Ray Harryhausen, later to become responsible for the Dynamation process used in so many films, including the Sinbad adventures, got his second solo assignment on this science-fiction thriller about a giant octopus on the rampage in San Francisco's harbour.

And it's an impressive creation. The creature is supposed to have been driven from the depths of the ocean by H-bomb experiments, possibly explaining why it only seems to have five tentacles.

Almost as impressive to watch is sultry Faith Domergue, once a Howard Hughes protegée at RKO, and here as unlikely a scientist as ever was. Nothing deterred, she got mixed up in outer-space fantasy the following year in This Island Earth.