes the HBO original mini-series "Band Of Brothers" and... well, that's it, but at least he looks like he could pass for Jeffrey Combs' evil younger cousin. Like I said, he's young and hopefully he'll be beefing up his resume with some more horror flicks in the near future. As for Paul's impossibly hot sex kitten Barb, well, Barbara Crampton's just not 22 anymore either (not to say I wouldn't still give her a personal introduction to my jackal half), so Gordon's gone with another new face in Raquel Meroņo... and what a nice face it is... complete with a very "kind" chin... though she's got the kind of body you wouldn't waste a good protein discharge in her face, more like a good full body white washing, heh heh.

Other good casting: the broad playing Uxia is effectively creepy while not losing her allure, especially with them spooky oculars of hers. She's like a real life siren... and I bet she does some funky shit with them tentacle legs of hers! The priest guy was effective, also due to his intense eyes and creepy, almost blank expressions. Ezequiel was actually played by a highly respected Spanish actor by the name o' Francisco Rabal, who died shortly after the completion of Dagon. He's now stewing around here in the Underworld getting snubbed by all the ladies who saw his final, shirtless scenes in the movie. I try to assure him that they're just jealous he's got a nicer set of tits than they do, but I don't think he's buying it...

What it comes down to is, was Dagon worth the LONG wait? Though I want to give a resounding "YAY! VERILY!", that would sound really queer and just way too Nordic for me to pull off... that, and I thought there could've been too much done far better, especially from Stuart Gordon. There could've been a lot more in the way of development and other story elements that would've served better as a replacement for the overly used "fish people chasing Paul around the island" theme. The soundtrack also was in desperate need of a good 60cc adrenaline shot to the bladder, as many scenes, especially chase sequences, should've been spiced up a bit for the senses with some musical accompaniment. The CGI wasn't the worst I've ever seen, nor was it blatant, but what was there was NOT good. I was also more than a little on the pissed side that the mighty Dagon got screwed down to a 2 second cameo, but since he was CGI himself, maybe that would've proved to be a better directorial decision. However, the NON-CGI makeup of the Imbocanians was VERY impressive, very creative and the highlight of the movie. Did I like Dagon? Indeed! Is it the next Re-Animator? Not at all.