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.
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.
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.
