Ghost Shark (2013)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

Company: Active Entertainment

Runtime: 84 mins

Format: T.V.

Plot: When reckless rednecks on a fishing trip kill a great white shark, its spirit comes back for revenge, and soon turns its sights on the nearby town of Smallport, where this 'ghost shark' can now hunt wherever there's water - both in the sea as well as on land.

Review: To say that shark movies are a very tired and overdone corner of the B-Movie market would be one of the biggest understatements in the history of mankind. On the surface, Ghost Shark may seem like a new and unique entry in that overcrowded corner, and while that is true to an extent for reasons I'll get to later, when you dig deeper into it, it really isn't a whole lot different from any number of the other low budget shark-themed B-Movies.

Stripping away the whole supernatural angle and taking Ghost Shark to its basics, we've seen this movie before, dozens upon dozens of times. A large killer man-eating shark wanders into a town that is not quite accustomed to such things, on the eve of some big town-wide celebrations, and those that know about the danger (in this case it is a group of cardboard cookie cutter teens that we get in almost all of these movies, with the exact same diverse personalities as in all of these) are running around town like crazy people, being ignored and threatened to remain quiet by the town officials such as the Sheriff, Mayor, ect for fear of causing a panic during one of their popular times of year, and ultimately the teens have to take matters into their own hands if they want to save their town. Seriously, if you've seen one of these shark movies you've literally seen them all.

However, I'd also be lying if I said that the supernatural spin they add to it didn't make me forget about all that, at least for portions of the movie, and didn't result in a decently fun ride. The one main area where this movie sets itself slightly above the pack are the really fun and unique death scenes, which could not have been accomplished had it not been for the fact that the killer animal here is indeed the evil vengeful spirit of a shark as opposed to a flesh and blood creature, and with that comes a whole new set of rules for it – it can move about in any water in the area, not just the ocean. And by any water I mean things such as circling around someone in a bathtub (in a scene that slightly reminded me of a similar scene from the first Nightmare on Elm Street movie), its fin coming up from a paved street where water sprinklers are set, appearing on a slip-and-slide while someone races down it, having an all-you-can-eat buffet of sexy young girls in bikinis at a car wash, being drank through a coffee cup only to rip the person apart from the inside, launching out of a toilet, and even capable of gliding through the sky during a thunderous rainstorm. And that's only a portion of some of the shark attack scenes offered by this movie! With a new attack scene seemingly every few minutes, this movie is full of cheer-worthy cheesy moments of spectral shark goodness and it goes a long way, like I said above, to making you forget just how mundane and paint-by-numbers the actual plot and characters really are. 

The movie also benefits from the fact that the effects seem quite above-average for such an affair as this. With the shark being a simple see-through spirit, I expected the level of detail on that thing to be next to zilch, yet to my surprise, the level of detail (in addition to the quality itself) was some of the best I've ever seen in a made-for-TV B-Movie, beating out (by far) the level of detail on most low budget CGI physical sharks from any other SyFy Channel Original. In addition to that, the bright glistening blue glow and accompanying sound effect of when the shark was around (an almost whistling kind of noise) were both excellent touches that weren’t exactly needed, but I'm really glad they were included.

The one thing I wasn't glad was included though, was the character of the crazy old man that everyone is nervous around but who seems to have all the answers to everything going on in the movie. Seeing as how the Scooby-Doo gang of teens went to the museum and spoke with a local historian (in addition to some other things in the movie), they pretty much found out most of what they needed to know on their own anyway, and mostly all this character did was reiterate stuff that both we as the audience, in addition to the characters, either already knew or would be finding out on their own again shortly after anyway. He also came with a pointless subplot of longing for his dead wife who still roams around the area as a ghost. It leads nowhere at all, adds nothing more to the movie, and if anything it just took time and momentum away from the main meat of the movie. In my opinion, neither him nor his subplot was needed at all. 

Crazy old man subplot aside though, while Ghost Shark retreads overly-familiar ground with the same basic cardboard cut-out characters, it manages to do so in a unique and fresh way that allows you to forget, at least temporarily, that you've seen this exact movie a dozen times before, while adding an extra layer of fun small touches that is not required or often seen in these types of movies, but is very much appreciated when it isdone. 

As far as fun, cheesy, stay-in-and-watch-on-a-rainy-Saturday-night made for SyFy Channel B-Movies go, you can do a hell of a lot worse then Ghost Shark. 

6/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

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Sharknado (2013)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

Company:  The Asylum

Runtime: 88 mins

Format: Screener

Plot: When a freak hurricane hits Los Angeles, thousands of sharks have no trouble terrorizing the waterlogged populace, but then when the high-speed winds also form tornadoes, nature’s deadliest killer rules water, land, and air.

Review: I know a lot of people love shark movies, but personally I'm just getting sick of them at this point, because the B-Movie genre is just getting over-saturated with them these last few years – they've become the easy go-to B-movie monster and I've gone on plenty of rants in the past about how we need to move away from them and give some other animals the spotlight. Luckily it seems that is finally starting to happen, seeing as how we've been getting plenty of good spider and dinosaur movies lately and a few less shark ones. Likewise, it's no secret that I'm just not a fan of Asylum's natural disaster movies. I give each one a shot, but I seem to find them all too similar to one another to really be of interest anymore and I also find that those are the ones that seem to have the laziest writing and the laziest acting and pretty much the laziest everything and I can't really muster up any interest for them anymore. 

With that stuff in mind, you can probably see where I'd be super cautious of Sharknado, a movie that combines both those genres into one movie – however, even I can't deny how damn eye-catchy and attention-grabbing that awesome title is, and when Asylum sent me a screener of Sharknado to review...well, I have no qualms in admitting that I was actually pretty excited to sit down and spend an hour and a half with this flick when I got home from work.

And boy, what a fast hour and a half it was! The movie started with a bang and never let up, only getting more and more insane (in a good way!) as it went on. It moved at such a quick pace that it was over before I even realized how much time had actually passed, and let me tell you – Sharknado doesn't waste any time at all. I was expecting the main event of the movie, the promise of the awesome poster art's flying sharks bringing down destruction onto a city to happen in the final 20 minutes or so as things often do in these movies, but I couldn't have been more wrong. It opens on a scene of sharks swimming in the ocean and getting picked up by the massively strong winds of a gigantic massive hurricane (Hurricane David, actually – which could be a coincidence but I'm willing to bet it was a nod to David Rimawi and David Michael Latt, the two main head honchos of The Asylum), which was directly followed by a scene of a fishing trawler getting caught in the whipping, whirling, teeth-gnashing shark-filled hurricane on its way to making landfall, and before the movie hits the 20 minute mark the hurricane and its army of hungry pissed off flying sharks has made landfall and rains destruction and chaos down, starting with a beach and its resident bar and boardwalk, and moving further inland from there, so literally from the opening seconds the movie has jumped right into its main plot and only escalates – no beating around the bush with this one!

Oh, and yes, the movie comes with just as many WTF moments as you would expect a movie called Sharknado to bring to the table; We have scenes of sharks flying in through windows, high winds knocking a Ferris wheel off its holdings and rolling down a street while at the same time sharks are falling down from the sky around it and trying to munch down on people, one of the sharks being knocked out by a bar stool being used as a bat, sharks swimming through a flooded Los Angeles and viciously attacking cars and chowing down on pedestrians, a shark shooting up into the air from out of a manhole only to get blasted mid-air by a shotgun blast, the main cast breaking into a hardware store and arming up on guns, chainsaws, and homemade explosives to battle the shark infestation, and of course the actual title mash-up itself of swarms of sharks being tossed around through the air by three giant F5-category tornadoes with all the damage, destruction, death, and fun moments of campy cheese that you would expect from such an amazingly unique sight!

The only part of these scenes that I found a bit iffy though, was during the flooding of Los Angeles, the water level as to how much of the city is flooded at any given time seemed to change from scene to scene. In some scenes the water was half-covering vehicles and deep enough for fully-grown sharks to be swimming around and playing Jaws in, while in other parts there's hardly any water (or even none) covering the streets, and certainly nowhere near enough for sharks to be fitting into. In addition, toward the end when the characters are trying to throw some bombs into the middle of the tornadoes to make them dissipate, both the people in the helicopter flying towards the tornadoes, as well as the people on the ground shooting up at the flying sharks, got waytoo close to the tornado – seriously, they were all pretty much inches away from these gigantic F5-category tornadoes and their hair wasn't even so much as blowing around, much less them getting sucked up into it, which is what should have happened being so close to the funnels. But hey, just some minor nitpicks in an otherwise uber-cheesy and just plain fun portion of the movie.

None of that cheese though would really be worth a damn if the special effects were utter crap, but thankfully they're not. There are a few weaker moments for it scattered here or there, but for the most part it's certainly above-average for the usual Asylum fare, though about on-average with the best of their 2013 selection (such as Age of Dinosaurs and the upcoming Atlantic Rim). Much like with 2-Headed Shark Attack they used practical effects for close-ups of sharks munching down on people and some of the shots of their fins moving through the water, but CGI for the wide shots as well as for the shots of sharks either swimming underwater or being whipped around through the air, and both types looked pretty good most of the time. Another part of the effects that certainly deserves a mention here is that the storm effects in the first part of the movie, as it approaches from the distance, were very well done. In retrospect that may have even been real storm footage that was just seamlessly integrated, or perhaps they actually filmed in front of an approaching storm, but if neither of those are the case then those dark skies and thick foreboding clouds were really well done CGI moments that had you almost feeling the humid winds approaching.

Another thing the movie surprised me with a bit was that it does a good job of very quickly establishing all the characters and making you care for them enough so that you're actually a bit sad to see them start getting offed. As I said above, the movie is in full-swing of its insane unique plot by 20 minutes in, and already by that point it has you feeling like you know the main cast and makes you genuinely care about what happens to them. And don't necessarily assume you know who will survive and who will die, because the movie has a knack for throwing some potential curveballs in there in that regard. I suppose that's also just as much a testament to the strong acting as it is the writing and directing as well – pretty much everyone here shines pretty brightly and never did take me out of the moment with any bad acting, which is made even more surprising by the fact that many of the characters are played by Unknowns that have very little previous acting gigs. 

Of course there are a few decent-sized names here as well, as there normally are in Asylum movies so they can slap their names onto the cover art. We have Ian Ziering as the main lead, most known for his voice work as lead characters on the classic animated series' Biker Mice from Mars and Godzilla: The Series, with Tara Reid playing his ex-wife that he does not get along with well at all. Sadly, Tara Reid is not aging all that well. She still looks beautiful with enough make-up on, but all those TMZ-reported-on nights of drugs and parties has not been so kind to her, making her look far older then she actually is. Admittedly though, she was a bit better then I was expecting her to be with this; I was totally expecting her to be nothing short of a painful trainwreck to watch and listen to, but thankfully she isn't. Hell, even though her line delivery is pretty bland most of the time and she may not be the best actor this movie has to offer, I'd still say she turned in a better performance here then she did in Uwe Boll's Alone in the Dark almost ten years ago. In addition to them, there's also John Heard playing a hilarious comedic relief character that's an old drunk who is a regular to Ian Ziering's bar that jumps in the car with them when all hell breaks loose, and Jaason Simmons from Baywatch playing one of Ian Ziering's friends and not nearly as much of a womanizing asshole as I was initially expecting him to be, and actually turning out to be one of my favorite characters in the whole thing.

And sure, most of these actors play their roles and act their way through all these insane shark-related situations pretty straight-faced, but sometimes playing things straight-faced in an otherwise really cheesy movie just adds to the cheese, in my opinion!

As I mentioned at various points earlier in my review, Sharknado may have a couple iffy parts here and there that made me scratch my head probably more then I was intended to as opposed to embracing it (changing water levels of the flooded city, characters getting within inches of a strong tornado with no repercussions, a couple minor shots of CGI that wasn't quite up to par with the rest), but the good far outweighs the bad, and with buckets of cheese just oozing from every pore of screen time. I never thought in a million years that if you took the two sub-genres that I'm utterly sick of, and combined them together into one movie, that it would result in a damn good time and just the revitalization I needed to feel for both shark movies as well as natural disaster flicks. Honestly, a movie like this is almost above review, because you get exactly what you expect a low budget movie called Sharknado to give you; If you love the title, you'll probably love what the movie has to offer, and if the title is something that makes you groan instead of laugh, then you're probably better off just staying away because the movie gives you all the cheese you would expect out of that title. Between Age of Dinosaurs already being out and Atlantic Rim coming out soon, followed shortly after (hopefully) by Sharknado, it looks like Asylum has a damn fine summer for 2013, with hopefully just as fine of a rest of the year to follow.

As to when you can expect to be able to add Sharknado to your home DVD and/or BluRay collections, sadly no release date (or even trailer for that matter) has yet to be announced, however if I was to take a guess I would place my money on late-July/early-August sometime, but that's nothing more then my own speculation. I do know however, that it will be airing on the SyFy Channel as one of their SyFy Original Movies and is currently set to air on the night of July 11th. As soon as a home video release date is announced though, along with a trailer, I'll be sure to edit this part of the review to include them.

In the meantime, enjoy another picture! (July 10th Update: Trailer added below picture now!)

8/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

 

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The Saturday B-Movie Reel Podcast

As a pretty big fan of podcasts, I tend to be subscribed to far more then I will ever have any hope of being fully caught up on. However, one of those podcasts that I make sure to always listen to the newest episode of as soon as it goes online is the lovely Saturday B-Movie Reel podcast, which is an offshoot of Tuning into SciFi TV, a podcast about various TV shows and such on the SyFy Channel.

The Saturday B-Movie Reel covers pretty much every movie that is a SyFy Channel Original Movie on a weekly basis, plus some older 'vintage' movies from the 70's, 80's, and early 90's about once a month, as well as a 'Could Be SyFy' section where they also cover direct-to-video B-Movies that come out that never aired on SyFy but probably should have.

The main host is a pretty cool guy named Kevin Bachelder who genuinely loves these movies and instead of just ripping them apart with savage hate like many podcasters and reviewers do, he actually talks about them with love and respect (well...for the most part. To be fair, some of these movies make it pretty hard sometimes - haha). Joining him every episode is a revolving door of special guest hosts that love these movies just as much as he does. I myself have been on a few episodes (Mega Shark vs Crocosaurus, 2-Headed Shark Attack, and Jurassic Attack/Rise of the Dinosaurs), and most of the guest hosts tend to return for multiple episodes so you get to know most of them just as well as you do Kevin, and you can tell that everyone involved just has a blast watching these movies, and just as much of a blast discussing them afterwards.

If you're interested in checking the podcast episodes out, you can go to the overall Tuning In To SciFi TV website which I linked to above, or go directly to the Saturday B-Movie Reel archive here, or you can do a search on Itunes for 'Tuning Into SciFi' and access the episodes through there, which includes the episodes for all the podcasts under the Tuning Into SciFi TV banner (including the Saturday B-Movie Reel episodes). You can also join the Facebook Group for the show, where Kevin, myself, and many others often frequent and have a few laughs, as well as post B-Movie-related articles and updates, or become a Fan and Like their official page. They now also have a Twitter feed dedicated to their podcast and all things B-Movie. Check it out and be sure to Follow them if you're not already.

Anyone who's a fan of B-Movies (which should be anyone reading this, otherwise why the heck are you on my blog?), I highly recommend this podcast. As for the episodes I've been a guest host on, you can find them listed below, along with links to those episodes as well as links to my own personal reviews for those movies.

May 23rd, 2013 Update: The newest episode in which I Guest Host on, the Jurassic Attack/Rise of the Dinosaurs podcast review episode is now Live! Check it out at the link below and enjoy!


Saturday B-Movie Reel Podcast Episode #34: Mega Shark vs Crocosaurus
You can listen to the episode Here.
You can read my own personal review of the movie Here.

Saturday B-Movie Reel Podcast Episode #55: 2-Headed Shark Attack
You can listen to the episode Here.
You can read my own personal review of the movie Here.

Saturday B-Movie Reel Podcast Episode #112: Jurassic Attack, aka Rise of the Dinosaurs
You can listen to the episode Here.
You can read my own personal review of the movie Here.

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Shark Week/Shark Assault (2012)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

COMPANY: The Asylum

RUNTIME: 90 mins

FORMAT: Itunes

PLOT: A group of complete strangers find themselves isolated by a wealthy madman on his island compound. They are forced into a horrifying gauntlet where they must survive a barrage of ever-deadlier species of shark.

REVIEW: Even though I've gone on multiple triads over the last year about how sick I am of shark movies, there's still been some really good ones that came out this year (2-Headed Shark Attack and Jersey Shore Shark Attack being chief among them). It was because of that, that I actually wasn't as hesitant about checking out and writing a review of Asylum's Shark Week (also called Shark Assault in parts of the world and on some TV channels) as I perhaps may have been if it had come out earlier in the year. Sadly, I probably would have been more on the money had I stuck to my guns. While it's certainly not the worst movie I've seen this year, it doesn't even come close to the greatness of those other two 2012 shark movies I mentioned.

Shark Week (or Shark Assault, whichever it is for you) is kind of a mix of the semi-recent theatrical Shark Night 3D and any number of the Saw movies or Saw-style ripoff movies. In this, the leader of a drug cartel and his wife (played by the always-entertaining Yancy Butler) kidnap a group of people that he has a personal vendetta against, that all played a part in the death of his son, and as revenge he brings them to his secret island which is rigged with multiple extensive and deadly shark-related traps, of which they have to survive, one after the other, for 7 days in order to escape. Well, the plot for the movie said 7 days, but if that was the case, than the movie has a really piss-poor way of showing the passage of time, as apart from a couple of the attacks most of them seemed to take place in the same day and I kind of just assumed that they did while I was watching. It's supposed to take place over 7 days, but the impression I got while watching was that it was more like two or three days, at most.

In the acting department, the main cast of victims were competently-acted but nothing outstanding; It was about on-par for what you would expect from a 2012 Asylum movie. Of course there are eight of them, so some do a bit better/worse then others, but overall it was pretty even. What did surprise me though, was the characterization each of them got. Despite being such a large group, none of them blended into the background at all and each one stood out for their own reasons and were unique from one another. Even 2-Headed Shark Attack, which I loved couldn't even pull that off at all and it was my chief complaint about it. But back to the acting itself; While the main heroes of the movie were ok, the main drug cartel leader was pretty terrible and cringe-worthy (and honestly, the actor appeared drunk during most of his scenes), and sadly Yancy Butler was below par for what I've come to expect from her after her stints in Rage of the Yeti and the Lake Placid sequels. She seemed just plain bored with her role here and not really showing any emotion or anything other then monotone. She was a pretty big waste here, and I'd rather see her better utilized if Asylum decides to use her again in another of their movies. They need to check out the above mentioned Rage of the Yeti or especially the latest two Lake Placid sequels to see just how much fun she can be, if used properly.

The special effects however, especially when it comes to the sharks themselves, are the big surprise here - they actually looked really well-done, with the sharks looking like actual real sharks most of the time and not like badly-integrated CGI sharks like in most of Asylum's killer shark movies, so kudos has to go to their effects team for that. It was also great to see such a diverse range of the types of shark, as opposed to just the one species. Along those lines, I also have to give them props for including a scene with Hammerhead sharks - they've always been my favorite, but very rarely get any movie love (Great Whites and Tiger Sharks seem to have the market covered), so it was great to get some Hammerhead action. Unfortunately, while the sharks themselves are amazing, their attack scenes leave a lot to be desired. They're filled with  a lot of really annoying quick-cutting when someone is being killed by a shark, so the death scenes are pretty redundant and uninteresting due to that, and I'm not sure if that's an issue with the Effects team or with the Editor of the movie, but either way it was a pretty bad call, IMO, as death scenes are sometimes all these movies really have going for them, and in one with the effects as good as this it baffles my mind as to why they would fumble the ball with that.

Also getting in the way of really enjoying it as much as I would have liked, are some really puzzling script-related decisions. For example, in one scene they survive a school of baby sharks and their prize is a key. They move onto the next portion of the 'game' where they get to sleep on dry land for the night. They then (for unknown reasons that make no sense) wait until the next day and after they've already traveled a distance, before A) checking to make sure no one was badly hurt from the attack the night before and B) checking to see if the key they received unlocked their chains and handcuffs that they were bound by (spoiler, but not really - it does). Why the heck wouldn't they do those things the night before, the first chance they got? Why wait so long? There's also a scene with the characters running through a minefield and all these mines are exploding, yet none of the characters are anywhere even near the ones that are going off. Actually, now that I think about it, the whole mine field part doesn't make any sense as-is, since the movie's villain takes great joy in watching them go through the shark traps in a twisted game-kind of way, so why out of the blue try to kill off everyone at once in a mine field? The movie is filled with pretty ridiculous script choices like that, that left me trying to figure out 'Why' more-often then actually paying attention to the movie, and thus constantly taking me out.

But back to the positives for a bit to end this off on - it was a very beautiful movie to look at. I'm not sure what kind of camera they used to shoot it, but it looked great, and the background scenery of the island certainly didn't hurt it either. The excellent CGI of the sharks mixed with the beautiful cinematography definitely makes this movie really nice to look at (especially in HD), if nothing else.

All in all, I'd say Shark Week, aka Shark Assault is certainly nowhere near the Greats that Asylum has put out this year, but it's also certainly nowhere near their Worsts either - it's pretty smackdab in the middle, with maybe a slight lean towards the more positive side. If you're a fan of Asylum, I wouldn't go out of my way to watch it, but if the opportunity comes up that you can see it, I'd probably suggest giving it at least a one-time watch.

6/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

 

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Dinoshark (2010)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

COMPANY: New Horizons

RUNTIME: 92 mins

FORMAT: BluRay

PLOT: A baby Pliosaur, a long-extinct prehistoric species of shark, swims away when the chunk of Arctic glacier that it had been frozen in breaks away due to global warming. Three years later, this 'Dinoshark' is a ferocious predatory adult and has made its way to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico where it starts killing tourists and locals just offshore.

REVIEW: Over the course of this upcoming weekend (August 18th and 19th), the Space Channel here in Canada is airing some kind of Killer Shark Movie Marathon, where-in they will be airing such classics as Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus and its sequel Mega Shark vs Crocosaurus, Sharktopus, Jersey Shore Shark Attack, Malibu Shark Attack, Dinocroc, Swamp Shark, and Dinoshark. Space was kind enough to send me a screener of Dinoshark for review, however I actually already owned that one on BluRay, so for the purpose of this review I'll actually be watching the BluRay copy in glorious HD! If you're interested in checking this one out for yourself, and you live in Canada, it will be airing at 6pm tomorrow night on August 18th on Space, but I highly recommend you tune in for the entire weekend of movies, because I've already seen each and every one of those and they all come pretty highly recommended by myself, even if I don't yet have reviews for all of them.

Now, the plot for this one is nothing special. In fact, it's a plot we've seen dozens of times over in dozens of almost-identical movies: Prehistoric shark gets thawed out from a glacier, makes its way to a beach-resort town and starts causing havoc (this time it's in Mexico though, as opposed to someplace within the United States, which was a welcomed change of locale). Of course our main ragtag group of  friends are the first to discover what's going on but nobody believes them when they try to warn the town, and with a big water-based event approaching, the town officials refuse to let anything get in the way of that event taking place, which of course leads to said prehistoric shark creating a massive bloodbath. Chances are you can name at least ten other movies with almost that exact same plot right off the top of your head at this very moment. And yes, while the plot is very uninspired and bland, the majority of everything else in the movie makes up for it and you don't even realize just how generic the plot is until after it's over and done with and you're thinking back on it.

A large reason for that is the fact that almost every character in this movie, from the main guy (played by The O.C.'s Eric Balfour) who's back in town after spending a long time away and he's living on his boat trying to find work, to his childhood pal who's now with Harbor Patrol and is stuck between helping his friend out and doing his job, to the ex-girlfriend/now-bestfriend girl, to the asshole Harbor Patrol Captain that hates the main character and goes out of his way to make things difficult for him and to try to pin crimes on him, to every other speaking-part in the movie – everyone has something about them that makes them enjoyable to watch and you can really have fun with this cast of characters. Helping that along are of course the actors who play them, who all do a surprisingly above-average job for a B-movie of this kind. I was also surprised to see Roger Corman have a pretty decent-sized role here. He almost always cameos in his own movies lately, but very rarely does he give himself such a large part as he does in this one, which was the role of a marine-life expert that has all the knowledge on this creature and helps the main cast out.

Another surprising factor is that because you enjoy these characters so much, you actually don't want to see many of them, if any, get killed (which plenty do, and not always ones you would expect) – it's actually pretty nice having a killer animal movie once in awhile where you actually aren’t rooting for the animal to slaughter every person on-screen. Between caring for the characters as well as finding out pretty early-on that characters you wouldn't normally expect to die, sometimes does in this movie, also adds an unexpected level of tension to some of the action and stalking scenes, which is another aspect that many of these fun summer popcorn monster B-movies normally don't bother to aim for. Also along those same lines of things these movies don't tend to do often, this movie had a really nice structured build-up. It wasn't just random scene after random scene that really could have been placed in any mix-and-match order, like say Piranhaconda or Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus, but instead there was a steady progression of intensity from scene-to-scene as the movie went on, and it gave a really nice natural flow to the movie that's not often seen in these.

As for the actual Dinoshark creature itself, overall both the CGI and practical effects looked really good and another above-average aspect of the movie, though the shark did tend to change size pretty constantly throughout the movie, depending on what the scene called for (in one scene it can almost eat a boat in one bite, while in another it's dragging a human carcass through the water in its jaws and the human body can hardly fit in its mouth), but after watching these movies on a fairly regular basis you tend to just get used to that sort of size-changing anomaly, to the point where I almost never even pick up on it anymore. It helps as well that you stay distracted from the size changes because unlike many B-movies, this one keeps your attention pretty well, leaving little to no time for your mind to wander to other things, such as the changing size of the creature - trust me, there are plentyof cheese-filled campy scenes with this beastie! Putting aside the opening scenes of it escaping the glacier and shortly afterward eating a diver, there's still many great gem scenes, such as the one where Eric Balfour drives toward it on a jet ski and launches himself into the air toward the creature while throwing a grenade at it, or where it propels itself out of the water and takes down a low-flying helicopter, or when it snacks down on the participants of an all-girls teen water polo match, and of course the bloody massacre that the entire movie leads up to.

I do have one slight issue, but it's not a mark against the movie itself but more-so with the BluRay. The video on the BluRay cut back and forth pretty regularly; When it was good, it was perfect and pristine and exactly the kind of thing HD was made for, but just as often it was also pretty bad with an overabundance of grain present, with no rhyme or reason as to why some scenes were great while others were beyond shitty like that.

Dinoshark may not have been as unique or memorable as movies like Sharktopus or the Mega Shark series, but I would say it's an overall better movie in almost every regard, and I find it's a great gateway movie to kind of introduce newcomers to the B-movie genre by including plenty of cheese but without letting it define the movie or overtake it, and both the acting and effects-work remained above-average throughout, so it shouldn't scare away newbies like many B-movies would with their horrible acting and effects.

All in all, this turned out to be an entertaining entry in the killer shark sub-genre, and one that I would recommend to both B-movie lovers as well as just casual people looking to check out their first B-movie.

8/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

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Jersey Shore Shark Attack (2012)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

COMPANY: ARO Entertainment

RUNTIME: 88 mins

FORMAT: Screener

PLOT: It's a holiday weekend at the Jersey Shore and, unbeknownst to anyone, underwater drills have attracted dozens of albino bull sharks to the pier. When a man goes missing, The Complication, Nookie, and their friends fear the worst and plead with the police chief to close down the beach, but of course no one listens. Now, the Preppies must work together with the Guidos in order to save the Jersey Shore and its inhabitants from a vicious slaughter.

REVIEW: I pretty much didn't give Jersey Shore Shark Attack a second-glance when it was first announced. There's just been such an over-abundance of killer shark movies flooding the B-Movie market in the last several years that I've stopped caring about them (though I can still admit when one comes along that I really enjoy, such as 2-Headed Shark Attack). Ever since then however, I've been slowly coming around on this one, first some behind-the-scenes photos that looked interesting, then the fact that they seemed to perfectly spoof the hit MTV show Jersey Shore and the cast on that (even going so far as to hire Vinny, one of the stars of Jersey Shore, to be in this movie), then as each trailer came out showing more and more footage, I was completely won over and excited, despite my earlier lack of caring.

Then SPACE comes along and offers to send me an early screener copy for review, so of course I jumped at the chance so I can see if the excitement that this project ended up making me feel during production would pay off, or if I was better off listening to my initial gut feelings. And for those wondering how you can get your hands on this one to make up your own mind, Jersey Shore Shark Attack airs tomorrow night, June 9^th, at 9pm Eastern Time on SPACE here in Canada and on SyFy in the United States.

I can honestly say, right from the opening minutes I was pretty much hooked. This is more then just a regular B-Movie – this is a full-on spoof movie kind of like the ones made by Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, only – you know – actually good. You'll find this movie funny anyway, but if you've had experience watching any large amount of MTV's Jersey Shore then you'll get oh-so-many more laughs out of this; They do perfect parodies of the cast (Nookie instead of Snooki, The Complication instead of The Situation, ect), they way they talk, the specific things they constantly say, the way they act – it's all here, complete with all the drinking, fighting, slutty dancing, hook-ups, and fist-pumping of that show, and it's all parodied to perfection. Actually, they do such a great job of it, that for a few seconds somewhere in the midst of it all, I almost forgot I was watching a SyFy Original Movie and (just for a second, mind you) thought I was watching an actual episode of Jersey Shore. Hell, they even have those grainy-film transitions between scenes that Jersey Shore uses – you know the ones...with the words that flash in them...? Wait...am I the only one that's familiar with Jersey Shore here? It was all for the research – I swear!

To sell the perfect parodying shown here of course, a large part of it comes down to the actors and how well they play the roles, and here they do excellent. They may not be the greatest actors ever, but they certainly know how to mimic the cast of Jersey Shore quite well, right down to specific tiny little mannerisms. Put these people in any other movie and they'll probably bomb, but here they were rock stars in my eyes. Of course, I can't talk about the cast without talking about a couple of the guest stars as well – two of them specifically. The first being Jersey Shore's own Vinny Guadagnino (seriously, the most 'normal' and sane person on that entire show, and not at all a jackass like most of the other people are portrayed as, but anyway - moving on...). Fans of Jersey Shore may be disappointed that he's regulated to cameo status here, as some of the advertising would have you believe he plays a larger role, however having spent many years watching these kinds of movies I was full-on expecting that anyway. Here he plays a news reporter in a few scenes, and he's honestly not very good, but he seems pretty self-aware of that fact and you can tell he's just having a blast doing his scenes, as short as they are. He fully understands that he's in a movie that's making fun of the show that made him famous, and he's in on the joke instead of being the butt of the joke. The other cameo guest appearance is by N'Sync member Joey Fatone, playing himself as he's the guest of honor at the Jersey Shore's 4^thof July Shore Party, which of course the albino bull sharks interrupt and, well, if you've seen Mega Python vs Gatoroid (in which legendary Monkee's rocker Mickey Dolenz had a cameo in), then you'll probably already have a good idea as to Joey Fatone's role in the movie.

And that is a nice way to seq-way into one of my main complaints here. The CGI for the albino bull sharks look atrocious, even by B-Movie standards, and what the hell was up with their mouths? Seriously, whenever they attacked they seemed to morph into the Leviathan from the latest season of Supernatural, and I'm not even joking. They were made all the more distracting by the fact that whenever there was a close-up of one of the sharks munching down on someone, it was practical effects (also not that well-made, though admittedly, better then the bendy-teeth practical close-ups from 2-Headed Shark Attack).

Luckily this movie didn't shy away from the bloody red stuff (to the point where I'll actually be surprised if SyFy and SPACE leave it all in without cutting any of it down). This movie was filled with lots of blood and gory shots to appease any gorehound, so even though the Leviathan themselves...err...I meant the sharks...even though they were horrible, they more then made up for it by at least making their attacks still really fun to watch due to how violent they were; My personal favorite is this one scene where a fisherman gets his fingers bit off and the laughably-fake blood just keeps pumping and squirting out of them – good stuff! I was also really impressed by the fact that our less-then-intelligent Guido and Guidette leads were able to figure out what exactly was going on so quickly. Most movies of this kind don't have the main cast figuring things out until towards the end, but they were able to quickly deduce that there were sharks invading the Jersey Shore after one of the first couple of victims got killed, and then instantly set out to stop them...with an arsenal of fireworks...? In all seriousness though, that scene is a total laugh-riot, and if you know how the real Jersey Shore cast is like then you can imagine how that ends up ultimately playing out (hint: there's a bit of horsing around, a firecracker is accidentally dropped into their bag of firecrackers, and well...boat goes boom). Though with that said, they surprisingly still manage to do a bit of damage to the sharks in that scene as well. Actually, the sharks seemed rather easy to kill in this movie - most of the time they just have to get shot in their fin as it's sticking above the water and that seemed to do the trick in almost every single case.

Sadly, when the movie was not focusing on the sharks killing people, or the Jersey Shore spoof cast, it got a bit boring as it followed around characters that just weren’t interesting (Like the Sheriff, the greedy Oil Tycoon, or the Mayor.) Where the Jersey Shore spoof cast, as well as Vinny, knew what kind of low-grade B-movie they were in, these side characters (all played by recognizable names) seemed to think they were in a much better movie then they actually were. Their acting was good, don't get me wrong there. Actually it was some of the best acting in the entire movie, but that's almost the problem – they played their roles a bit too straight-faced, and I just found those characters, and the time spent focusing on them, to just not be that interesting and it really wrecked the flow of the movie and slowed the pacing of it down more often then not. Luckily though, they didn't give us an over-abundance of these scenes, and the rest of the movie was enjoyable enough that these scenes are pretty quickly forgotten about once they were over.

Even without the whole killer shark parts of this movie, Jersey Shore Shark Attack would still have been an excellent Jersey Shore parody movie, filled with equal parts making fun of as well as love towards the source material. The really bad effects work and uninteresting sub-plots do bring the overall enjoyment down just a tad, but there's still enough hilarity and fun to keep this movie afloat.

I actually wouldn't mind seeing further 'Jersey Shore' spoof movies with this same cast of characters returning – Jersey Shore Arack Attack next perhaps? Jersey Shore Avian Assault for Part 3? Somebody get on that. 

8/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

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2-Headed Shark Attack (2012)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long
 

COMPANY: The Asylum

RUNTIME: 90 mins

FORMAT: BluRay

PLOT: Survivors escape to a deserted atoll after their Semester at Sea ship is sunk by a deformed two-headed shark. But when the atoll starts flooding, no one is safe from the double jaws of the monster.

REVIEW: Asylum can be all over the board. Their movies range from downright dreadful to excellent fun, and it's pretty much impossible to tell which ones will be which beforehand because if there is one thing they're good at 100% of the time, it's advertising. They sure know how to advertise their movies and put together excellent trailers. 2-Headed Shark Attack got the full treatment – excellent trailers, top-tier advertising, and lots of word-of-mouth, and it all looked and sounded excellent so I was really hoping that it would be able to live up to the hype and not be one of their let-down movies (Such as the first Mega Shark flick). Adding to my caution are some of the names behind the movie; We have Christopher Olen Ray directing, who I'm 50/50 on (Loved Mega Shark vs Crocosaurus but hated Almighty Thor), and fellow-B-Movie blogger turned scriptwriter H. Perry Horton who did the screenplay (He also did the script for A Haunting in Salem which I only 'liked' but did not love, and I had a few issues with), so I wasn't quite sure what to expect from these two on this one. On top of all of that, I'm getting REALLY sick of shark movies. We've been bombarded with cheesy shark movie after cheesy shark movie for the last several years and I'm just sick of it all now; there's plenty of other animals that they could pretty much build the exact same movies around, so why not switch it up and keep things fresh? I think it's time that the shark moves over and they start giving another animal the spotlight.

Well, against all of my worry and low expectations, as it turns out this movie isn't just one of Asylum's better movies – it is their BEST movie, period. Words cannot describe how much fun there is to be had with this flick, but I'll try my best: I had a god damn blast with this movie. My point still stands however – movie-makers need to lay off the sharks for a bit and employ some other species' to do the killing – but I'm really glad that if they do decide to finally go that route, that this one will remain one of the last of the onslaught of shark movies. I'd rather this trend goes out with an amazing bang like this movie, as opposed to some crappy whimper.

If the title alone wasn't enough to pique you're interest, then perhaps the cast list can help: We have Brooke Hogan (daughter of Hulk Hogan) as our main JWoww-esque tom-boyish tough girl heroine of the movie, Charlie O'Connell (look-alike brother of Jerry O'Connell) as the Professor that seems to be almost as young as his students, and Carmen Electra as his smoking hot wife and the trained medical personnel for the trip (though despite her name getting top-billing, all she does during the entire movie is sunbath on the deck of the boat while everyone else is exploring the island, and when she does join them she mostly just stands around in the background with little or no dialog). The only way the casting could be any better for such a movie is if Asylum brought back Tiffany and Debbie Gibson from their previous outing with Mega Python vs Gatoroid – perhaps one as the teacher and the other as the medical personnel? Hmmm...

The movie isn't a complicated one to follow. A group of school students are doing a semester at sea (though there's next to no studying going on and plenty of skin-tight bikini-clad beauties bouncing around and getting on as if there are auditions happening for Girls Gone Wild: Spring Break XXV), when their ship gets stranded by an atoll (a very tiny land mass in the middle of the ocean) which as it turns out is slowly sinking due to increasing tremors, while a mutated two-headed shark stalks them from the ocean. That's about as extensive as the plot gets, but don't be fooled; the less there is for plot means the more room for the abundance of campy cheese! And if you're a cheese-lover like me, then this is certainly the one movie you will not want to skip! On top of enough eye candy to last a year (for both men and women), we get such great lines of dialog like “Which one of you wants to get nude first?”, “The kids are in danger! To the dingy!”, “Mayday, mayday, there's a 2-headed shark attacking me! Send help!” to list just a few of my favorites. And if that wasn't enough for you, there's great visual treats like a trio of teens skinny dipping and making out right before they all get munched down on at the same time, the shark bitch-slapping someone out of the water with it's tail and then while he's in the air, it turns back around and jumps out of the water to chomp down on him mid-air in an explosive geyser of blood, and my own personal favorite: Seeing the shark riding inside of a giant tidal wave to take out two characters standing on a bridge that was previously out of the creature's reach – Yes, it's quite the resourceful shark when it wants its meal! Like I said, there's such an abundance of cheese here, that any true B-Movie fan can't help but fall in love with this movie.

On the downside, what this movie has in cheese it lacks in anything even resembling characterization. There is no effort at all put in for making us give a damn about any of the characters, resulting in the biggest cast of cardboard cut-outs I've ever seen. The closest we get to characterization is with Brooke Hogan's character, and she seemed to mostly draw her inspiration from JWoww of Jersey Shore, from just her basic body shape, to her overall outward attitude, to just the way she composes herself and struts her stuff around - it all reminded me very much of Jwoww, but with blond hair. Also, she slaps a girl in one scene and punches a guy in the face in another, followed by shouting in his face directly after. So like I said – very Jwoww-ish. Her acting however, along with every single other person's acting in this movie, is really quite brutal. Pretty much cringe-worthy, actually. But in all honesty, it doesn't really matter much because nobody really pays attention to the acting in a low budget movie about a 2-headed mutant shark eating hot girls in bikinis (or not in bikinis if it's a lucky scene).

Which brings me back to more of the movie's strong suits – nudity and gore. Asylum movies from years ago used to always be pretty R-Rated with plenty of nudity and gore shots, but it seems these last couple of years they've shied away from that a lot. Largely I guess, because of their movie deals with the SyFy Channel, they probably felt it was easier to just shoot with a PG/PG-13 rating as opposed to spending the time to edit and cut stuff afterward, so most of their recent movies (if not all) have been pretty tame compared to their older stuff. Well this one sure is a great return to form, TV deals be damned! There's only one scene with any actual nudity in it, but we see quite a bit of it during that scene, and the gore is where this one really shines. Every single kill (and there is quite a lot of them) is filled with enough buckets of the red stuff to make any gore-hound happy.

The shark itself looks surprisingly good as well, considering the company that made this movie. Definitely a huge step up from any of their previous monster movies. They do still do a few repeat shots where they just reuse the same CGI shot of the shark swimming in the water over and over (something they do quite often in the Mega Shark movies, especially the second one), and it is a bit jarring at times when they switch from the CGI model of the shark directly to a practical puppetry shot, but even then the switch back and forth is still integrated more smoothly then it was in 100 Million B.C., another Asylum movie that would switch back and forth from CGI shots and practical shots but not done as well. Oh, and if you're one of the few fans of the scene in Jaws 4: The Revenge where the shark roars, then you'll be as happy as a fat kid on Halloween with this movie, as every single scene that the shark is in it lets out at least two (sometimes plenty of more) deep thundering roars. Even when it's submerged under the water. Like I've said, this movie so excellent with the cheese!

Thanks to the talents of scriptwriter H. Perry Horton, another really strong suit to the movie is the fact that you can rarely guess how things will turn out. I can honestly say that I had no idea at all how they would defeat the shark. For a few minutes there it actually seemed like maybe they wouldn't and for once the evil creature would actually win and every single human would die. There were even a few things that were purposefully set up during the movie to make you think that that was how they would eventually end up defeating the shark, but none of them end up panning out or working in the characters' favor, so kudus to H. Perry Horton for actually making what could have been a very by-the-books predictable B-Movie quite suspenseful and fresh, making the viewing experience all the more enjoyable. Any reserves I had after A Haunting in Salem are completely washed away here and I now 100% look forward to any future projects that come out of him.

This movie was just the perfect mix of everything I look for in my B-Movies – lots of eye-candy, cheesy dialog, and campy scenes – mixed with better-then-expected special effects and a script that goes above and beyond what you would expect from such a movie. I have no hesitation in stating that, in my opinion, this is Asylum's all-time best effort yet, and if this is a taste of things to come from them going into 2012, then consider my seat reserved, because this year is going to be one hell of a fun ride.

10/10 rooms in the Psych Ward


UPDATE: You can now hear me discuss this movie as a Guest Host on the Saturday B-Movie Reel podcast.

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Mega Shark vs Crocosaurus (2010)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

COMPANY: The Asylum

RUNTIME: 90 mins

FORMAT: DVD

PLOT: After surviving the titan battle at the end of the first movie, the Megalodon is back and wrecking havoc in the ocean once again, but soon finds itself locked in battle with a new gargantuan foe.

REVIEW: Right off the bat, Mega Shark vs Crocosaurus starts on a slightly disappointing note. The end of the first movie set the stage for a sequel pretty well, but instead this movie decided to ignore that and go it's own route. Due to that, it lacks any returning characters from the first which means Lorenzo Lamas and Debbie Gibson, two of the better aspects of the first movie, are nowhere to be found and no explanation given as to their absence, which is weird considering their heavy involvement in the Mega Shark situation of the first movie. You'd think they would have been called back to action again here when the creature reappears.

In their place however is Jaleel White of Family Matters fame (Steve Urkel) and he plays a navy soldier on a U.S. battleship, having supposedly participated (off-screen) in the events of the first movie. He's some kind of shark expert and holds the conspiracy theory that the Megalodon is still alive and roaming the sea due to no carcass ever being recovered. When the beast proves him right by attacking the vessel he's currently serving on, his military girlfriend is killed and that makes everything personal for him from that point on. Much like Debbie Gibson in the first movie, he does as good as he can with what he's given to work with and comes out in top form, especially during a surprisingly emotional scene towards the end that he handled with perfection. Actually, most of the new main cast are all bright spots here, sticking out far above the main cast of the first movie. Joining Urkel, we get a John Roxton-style great white jungle hunter that's hired by a mining company to hunt down the newly-awakened Crocosaurus and this actor that plays that role, Gary Stretch, just completely steals every single scene he's in (which is almost all of them). Without a doubt, he's not only the best actor in the movie, but the most entertaining character to watch as well, though you have to wonder if the actor was drunk while filming some of these scenes because once in while he's hard to understand due to very slurred speech, and not just in the scenes where it shows him to be drinking. We also have a hard-as-nails female Government agent that links the two plots together as she hires both Gary Stretch and Urkel (each one an expert on one of the animals) to work together with herself for the U.S. Government in order to stop both monsters. What makes this group of ragtag experts even better and more realistic is that unlike the first movie, these guys aren’t friends and they don't always get along or see eye-to-eye which creates some very good tension and some entertaining scenes to pass away the time between animal attacks. Finally, we have Robert Ricardo from Star Trek Voyager playing the same basic role that Lorenzo Lamas did in the first movie; that is to say all he had to do was stand around in a control room and threateningly bark orders at everyone while every once in a while firing off a sarcastic wise crack. Not a whole lot to do, but he handled the role very well and dare I say, far better then Lorenzo Lamas did in the first movie. Right from the beginning, you can get behind these new characters and if we must leave out the characters from the first movie, these are damn good replacements. Actually, sorry to say, but I ended up liking all of these characters far more then the ones in the first movie.

But where this movie did better with the characters, it failed with the title creatures. The special effects for the Megalodon are of a far lesser quality then they were in the first movie, and the Crocosaurus just looks plain bad and kind of unfinished, coming across as if they ran out of time while creating it. Granted, there was one or two scenes were it did look pretty good, but they don't stand out in the memory much since every other scene of the animal looks really bad. Where we got an explanation in the first movie to the creatures being alive, however loose and unrealistic, no such explanation is given here for the gigantic prehistoric crocodile; the only explanation we get is that it was in an eon's-long slumber deep under the ground in the Congo jungle, when an illegal diamond mining operation accidentally wakes it up, with no explanation as to why it was asleep for so long nor how it could still be alive after being asleep for so long.

After my initial disappointment at seeing how crappy the effects were in this entry, and the fact that the introduction scenes of each creature were pretty lame, I pretty much lost all faith in future action scenes involving these creatures and was quite worried about my enjoyment in the movie. So it was then quite surprising to me that all the action scenes after the first 10 minutes were actually really well done and exciting. We don't get anything quite as memorable as some of the iconic cheese-fest scenes in the first movie, but we do get some very fun stuff all the same that works out to be bigger and better then most of the ones in the first movie. Some of the highlights would include an attack on the famous theme park Sea World by the Crocosaurus as it rampages through Orlando, Florida, while the Mega Shark deals with an attack from a submarine in a very humorous and entertaining way that I won't spoil here, as well as a fight to the death involving both animals while an underwater volcano spectacularly goes off around them. There were even a few action sequences, more-so towards the end, that almost seemed like they were inspired by some Michael Bay movies which was interesting to see.

Accompanying the awesome, more-longer, action scenes in this sequel is also an enjoyable fast-paced musical score that helps raise the excitement and urgency and was something I'm only realizing now that the first movie was lacking. Sure, that movie may have had generic action music, but it was boring and wasn't really noticeable. In this movie it's not only noticeable, but really adds to the action scenes, helping to elevate them above the action scenes of the first flick.

The script for this entry also seemed to be more competently-written, giving the characters actual real dialog to work with and creating a realistic and intelligent way of bringing the two creatures together for the promised water-based duel (which we actually get a few separate matches of this time). You see, after Gary Stretch manages to tranquilize the Crocosaurus in the jungle, he tries to transport her and her newly-laid eggs to the States, but while en-route over the ocean, the Mega Shark attacks the boat, only to have the Crocosaurus wake up and break free in order to fight the Mega Shark to protect her eggs. Things just proceed to get more and more out of control from there. While it may not be the best plot point ever, it's certainly better then the bullshit explanation we got in the first movie of 'They were programmed on a genetic level to hate each other and always fight when near one another'. Even the build-up to the climatic showdown in the back half of the movie was handled so much better then it was in the first movie. Not only was the main fight longer and more intense then the one in the first, but there were some nice little twists and surprises sprinkled throughout that I'm not going to spoil here that upped the ante, as well as being just an all around more action-packed fight.

After all is said and done, despite a few short comings with the special effects, this can be put down in the books as one of the rare cases of a sequel being better then the first, and it's now among my list of all-time personal favorite Asylum flicks. I find it surprising that the first got a nice BluRay treatment while this one was regulated to DVD-Only. Likewise, it also blows my mind that this one's not as well known as the original, despite clearly being much better, and many who saw the original didn't even know this one existed. Then again, I'm still shocked at how many people rent or buy a movie like this and then get upset that they're not watching something they can compare to Gone with the Wind. Like really...what were you seriously expecting with a title like Mega this vs Giant Whatever?

I'm really hoping for a third movie, and if that ever comes to light, I'd like to see these characters return – or possibly even the characters from the first movie team up with the characters from this movie. There's a short hidden teaser scene if you sit through all of the end credits that does set up quite well for a third movie, although it is basically a carbon copy of a line at the end of the first movie so who knows if the Godzilla-inspired nod will actually have anything to do with the next entry. However, the original idea for this one was going to be Mega Shark vs Giganotosaurus with a poster even done up showing the Megalodon fighting a giant Godzilla/Tyrannosaurus creature, so I'd say it's a pretty safe bet that they're instead going to use that idea for the third movie and hopefully the line of dialog during that hidden teaser scene really was setting that up instead of just being a throw-away line like the similar one in the first movie.

Here's to a Mega Shark 3.

8/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

UPDATE: You can now hear me discuss this movie as a guest host on the Saturday B-Movie Reel podcast.

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Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus (2009)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

COMPANY: The Asylum

RUNTIME: 89 mins

FORMAT: BluRay

PLOT: When two prehistoric beasts – an ancient Megalodon shark and a giant Octopus are released from having been frozen in a glacier for eons, they continue their never-ending battle throughout the world's oceans, with the U.S. Military hot on their heels and trying to put a stop to them.

REVIEW: As far as I'm concerned, when I popped Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus into my BluRay player to watch and review, I was just looking for a quick cheesy and fun B-movie to help pass a couple hours of my time and unwind after coming home from a super-busy day at work (which is all I really expect from any Asylum-made movie), and while I did end up getting that, overall this one just fell a tad short of the hype that the title and advertising promised.

Right off the bat, there are a lot, and I mean a lot, of overly-annoying and pointless flashcuts that make no sense as they happen in the middle of a scene for absolutely no discernible reason, instead of as a scene transition like they're supposed to be used for. In the span of the first 10 minutes I say we get a good 20-odd of those things, and they never do let up during the rest of the movie. And speaking of the first bit of the movie, we get about 5 minutes of nothing but sweeping landscape shots. Sure, the arctic glacier landscapes and the underwater ocean shots themselves all look really beautiful (especially in HD on BluRay), but there is no need for 5 minutes worth of showing these shots and just these shots. It's not a good sign when the movie starts off at such a slow rate. It made it quite tedious to sit through, even for me. There were a couple moments I found myself actually wanting to fast-forward a bit just to get through the first 5 minutes or so. And it got really annoying when they decided to combine those overly-long sweeping scenic shots with the pointlessly annoying flashcuts - again, for no reason whatsoever other then to try to be stylish when in actuality it just came off as annoying and hard to sit through.

With this being an Asylum movie, you can probably already assume, and you would be correct in assuming, that the actual script itself may not exactly be the best thing since sliced bread and the dialog can get quite atrocious at times, but neither of those things are really all that unexpected and anyone who did expect otherwise were clearly fooling themselves. Personally for me, the weirder the script and the worse the dialog, the better. I find it's part of the charm and is what makes these movies so much fun to watch while having a beer or two. Even the worst Asylum movies have that stuff going for them to make them entertaining, at least on some level.

Much like with another of their movies, Mega Piranha (which stared 80's pop sensation Tiffany), this movie also stars a washed-up 80's pop sensation by the name of Debbie Gibson who, IMO anyway, has aged far better and more gracefully then Tiffany has. Gibson could easily still pull off being in her late 20's and surprisingly, also unlike Tiffany, Gibson appears to be a decent actress. She may not win any Oscars, but as far as low budget Direct-to-Video movies go, she's excellent and never groan-worthy. Her actual role in the movie is that of a sealife expert that has teamed up with some colleagues to track the rampaging creatures down and figure out a way to stop them, and it's only a matter of time until they team up with the military, led by SyFy Channel alum Lorenzo Lamas (of such cinematic beauties as Raptor Island and 30,000 Leagues Under the Sea). He doesn't do anything spectacular here, but he's far from bad. He plays pretty much the exact same hardened military man that he plays in all of his movies, so by this stage of the game he can do the role in his sleep without much effort, especially in a movie like this where he doesn't really have a whole lot to do but stand around and threateningly bark orders at everyone. Other then those two, none of the other actors are really all that good at delivering the horrible dialog they're given, and the only other character of note is the Japanese scientist guy, and only because he's just so bad; easily the worst actor out of the entire group - it was literally painful to hear him talk. The other actors aren’t really worth mentioning and are pretty forgettable once the movie is over and all is said and done. The minor characters that are only in one or two scenes are also some of the worst I have ever seen in any movie, period. One only needs to watch the opening scene of the movie and bear witness to whoever's brother or friend they owed a favor to and gave them the helicopter pilot role, to understand. And for some reason, Asylum decided to throw in an out-of-nowhere sex scene between Debbie Gibson's character and the geeky Japanese scientist about half way through the movie, despite there not being even a hint of a romance between the two, and had no build-up, and then just completely drop the romance angle from the movie all together again after that, until the final scene where they throw in one throw-away line about being together.

But the part of the movie I really want to talk about, and the part that I got the most enjoyment out of, is not the boring cardboard human characters with bad acting and atrocious dialog, but instead the awesome title goliaths of the seas, the true stars of the movie - the Mega Shark and the Giant Octopus. Asylum's level of standards when it comes to their effects work can be a mixed bag - some movies have piss-poor special effects while others have excellent special effects. This movie leaves no stone unturned as they decided to incorporate both ends of that spectrum; The actual creatures themselves - the Megalodon shark and the Giant Octopus - looked great; some of the best effects work I've seen come out of this company yet. But then there are individual shots where the quality is noticeably lesser. For example, whenever we see the full Octopus – looks great, but whenever we see just the tentacles coming out of the water – looks horrible. Whenever we see the shark swimming around and attacking things on the surface of the water or under the water – looks great, but when it's leaping out of the water to attack things in the air – looks horrible. The difference in quality is most notable when both animals are on-screen at once, as it seems the quality in their effects work drop substantially, which is a shame since the movie is a 'Vs' movie after all so those scenes should be the most well-produced. Instead, the best looking scenes are the ones with the animals separate from each other.

Differing quality of effect shots aside, the actual action scenes involving one or the other of the creatures are mostly pretty fun. There are two or three of them that consist of a shot of the animal heading towards the camera, then a shot of the reactions of people on board whatever vessel is in the scene, and that's it. But luckily there's only a couple scenes like that and the rest actually do manage to show stuff happening. Yeah, ok, they may tread being annoyingly short with just about every single one clocking in at under 60 seconds, but what we do get to see are some pretty amazingly fun and cheesy stuff that just makes you fall in love with it so much that you don't even notice that it all happened in the amount of time it takes you to sneeze. Examples include, but are not limited to, the Mega Shark leaping so far out of the water that it takes down a passenger plane flying high in the sky overhead, or the Giant Octopus taking out a fleet of submarines in a split second as it crushes each one in a different tentacle at the same time, or the Shark taking out the Golden Gate Bridge while the Octopus takes down a huge ocean oil rig platform. Oh, and of course the fight scenes between the two colossal beasts as the movie hits it's exciting cheese-fueled adrenaline-pumped climax. There is plenty to love in this movie when it comes to the action scenes and IMO, the short runtime on them only means that we can get even more of them squeezed into the movie.

In the end, despite probably being their most well-known movie, it's definitely not Asylum's best movie and holds quite a few faults which prevents it from being as insanely enjoyable as it was advertised to be. However, it's still an all around fun movie and a great way to pass a rainy weekend night while having a beer or two with some friends.

6/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

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