Dagon tells the story of two American couples shipwrecked on the coast of Spain. When their sailboat is pinned on rocks and one woman trapped below deck, the other couple goes ashore to a fishing village for help. Wandering through the eerily quiet village, they enter a church and, while looking at its odd alter, encounter a priest who offers to help them. The priest arranges a boat to take the man, Paul, back to the sailboat and directs the woman, Barbara, to a hotel with a telephone. Only, when Paul boards the sailboat, his friends are gone, and when he returns to the village, Barbara is missing.
Paul begins searching the rain-drenched village for Barbara only to turn into the pursued as the odd villagers, with unblinking eyes and dressed in dark rain suits, begin chasing him. Paul’s discovers that the villagers are worshiper of Dagon, a great god of the sea reportedly worshipped by the Phoenicians.
Dagon contains many striking scenes of horror and sex reminiscent of Re-Animator. The movie revels in gore and sexuality with a reckless disregard for any opportunity to be sold for viewing on basic cable. Unfortunately, though, because the villagers speak a heavily accented Spanish, much of the dialogue is unintelligible. Also, while there are some striking scenes of mystery and menace, many of the plot hooks are about as subtle as a gaff. Paul’s flight through the rain-soaked village turns into a string of random encounters, and even though he injures his knee early on and adopts a gait akin to some of the more mobile villagers, he never trades his bright orange Miskatonic sweatshirt for one of the villager’s rain slickers. One of the central plots is the relationship between Paul and the Priestess of Dagon, and not nearly enough time is devoted to developing their relationship. The actor playing Paul appears in most scenes and needed to be able to carry the movie, but he unfortunately wasn’t up to the task.
The special effects and staging range from quality sets, elaborate costumes, and well designed CGI to classic B-movie sets, endless rain, and all too obvious CGI. Toward the end, an important character appears, and I wondered for several minutes whether he was wearing a mask or if what I was seeing was supposed to be his head. By that point, though, there had been so many incomprehensible or indecipherable scenes that I was just ready for the movie to be over. Dagon is now in limited release in the U.S. before going to video.
