For all the strange and possibly dangerous things found in deeper waters, sharks are perhaps the most feared. More deserving of your maritime phobia, though, is a sort of predator whose appearance defies comprehension.

These particular creatures look as if they’ve come from another world. Nevertheless, the incredible squid is here, has been since prehistoric times, and they come in all shapes and sizes. In that last regard, they can range from tiny to massive, with the larger specimens becoming the stuff of legends. Ever heard of the Kraken? Well, this is one case where the myth turned out to be real.

Although it’s more elusive than fictional, giant squids still remain as something of a mystery these days. Born out of that mystique is the inclination to make them scary. The giant squid, or Architeuthis dux if you’re nerdy, doesn’t need a lot of help in that one area. On top of their sheer enormity, they have ten “arms” that include two long tentacles, plus a tongue coated in teeth. It’s the stuff of nightmares. Nevertheless, Peter Benchley tried to do for these animals what he did for the great white; he plucked one rather ornery specimen from the depths and made it mankind’s problem.

When writing 1991’s Beast, author Peter Benchley returned to the subject that made him famous. That, of course, was the vast sea. Benchley also didn’t stray far from the formula of nearly all aquatic monster horror made since Steven Spielberg’s Jaws was first unleashed. An aggressive, or misplaced, sea animal lays waste to anyone foolish enough to take a dip. Yet prior to getting back on the shark boat, as he did in 1994’s White Shark—later retitled Creature for the TV tie-in—Benchley delivered this squid tale that, to this day, may be the only one of its kind. That is, a story where the man-eating squid is the star, as opposed to the guest star.

Peter Benchley’s Beast. Cover art by Jerry LoFaro.

Unlike Jaws, Benchley wasn’t involved in the screenplay for Beast. Or The Beast, as it became known. The script was courtesy of one fairly new writer on the block, J.B. White, whose sole credit up to that point was a sinister grandpa TV-movie starring Andy Griffith. So, yes, The Beast was a big deal for White, along with director Jeff Bleckner. Additionally, NBC was banking on this sweeps stunt to pull in the numbers during late April (and ahead of “Monster May“). According to the Nielsens, this two-night event did quite well. Swimmingly, you might even say.

Growing up with SYFY made it seem like monster TV movies weren’t all that unusual. However, for one to show up on 1990s American primetime and on one of the major three networks was a bit of an anomaly. NBC neither hid the fact that they were airing a creature feature, nor did they hold back on the marketing; the rollout included a huge building spread in Los Angeles, plus a website devoted to the TV event. Through the latter, you learned the process to make the monstrous main attraction, courtesy of Mixon & Ellis FX, as well as trivia about real giant squids.

The rights to Benchley’s Beast were optioned some years before it was made and aired. Nevertheless, Jurassic Park must have had a say in the squid production’s go-ahead. The Beast splashed its way onto television in the spring of ‘96, shortly before monsters started trampling all over the big screen. Keep in mind, The Lost World: Jurassic Park, The Relic, Anaconda, Deep Rising, and the first Godzilla remake all came out after The Beast. Before then, you were more likely to see this type of movie being sent straight to video, even in the wake of Spielberg’s successful dino epic.

NBC’s old website for The Beast. Screenshot courtesy of Dinosaur Dracula.

Taking the TV route for a monster movie would seem like a total downgrade, especially in the production department. In many cases, this is often true. Yet with a reported $12 million to spend—how much of that number was just for the squid is unclear—the namesake of The Beast looks decent. Good, if we’re being generous. Once you remember the timestamp, the overgrown mollusk is, on occasion, a little impressive. It’s not the stuff of blockbusters, but one can definitely spot where the money went (and didn’t go).

On the surface, the novel and miniseries (or movie) aren’t radically different from one another. In either version, a coastal area is targeted by the tentacled threat, and then desperate measures are taken to expel it. That leap from Bermuda to Washington, specifically an unsubtly named resort community called Graves Point, has no major bearing on the overall story. Either fictional setting is overfished, full of struggling residents, and a factor in the squid’s new diet. What largely changed from the book, apart from the creature being upsized and its having a partner-in-crime/offspring, was really the characters. Oh, and there is also the novel’s use of deus ex machina—at the last second, the squid is defeated by a sperm whale, not the humans.

Changes made to the cast run from small to significant, but for the most part, they are inoffensive. A few are even beneficial. The protagonist going from married to widowed allows for him, Whip Dalton (played on screen by William Petersen), to be freed up for a budding romance with Lieutenant Kathryn Marcus (Karen Sillas). Who, by the way, is an amalgam of two characters from the book. While it was reduced in the condensed version of the miniseries, Kathryn’s personal battle against sexism in the navy is one example of how the TV adaptation improved on the source material. By comparison, the women were neglected, or simply forgotten, by the book’s end. Whip’s daughter Dana, for instance, passed through without making as much as a ripple in the novel’s story, whereas Missy Crider’s Dana has an entire character arc.

It could just be the nostalgia talking here, but The Beast actually holds up as a pretty entertaining dose of sea horror. Does it look and feel like a ‘90s TV movie? Yes, and that’s because it is one. Yet for a killer squid story hailing from the small screen, this one turned out better than anticipated. Now, if someone out there wants to remake Peter Benchley’s novel, with more money and bigger names involved, then I am certainly not opposed. There’s even a bigger squid lurking out there in the briny deep—the colossal squid—that would make for a great villain.

The Beast is still available on DVD.

William Petersen, Karen Sillas and Larry Drake in The Beast (1996).