The government, in its infinite wisdom, has sanctioned an experimental program to create a race of genetically altered amphibian super soldiers by injecting altered salmon DNA into death row inmates for use in the future... like when George W. decides one day that it's finally time to squash the threat imposed on our country by the terrorist merpeople of Atlantis... Anyway, as with any top secret government program involving death row inmates and gene splicing, things go horribly horribly wrong and the resultant abominations of nature must be destroyed. This results in our opening sequence, in which the military proves it's prowess by living up to a modernized version of the old "shooting fish in a barrel" adage, unleashing a small outfit of camouflaged commandos with machine guns and flamethrowers upon a single containment unit holding one of said gill breathing mutant guppy men. Unfortunately, much like any effort by the government to cover up their unholy tampering in the Gods' domain and such, it looks like shooting fish in a barrel is harder than it sounds as the creature escapes into a nearby manhole (and here I thought I just had hemorrhoids, ZING!) like a common C.H.U.D., taking one soldier’s head with it as a consolation prize. And so kids, we now have another Roger Corman movie in our midst.

Things are tense in the small town of Harbor Shores. The area's biggest source of employment for much of the people is a fish cannery (called "Canco", of all the stupid generic names you could possibly give a place...) that's come under accusations recently by the local environmentalist group of using illegal growth hormones called Synthestin (as produced by Rogeman Pharmaceuticals... a rice paper thin shortening gag reference to "Roger Corman") on their fish to make fatter, juicier flounders. This leads to daily protests and chants of "Leave the fish alone!" which, though it doesn't sound like much at first, will kick around inside of your skull like a mental construct of Pelé for the rest of the day after you hear it shouted enough times. Repetition over creativity, that's our motto!

It's at Canco that we're introduced to Wade; our sensitive hero-type and former shark attack victim who takes his fashion and beard tips from Walker, Texas Ranger. It seems that Canco is run by Wade, his sinister friend Bill and two other redneck stereotypes that I didn't bother to catch the names of. They might as well each be named "Monster Fodder" for all I care, as that's what we know they're all going to end up as. Wade wants to put an end to the all the illegal growth chemical activity, but won't go public with the info for fear of getting the factory shut down and costing a lot of otherwise innocent men and women their only means of income. As such, he trust his old pal Bill to do the right thing and abide by Wade's wishes to put an end to the criminal mischief before it goes any further. Yeah, fat fucking chance of that happening.

We also meet Wade’s daughter Kim, who just so happens to be dating Matt, also known as the head of the environmentalist protestors who spend their days standing around and shouting "Leave the fish alone!" outside of her daddy's factory all day. Zoinks, what a wacky cinematic koinky-dink that is! Golly! Shazam! And all that shit... Of course Wade is wary of the fruit of his loins making boinky-boinky time with the rebellious youth who could cost him his job, but 98% of girls base their qualifications for potential boyfriends on how much the guy will piss off her parent(s), so the low rent Tori Spelling isn't likely to breaking up with the poor man's Chris O'Donnell any time soon. Meanwhile, that pesky escaped humanoid fish monster from death row has started making trouble, dragging a woman and her son from their tourist cruise aboard a fishing boat. The lad's remains are recovered while his mom is considered lost at sea, both being blamed on a shark... you know, cuz it happened to Wade once, so it's easily explained away... for now... insert dramatic music here.

In an effort to pad the story, Green Peace Lite videotapes Bill and his accomplices dumping their growth chemicals into the ocean. Instead of going straight to the authorities with an important piece of evidence like that, Matt hides it at his place and lets slip it's existence in a bar face-off with Bill and Wade. This of course prompts Bill and his two goons to promise Wade that "that videotape will never see the light of day", meaning they're going to break into Matt's house and try to find it first... because, again, Matt's apparently too stupid to give it over to the authorities or at least make copies of it and distribute them amongst his friends to assure that it will remain safe. Speaking of Captain Shithead, he and his tree hugging hippy pals have a scene to prove that they're not all sinless goody-two-shoes (what the Hell does that phrase even mean?!) as they party on the beach, smokin' doobies, knockin' back brewskies, and partaking in some after dark group skinny dipping... which is quickly halted when Kim and the rest are all slaughtered and/or kidnapped by the evil "deep" dwelling fish monster(s), who leave Matt behind untouched. Why? Well, we all know there needs to be somebody left for officer Clint Howard to interrogate and for the rest of the cast to blame the mass murder on! And who better to fit that bill than the hippy boyfriend of the incredibly upset hero's daughter, right?

This leads to Bill trying to convince Wade that they need to break Matt's legs and burn the troublemaker alive in his own home... to which even the distraught Wade isn't stupid enough to be led into, especially not when Bill's best argument is "He killed 'em all like some Al Bundy!", to which one of Bill's nameless goons replies "That's Ted Bundy". Yeah, I always liked making that joke too... in the sixth grade. Immediately following this barroom exchange (seriously, of the four or five sets actually used to shoot the movie, I think 70% of the scenes take place in that bar...), Wade saves a woman and her hubby from being eaten by none other than one of the titular killers so he now believes Matt's outlandish story, arriving just in time to save the punk from being blown to the proverbial smithereens by Bill and his almost Warner Brothersian bundle of dynamite. With the two now forming an uneasy alliance to try and save Kim and the rest of Harbor Shores from the mutant menace, the duo discovers that a reporter/coroner new to town is in actuality a Miss Dr. Drake who has come to find evidence of the creatures' existence so she can twist the government's balls into actually taking some kind of responsibility for their actions (yeah, like that ever happens!) and wiping out the monsters they've created. And just how does she know about all this supposedly top secret governmenty shit? She was a member of the project... and the government somehow let her live?! Why didn't they just cover her existence up and arrange for her to have a very unfortunate car ride with Ted Kennedy like that other woman? I think she was a spy or something...

Dr. D says the Synthestin that Bill and friends have been dumping in the water has contributed to the growth and strength of the monsters, which otherwise shouldn't be able to survive in a salt water environment. As the karmaic fuck up that the cosmos likes to dole out at times like this, Bill's life is affected by his actions when one of the monsters breaks the hearts of animal lovers everywhere and causes PETA members to ball their fists and grind their teeth when Slippy McWaterbreather kills the man's golden retriever... in a drawn out and violent sequence that's only made worse later on when the man finds his faithful canine companion's severed and blood head in the woods nearby... oh yeah, and his wife's kidnapped too... I think her name's Pam or something?

Elsewhere, Matt and Wade save officer Clint Howard from a Humanoid attack thanks to their big flaming harpoon (?!) and the resultant fish jerky corpse is all Drake needs to take her message of government misdoings to the airwaves, prompting the military to finally send in a regiment of extras in fatigues… though I don't think their jungle camo uniforms will do them well in the beach setting of our tale, but who am I to question the always lovely oxymoron of military intelligence? Meanwhile, the tourist lady whose son was mutilated earlier in the movie appears seemingly from nowhere, sopping wet and disoriented, then lays herself out on a table (once again, IN THE BAR) and proceeds to give birth to a sewer baby that tears from a pre-made tear in her big fake mommy stomach. The mandatory comedy sequence where grown men fall over each other trying to kill the little bugger follows, and the bastard cousin of that thing from the box art for The Suckling escapes into the sewers.

As the military sets up their half-assed beachside operations (hopefully no more of those "shooting fish in a barrel" debacles like earlier), we check in on Kim and the rest of the kidnapped ladies who are writhing around naked in a big communal gestational goo sack in the creatures' underwater cave lair. It all starts to come together as, with any beach community horror movie worth it's salt (or salt water as the case may be, har har), the annual Harbor Shores summer festival is underway (despite all the military action and the whole "killer rapist fish monsters" side note...) for no other reason than to provide us with the standard issue "carnival mob scene monster attack hysteria climax". Matt and Wade peg one of the monsters with a tracking beacon and they follow the beasts back to their sub aquatic home. The military lines the place with explosives to kill the creatures (and, conveniently enough, anyone who might bring massive lawsuits and unwanted bad press to the government as a result of otherwise surviving the ordeal...) and it's up to Matt and Wade to swipe some scuba gear and sneak past the soldiers so they can save the girls before it's too late, doing so with surprising ease mere moments before our tax dollars go to work sending the gill men back to Neptune’s wrathful arms and the various sea creature based tribal tattoos scrawled upon them.

All of the women check out negative for fish babies afterwards (though the decades of psychological treatment required to deal with something like repeated rape by fish men will no doubt bankrupt them all) and everything is great in Harbor Shores once again... except for Dr. Drake (who one of the mutants captured earlier with it's 12ft. sucker tongue thing), who gives a painful self-Cesarean birth to the threat of a sequel. That's right, somehow a handful of naked young women who were fish raped for days on end managed to not get pregnant, while the one woman whose pants never left her backside once the entire 3 hours of her captivity manages to somehow be the sole pair of ovaries to feel the squirm of the beasts' super sperm... a disturbing thought, yes, but still one of most nonsensical moments of the entire movie. But hey, at least it's over now, so we can all rejoice! Woohoo! Pop a cold one, turn on some porn, order some Chinese food and relax Ladles and Germans, you've earned it!... cuz I sure as shit know I have.

A major problem faced by modern monster movies? Rubber suits just don't cut it anymore. In the '70s (and even some instances of the '80s) makers of movie magic could rely on grainy, muddy film to cover up their exposed zippers and costume damage. Yes, through the power of poor film stock, the equally poor qualities of the not-so-special effects on display were almost acceptable in a way and, dare I say it, charming. Nowadays (or, in this case, 10 years later) the advancements in filmmaking technology have ruined any chance of treating rubber monsters as a genuine threat to the audience anymore. This of course has led to the domination of computer generated beasties... which still never seem to look quite as realistic as you'd think their engorged budgets would allow for. As such, the once proud brotherhood of suit actors have all relegated to jobs on supermarket check-out lines and handing out towels in restaurants men’s rooms, replaced by motion capture suit "interpretative dancer" Doug Jones… not to be confused with actor Duane Jones who starred in the original Night of the Living Dead. It's kinda sad really. I have nothing again Doug Jones personally, as his work in Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings trilogy and Guillermo del Toro's Hellboy movie were great to watch. It's just sad to think that an entire industry of guys who made their livings dressing like any number of mutants and monsters have been pretty much booted out onto the street by the industry that was kinda built on their backs... in an abstract sorta way... if you look at it from the right angle... and squint hard enough...

So, yeah, as you can imagine by that little rant, the Humanoids in question in this movie are badly done. I'd almost go so far as to say they look horrible, but I think “horrible” is too intense a word for such lackluster, lazy-ass monsters. The characters are all shallow (pun intended!) imitations of the type we've seen a thousand times before, the acting is passable but in no way impressive, the t&a quotient is met but is also hampered by the inclusion of blood and ooze on top of it, and with the exception of Clint Howard and Mark “The Shawshank Redemption” Rolston (who played Bill) nobody on the cast really kept my interest. The direction was very lackluster, there was nothing exciting or eye catching about anything that was happening and overall I wasn't impressed. Actually, that makes me sound all fruity and snobbish, so let's just say the movie wasn't great, the gore wasn't terrible, I need me some more Clint Howard and leave it at that for now. Take it easy Buttercup. Oh, and ladies, don't forget to sprits on some of your anti-fish man rape "personal hygiene spray" before bed tonight.