FRISWELL'S FREAKY FEATURES: Octopus awfulness

Some months ago Alan Friswell, the bloke who made the CFZ Feegee Mermaid and also the guy responsible for some of the most elegantly macabre bloggo postings, wrote me an email. He had an idea for a new series for the bloggo. Quite simply he has an enormous collection of macabre, fortean, odd and disturbing magazine and newspaper articles, and he proposed to post them up on the bloggo.

OBSCURE OUTRAGED OCTOPOID'S OBJECTIONS ON OBNOXIOUS OUTRAGEOUS OFFENCES!

I should perhaps subtitle some of these features 'Reasons why I hate the human race' and this one would be a perfect example.

Octopus and squid have featured in many a B-movie, horror story and Saturday-morning serial, usually in the role of hideous monster, lurking in some dreadful, skeleton-strewn pit in the ocean floor, waiting to grab its hapless human prey with its slimy tentacles.

In reality, of course, these amazing animals are wonders of natural design, with considerable intelligence and even, so some icthyologists contend, a degree of emotional capability. Yes, they're dangerous--but only if some idiot trespasses into their territory.

Which sadly brings me back around to human beings. In fairness to the following articles, it has to be noted that they were produced a long time ago, in what might be described as a more ignorant time, and I'm certainly not going to mention the fact that there are still places in the world where fish are fried and eaten alive, and sharks have their fins sliced off for soup, before being thrown back into the sea. Oh, I wasn't going to mention that, was I? Ooops....

One point of interest is that the footage of the shark-octopus fight was subsequently used years later (in 1953) as a back-projection image for Harryhausen's The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms.