A story written by H.P. Lovecraft, and adapted to the screen by Stuart Gordon, sound familiar? With billing like that how could you possibly go wrong? Well for starters, you could hire a bunch of Spanish "English as a second language" actors and spend a chunk of your budget on some CGI effects that aren't really necessary, when you should have spent it on the talent.

Dagon is based on the H.P. Lovecraft tale The Shadow Over Innsmouth, you'd think it would have been based on his story Dagon, but I digress.

We start the movie with a scuba diver tooling around under water, pretty soon he comes upon a strange opening under the water, upon further inspection, the walls seem to be made of the remains of some aquatic creatures the likes of which have never been seen by human eyes, or have they? The scuba diver goes into the opening and sees a beautiful mermaid (gratuitous boob shot here guys) who suddenly opens her mouth to reveal a few rows of razor sharp teeth. Cue the end of the dream sequence.

Chuckles the scuba diver is now awake on a boat. Next to him his beautiful mate, girlfriend, fiancé, whatever. She goes down on him (nothing shown) while he laments over his stock options (this is the first part of the movie where I wanted to smack the guy) Come to find out he's just struck it rich in the stock market, yada yada yada, girlfriend gets mad that he's checking his e-trade account on the boat, grabs said laptop and chucks it into the deep blue.....

While above deck we see an older woman sunbating topless (yikes!) and her hubby doing his Captainly duties. Ominous clouds roll in, everyone scrambles to get everything below deck, storm pushes boat into rocks, poking a hole in it, and injuring naked old lady, who starts bleeding out into the water, DUN DUN DUUUUUUUUN! Meanwhile stockbroker boy and hottie sidekick get in the dinghy and head to shore for help.

Somewhat deserted town, strange faces quickly shutting window blinds, we notice that stockbrokerboy is wearing a "Miskatonic" sweatshirt (this got a chuckle out of me). Couple runs into a priest who gets two um, interesting looking fellows to take stockbrokerboy out to the boat, while hottie sidekick goes to get help from the po po.

Stockbrokerboy (SBB) gets to the boat to rescue naked old lady and hubby, but the boat is empty and bloody, SBB heads back to shore, hottie sidekick is now missing, and there are more and more fishy(literally) people wandering about.

Okay, you may think that I've spoiled the movie, but I haven't this is only like the first ten minutes of the film. It gets creepier and creepier as the story goes along, and I'm not going to give any more of the story away.

I did indeed like this movie, there were some really good gory scenes (a face peeling that MUST be seen!). We are treated to the hottie sidekicks boobies and buttocks towards the end (that's not a spoiler, now that you know you'll stay 'til the end to see it) Plus more of the mermaid thingy baring some more skin (sorry ladies just some shirtless fat old guy for you in this one). Altogether a pretty decent flick with some creepy moments.

However, the big thing here is that a lot of the dialog is in Spanish and the subtitling falls short so I was pissed knowing that I was missing SOMETHING (I hate subtitles by the way, call me uncultured but if I wanted to read I'd have gone to the library, not the video store). Also, there was a long explanation about how the town got to be the way it was, but the story was told by an old Spanish guy with a really heavy accent and gravelly voice, so I missed some of that too. DAMMIT!

Not a horrible movie by any means, but I was hoping for so much more from one of the team members that brought us all of the Re-Animator's, and From Beyond. Let me sum it up like this, I'm not sorry that I rented it, but I'm glad I didn't buy it.

5.95 out of 10 fish-heads, fish-heads, roly-poly fish-heads

Your gripes about missing some of the dialog are legitimate. One reason of that is because this is produced by Brian Yuzna and Fantastic Factory, which is a Spanish company. That is why you have the spanish actors and the reason that it was filmed in Spain, instead of New England. Same deal with Beyond Re-Animator.

Incidentally, this movie was written for Jeffrey Combs to play the lead role, but they needed somebody in their 20's. I thought he would have done just fine. I loved this movie. I have small similar gripes like you, about missing and not being able to understand some of the dialog, but I easily overlooked them. I thought it was a wonderful adaptation of the Lovecraft story The Shadow Over Innsmouth. It has little to do with the story Dagon, though it does capture the desolation and paganistic aspects of it quite well.

This movie was creepy, very gory, surreal, violent, and other great adjectives. A little booty boot boot was also thrown in, to boot (I'm on fire!). 9.75 out of 10 face peeled skulls, served up hot!