Last summer I wrote startling capsule reviews for: EMPIRE OF THE SHARKS, PLANET OF THE SHARKS, OZARK SHARKS, ZOMBIE SHARK, TOXIC SHARK, TRAILER PARK SHARK, MISSISSIPPI RIVER SHARKS, 5-HEADED SHARK ATTACK. This year we have seven more: 6-HEADED SHARK ATTACK, 2-HEADED SHARK ATTACK, SHARKTOPUS VS. PTERACUDA, SHARKTOPUS VS. WHALEWOLF, DEEP BLUE SEA 2, DAM SHARKS, and ATOMIC SHARK!
And believe me, like the talking head oceanographers themselves, I've only plumbed about 10% of what's down there in the depths/dregs, so am likely to be 'swimming' in it for Julys to come.
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As before, my ratings are all relative to a certain level of badness and audience indulgence. And though sure, the effects are usually bad CGI, it's not always the case. For example take a close look at the shot above: the excellent shadows cast on the beach, and the heads on each other, the glistening shark skin reflection off the unseen (lighthouse?) light source. Details like that take some amount of care and patience to get right.. Sneer away! These sharks were made with some amount of love and you can feel it - there's effort and low-key talent afoot!
Still, the criteria for quality here is how well the film fits in with the Platonic ideal of the lazy Saturday afternoon half-nap, the ultimate set/setting for shark sci-fi. If it's the kind of thing you want ona rainy Saturday afternoon after a strenuous week, where you really earned a day of total indolence. There should be a certain level of dry wit (i.e. deadpan cool rather than doofus snickery clowning), good pacing, a game cast, beachy vibes and Bechdel professionalism, i.e. women (as per the Corman tradition) capably playing professionals--sheriffs, scientists, grizzled shark hunters, unscrupulous corporate mongers--as well as the usual lifeguards and screaming bathers.
The ideal ratio, as per baking (literally and figuratively) is just enough thrills to keep you watching but not enough to wake you all the way up or stress you out. It should be witty without getting puerile and sexy without being vulgar.
Tough order? Not for (most of) these Syfy/Asylum shark bytes! Pull up a 'tube!
The third best Casper Van Dien movie (after Starship Troopers and Modern Vampires), Sharktopus vs. Whalewolf is further proof the Casp is on the joke but knows how to play it dead straight. Here he's a hungover charter boat captain, operating out of the scenic and tropical Dominican Republic. His first mate / drinking buddy Pablo (Jorge Eduardo De Los Santos) is ever at his side. Troubles begin when Capt. Casper wakes up after a deep bender to find his boat is hosting a funeral at sea. One of the bereaved mourners is grabbed and sucked under by a malicious clawed tentacle, and Van Dien is blamed and jailed by his ex flaca, Inspector Nita Morales (Asylum regular Akari Endo). But what Casper mainly worries about is that the other prisoners stay quiet long enough for him to sleep (that hangover's a mother); This here is the kind of drinking movie when Casper might get his leg bitten down to the bone, but his main concern is whether or not he spilled his beverage.
We here at Acidemic salute such thee! (or, as we say in AA, I really related.)
In a refreshing (and very Corman) gender update, the divine Catherine Oxenburg mysterious and unscrupulous geneticist / mad scientist named Dr. Reinhardt. Her 'undetectable' doping clinic is a front for her crazy genetic hybridizing plans, which include turning a has-been Dominican baseball player (Mario Arturo Hernández) into a force of nature via radical gene therapy that involves splicing him together with wolves and whales. Fans will remember Oxenberg as the girl who was almost sacrificed to Dionyn 30 years ago in Ken Russell's Lair of the White Worm. Here she is doing the sacrificing - on the altar of science! She can really deliver science-flecked lines like "I merely inquire so I can coordinate the correct gene sequence for your physiology" as if they trip off her tongue.
Pros: Caspar Van Dien and De Los Santos' drunken rapport as Pablo and Ray is very lived-in and dryly hilarious. I love that their approach to finding the sharktopus (in order to please the local voodoo priest who demands they deliver its heart for his juju) is to just hide out and get drunk. Genius!. Meanwhile his ex-novia shoots at both the wolf and the sharktopus; a local live dating competition show is compromised by monster attacks right onscreen, but it's all up to these two drunks and a lady cop to save the whole island! A highlight is their chasing Whalewolf through all sunny sights the DR has to offer, from their state-of-the-art docks and shopping malls to their brand new baseball stadium. That the pedestrians crowding the streets don't even look up from the phones while these giant monsters race past them makes it all extra surreal. Clearly, they had no idea they were even being filmed. That's how it should be.
Cons: As usual, the quality of the CGI seems to steadily devolve as the film goes on, as if the animator's wrist is getting tired. Once the climactic fight supplants Dien and Ray's drunkenness and the hammy nonsense of the crazy juju priest, we're like 'okay, what's next?'
Extra Props: Casper recognizes who the Whalewolf is (or used to be) by his baseball swing!
Naturalist Lorena Christmas (Katie Savoy) has a tight bond with Sharktopus, having raised it from a pup at a Sea World-style water park/aquarium in the DR. But Sharktopus isn't ready for display to the general public, despite the nagging of her cash-strapped boss. Sharktopus especially gets irritable when black budget spook Robert Carradine puts a chip in his brain and sets loose in the ocean, hoping he'll fight the amok Pteracuda, the last hybrid monster he tried to control. But then a snarky Russian spy hijacked the signal and then Pteracuda rips the chip out of Sharktopus' brain during one of their tussles. Who could have predicted that?
Pros: Robert Carradine seems to be having fun here in B-movie central. I was never a fan of him in things like The Big Red One - way too ordinary, but here his ease and comfort in this slippery agent role is very refreshing. Naturally the three of them--Carradine, his muscled security guy, and Lorena, will have to work together to reign in the collateral damage - which is ever worsening. The Dominican Republic's approach to monster control, meanwhile, is to just go about their business; there's never a thought of calling in any national guard or riot squad. They leave it all to a CIA analyst and his hostage. Akari Endo (the cop in Whalewolf) is the TV newswoman who disseminates information. In this case it's all very current events as the real enemy is an evil Russian hacker trying to program one or more of the monsters to attack the nuclear reactor.
Pros: The first thing one notices is the animation -- a slight but notable step above the norm, with extra care taken to get the lighting right in both the fuzzy underwater and surface breeching; all the tentacles and fluttering wings sending water beading out in all directions, glinting in the sunlight as the monsters rise from the depths of the ocean to high in the sky. Harryhausen would be proud!
Cons: By the time they beast finally start to settle down to one plane animators, nearly exhausted, are phoning it in. Who can blame them?
Cameo: Conan O'Brien appears as a jerky preppie yachtsman, clearly doing Tony Curtis doing a Cary Grant impression in Some Like it Hot. His head is bit off and used as a volleyball! That never stopped Conan before!
Cons: Almost no women characters, except Katie Savoy, who is ignored in her pleas for this or that but at least is allowed to show a keen level of intelligence that cuts through the mansplaining and condescension, at least as far as we're concerned.
It makes me pretty mad when Robert and his man get the drop on the KGB spy but then turn their back on him so he can get the jump on them. Oy mios dios! What kind of shitty agents are you?
A lot of the South African lunatic fringe are back! Mark Atkins' cast from EMPIRE OF THE SHARKS and PLANET OF THE SHARKS return to the Syfy screen in glorious salty dreadlocked white hippie beach bum realness. Sexy-ugly gutter-voiced Brandon Auret is William, a scruffy islander hosting a couple's therapy action vacation on a remote, uninhabited island off the coast of South Africa. His credibility as a marriage whisperer is called into question by his pending divorce. Also lacking credibility is the CGI of the shark, aside from some good deadness in the eyes and some great moonlight glistening on their grey skin in the night scenes (top image). A 40 year-old floating lab offshore is no doubt is responsible for the mutation. The six-heads, I mean.
Pros: Jonathan Pienar (the marvelous "Mason Scrimm" in in EMPIRE) evokes the holy power of Timothy Carey as he blows off one of the shark's many heads with a 'boom stick' (a tribute to Hemingway). Megan Oberholzer is very cute as the hippie meteorologist who lets them all know a hurricane is coming and the whole island is about to be underwater. She calls her dim but gorgeous blonde hippe boyfriend (Chris Fisher), "the smartest guy I know." And says things like "that this has SIX heads, we have EIGHT heads! We ought to be able to outsmart it!" ("That's your reasoning?" says the smart freaked out black comic relief).
Cons - James, the redhaired bearded idiot is ridiculously miscast - it's unbelievable that this dipshit middle-aged ginger would be with a Strong Black Woman or that she would put up with his mess one bit. The idiot hero, after chopping off a shark head with a giant threshing blade, immediately drops it so so the shark can escape, and/or come back and kill him now that he's defenseless. Nothing like getting rid of your one effective weapon in the midst of an all-out battle to just scream 'hero.'
Meta - the weird sight of this tween in glasses talking about looking for his forever soulmate on eharmony. That this kid has found his soulmate already at his age is too disturbing - so is the idea of some of these couples being together -especially James -good lord!
--
Conclusion- In South Africa, the Syfy filmmakers give a shit. And as the body count mounts and the survivors get crazy desperate, the music stays deadpan --even when one of the shark's heads rips off another and tosses it up at the top of a lighthouse to knock out a jealous raging ginger sniper.
Weirdly there's another Atomic Shark movie out there (I wish there a dozen!), also from 2016 - so this one was changed in some markets to SALTWATER which is what imdb calls it. But to me it's SIN JAWS because of the nifty poster above. Either way, it's a cheeky web-savvy thrill ride that centers around a cadre of lifeguards who use drones to rescue bathers and track sharks. The boss of the lifeguards is a douchebag who makes the hottie lifeguard go swimming to encourage bathers to go in the water. He also doesn't approve of the use of drones, and so is made fun of by the smartass who hides the fact he can't swim by using one to bring lifejackets out to them who've drifted out on riptides. Then the giant irradiated great white comes rolling in, setting people on fire if they swim within range. It glows rather nicely, if generically.
In addition to the use of drones, this very environmentalist and social media savvy employs all sorts of web based communication to spread the word. "We're nowhere near where we need to be yet - we're not even at four million viewers!" Jessica Kemejuk is a vain lifeguard selfie enthusiast with "87,000 followers and counting" and the silvery-gray eyed Maria Bonner is Felice, the camerawoman for the edgy environmentalist channel in scenic San Diego.
And who amongst us doesn't love seeing the piercing blue eyes and hearing the centering growl of Jeff Fahey? Here he's driving around and drinking and trying to get cops to believe him. He's only in the film three minutes but he still helps bump the score up 1/2 a star. Another half goes to the well-showcased abs of Rachel Brooke Smith (far left) as the environmentalist lifeguard Gina. "What would radiation do to a shark?" asks the far-left underground environmentalist TV host, "make it glow?" "This shark would be radioactive - and emit very intense heat," notes Gina. They rendezvous at a beachfront joint called "Tales from the Dockside", where the bratty food critic Skip Forte eats a radioactive fish and bursts into flame - as does everyone else who ordered the catch of the day - or prepped it. Uh oh. Lots of funny throwaway gags meanwhile help keep the suspense and laughs evenly mixed.
Cons: Folks vaporize in clouds of laughable FX. As with 5-HEADED SHARK ATTACK, there's way too much time spent with the tool head lifeguard. These tools need to get eaten faster! The pervy slob they steal the drone from, for example, needs to be fed to the shark sooner too.
There's a certain schlock director who long befouled the lines of Corman's libsploitation trawler. But this is made by his son, so it's paradoxically more mature, less 'augmented' and relatively less puerile. It's got bad editing but enough bikini clad heroines (young and natural, relatively) in professional jobs to make it almost worthwhile, the photography and scenery are good too. The story involves a large schooner hosting a semester-at-sea (though they're more like some shanghaied community college) who winds up crashed at an ever-shrinking island, circled by a two-headed shark.
Pros: Carmen Electra earns a day's pay for lounging around on a yacht, pausing to help some of the kids on board when they're hurt. Brooke Hogan conveys a vividly realized characterization of the cliche'd, slightly 'out-of-her-element' shy girl, the sort able to fix a boat and load guns or whatever as the boys snicker and to to hit each other in the nuts, like they used to do in dad's films.
Cons: Theres's still way too much shouting and douchebaggery and--as with so many of these films (such as 5-HEADED SHARK ATTACK)--the douches don't get eaten until it's way too late to care.
Everything in the film seems like shitty CGI - even, hilariously, and sadly enough, the dressing room.
The eccentric Denzel drinks some unnamed nootropics and they make him see geometry problems; Jeremy Boado and Kim Syster are married science partners with trepidations about signing on ("we'll be rich."/ "we didn't go into science to get rich"). Throughout, the girls are the idealists and the boys are the practical ones (what a twist!), but at least these two do seem like actual scientists vs. the one-channel bitchy shark conservationist Misty, whose sole expertise seems to be acting all bitchy because "bull sharks are not lab mice!" (I don't think the sharks feel the same way about you, Misty). She's very pretty but it's like she forgot to make her character either interesting or appealing. Her complexion/make-up scheme seems to be straining against some long digitally-removed blemish; her hair tells the story of a stressful shoot. Meanwhile the Scott Walker (RIP - you beautiful himbo) role is filled Rob Mayes, a kind of hybrid Mark Wahlberg and Collin Ferell. And.. that's about it, man.
Pros: Always good to see illegal 'finners' get eaten. There is a memorable death in a flooding phone booth while the guy's buddy watches horrified from atop a bunk bed that's right at the water line. Cool.
Smart Tip: Never threaten the boss when you're alone with him while trying to escape a flooding complex.
When a pair of nature photographers dive below the water line to check out a beaver dam, it turns out it's really a shark dam chock full of human corpses! It all takes place in a single long day along the long river, which works very well for its 'flow' as everyone farther upstream is heading right towards this climactic corpse pile. Jessica Blackmore is Kate, the game warden who teams up with Craig, an irascible fisher outdoorsy poacher, played by the familiar-seeming Robert Craighead (he once "saw a one-armed man fist-fighting a hare krishna"). An outdoorsy team-building software company's meanwhile, upriver and dwindling. Jason London is their smarmy stereotype software CEO, the type whose whole company seems to be an excuse for him to make people like him. Most everyone is eaten in fairly short order, no matter how much we like them. We hope London's shit-for-brains CEO be first on the menu. But his kind never are.
Pros: My favorite new (to me!) sharkstar, Kabby Borders (TOXIC SHARK) is here as London's eager beaver assistant, fluttering with clipboard, foxy in her outdoorsy and executive assistant garb with an open midriff displaying her magnificent abs. And Blackmore is great as the game warden who knows how to be no nonsense without being a dick about it. Her begrudging rapport with her longstanding old salt nemesis is pretty endearing in its gruff way. I also like the sheer grim spectacle of a dam made of human corpses, though it's hard to believe those sharks wouldn't have eaten every scrap long ago. Then again, why would anyone suspect 'believability' with a title like "Dam Sharks"?
See Also:
Blu Summer: BLUE CRUSH, INTO THE BLUE, MIAMI VICE (7/10)
Great Acid Movies 1/300: MOBY DICK (1956)
Prime Post-JAWS finds (up from the Amazon): SCREAMERS, GREAT ALLIGATOR, HUMANOIDS FROM THE DEEP, UP FROM THE DEPTHS, PIRHANA
PLUS:
Part 1: EMPIRE OF THE SHARKS, PLANET OF THE SHARKS, OZARK SHARKS, ZOMBIE SHARK, TOXIC SHARK, TRAILER PARK SHARK, MISSISSIPPI RIVER SHARKS, 5-HEADED SHARK ATTACK
NOTE:
1. Hughes teaches geeks that if you really love the prettiest girl in school (i.e. your naive enough to mistake your crush over her beauty for something unique to yourself) of course you'll get her, because you are special! So there is a constant parade of dumbass dorks and wallies, totally unconscious of their stepping out of their own class, hitting on her day and night, hoping their stuttering imbecile awkwardness will charm her with its mealy-mouthed sincerity, as John Hughes and Cameron Crowe promised.
SHARKTOPUS VS. WHALEWOLF
(2015) Starring Catherine Oxenburg
***
The third best Casper Van Dien movie (after Starship Troopers and Modern Vampires), Sharktopus vs. Whalewolf is further proof the Casp is on the joke but knows how to play it dead straight. Here he's a hungover charter boat captain, operating out of the scenic and tropical Dominican Republic. His first mate / drinking buddy Pablo (Jorge Eduardo De Los Santos) is ever at his side. Troubles begin when Capt. Casper wakes up after a deep bender to find his boat is hosting a funeral at sea. One of the bereaved mourners is grabbed and sucked under by a malicious clawed tentacle, and Van Dien is blamed and jailed by his ex flaca, Inspector Nita Morales (Asylum regular Akari Endo). But what Casper mainly worries about is that the other prisoners stay quiet long enough for him to sleep (that hangover's a mother); This here is the kind of drinking movie when Casper might get his leg bitten down to the bone, but his main concern is whether or not he spilled his beverage.
We here at Acidemic salute such thee! (or, as we say in AA, I really related.)
That said, her flat Arianna Huffington-impression German accent quickly wears on the nerves; and when she feeds her devoted and very sexy nurse (Jennifer Wenger) to the ensuing monster we get pretty pissed. Especially after watching her walk to work in a very groovy slow-mo strut through the DR streets
Cons: As usual, the quality of the CGI seems to steadily devolve as the film goes on, as if the animator's wrist is getting tired. Once the climactic fight supplants Dien and Ray's drunkenness and the hammy nonsense of the crazy juju priest, we're like 'okay, what's next?'
Extra Props: Casper recognizes who the Whalewolf is (or used to be) by his baseball swing!
SHARKTOPUS VS. PTERACUDA
(2014) Starring Katie Savoy
**1/2
Naturalist Lorena Christmas (Katie Savoy) has a tight bond with Sharktopus, having raised it from a pup at a Sea World-style water park/aquarium in the DR. But Sharktopus isn't ready for display to the general public, despite the nagging of her cash-strapped boss. Sharktopus especially gets irritable when black budget spook Robert Carradine puts a chip in his brain and sets loose in the ocean, hoping he'll fight the amok Pteracuda, the last hybrid monster he tried to control. But then a snarky Russian spy hijacked the signal and then Pteracuda rips the chip out of Sharktopus' brain during one of their tussles. Who could have predicted that?
Pros: Robert Carradine seems to be having fun here in B-movie central. I was never a fan of him in things like The Big Red One - way too ordinary, but here his ease and comfort in this slippery agent role is very refreshing. Naturally the three of them--Carradine, his muscled security guy, and Lorena, will have to work together to reign in the collateral damage - which is ever worsening. The Dominican Republic's approach to monster control, meanwhile, is to just go about their business; there's never a thought of calling in any national guard or riot squad. They leave it all to a CIA analyst and his hostage. Akari Endo (the cop in Whalewolf) is the TV newswoman who disseminates information. In this case it's all very current events as the real enemy is an evil Russian hacker trying to program one or more of the monsters to attack the nuclear reactor. 
Pros: The first thing one notices is the animation -- a slight but notable step above the norm, with extra care taken to get the lighting right in both the fuzzy underwater and surface breeching; all the tentacles and fluttering wings sending water beading out in all directions, glinting in the sunlight as the monsters rise from the depths of the ocean to high in the sky. Harryhausen would be proud!
Cons: By the time they beast finally start to settle down to one plane animators, nearly exhausted, are phoning it in. Who can blame them?
Cameo: Conan O'Brien appears as a jerky preppie yachtsman, clearly doing Tony Curtis doing a Cary Grant impression in Some Like it Hot. His head is bit off and used as a volleyball! That never stopped Conan before!
Cons: Almost no women characters, except Katie Savoy, who is ignored in her pleas for this or that but at least is allowed to show a keen level of intelligence that cuts through the mansplaining and condescension, at least as far as we're concerned.
It makes me pretty mad when Robert and his man get the drop on the KGB spy but then turn their back on him so he can get the jump on them. Oy mios dios! What kind of shitty agents are you?
SIX-HEADED SHARK ATTACK
(2018) Dir. Mark Atkins
**1/2
A lot of the South African lunatic fringe are back! Mark Atkins' cast from EMPIRE OF THE SHARKS and PLANET OF THE SHARKS return to the Syfy screen in glorious salty dreadlocked white hippie beach bum realness. Sexy-ugly gutter-voiced Brandon Auret is William, a scruffy islander hosting a couple's therapy action vacation on a remote, uninhabited island off the coast of South Africa. His credibility as a marriage whisperer is called into question by his pending divorce. Also lacking credibility is the CGI of the shark, aside from some good deadness in the eyes and some great moonlight glistening on their grey skin in the night scenes (top image). A 40 year-old floating lab offshore is no doubt is responsible for the mutation. The six-heads, I mean.
Yes, there's time for hilariously over the top acting - Atkins gives most of the actors a chance to really lose their shit before they're eaten. The Timothy Carey lunacy of Jonathan Pienar; the crazy "I make good decisions!" shouting of the blonde couple, lapsing into Dutch, working each other up ("we got this!" / "we got this! It's GONNA BE OKAY!") Great stuff. The shark animation eventually grows on one, especially when the beast gets out of the water and starts walking around on its heads like a scorpion (the sunlight glistening and reflective shadow work is pretty good and--rare for a shark movie--the animated sharks seem to incorporate real shark movement - it's pretty close in rare moments to crossing the Uncanny Valley of sharkiness.
Cons - James, the redhaired bearded idiot is ridiculously miscast - it's unbelievable that this dipshit middle-aged ginger would be with a Strong Black Woman or that she would put up with his mess one bit. The idiot hero, after chopping off a shark head with a giant threshing blade, immediately drops it so so the shark can escape, and/or come back and kill him now that he's defenseless. Nothing like getting rid of your one effective weapon in the midst of an all-out battle to just scream 'hero.'
Meta - the weird sight of this tween in glasses talking about looking for his forever soulmate on eharmony. That this kid has found his soulmate already at his age is too disturbing - so is the idea of some of these couples being together -especially James -good lord!
--
Conclusion- In South Africa, the Syfy filmmakers give a shit. And as the body count mounts and the survivors get crazy desperate, the music stays deadpan --even when one of the shark's heads rips off another and tosses it up at the top of a lighthouse to knock out a jealous raging ginger sniper.
ATOMIC SHARK
(aka SALTWATER)
(aka SALTWATER)
(2016) Dir. A.B. Stone
***
In addition to the use of drones, this very environmentalist and social media savvy employs all sorts of web based communication to spread the word. "We're nowhere near where we need to be yet - we're not even at four million viewers!" Jessica Kemejuk is a vain lifeguard selfie enthusiast with "87,000 followers and counting" and the silvery-gray eyed Maria Bonner is Felice, the camerawoman for the edgy environmentalist channel in scenic San Diego.
Pros: When he finally does go in the water, the drone nerd gets creamed by a pair of literally flaming parasailers after the hot shark belly flops up on their boat. The sight of a lip of flame shooting slowly up the rope to a parasailer, before turning the chute itself into a flaming radioactive meteor is pretty badass.
And who amongst us doesn't love seeing the piercing blue eyes and hearing the centering growl of Jeff Fahey? Here he's driving around and drinking and trying to get cops to believe him. He's only in the film three minutes but he still helps bump the score up 1/2 a star. Another half goes to the well-showcased abs of Rachel Brooke Smith (far left) as the environmentalist lifeguard Gina. "What would radiation do to a shark?" asks the far-left underground environmentalist TV host, "make it glow?" "This shark would be radioactive - and emit very intense heat," notes Gina. They rendezvous at a beachfront joint called "Tales from the Dockside", where the bratty food critic Skip Forte eats a radioactive fish and bursts into flame - as does everyone else who ordered the catch of the day - or prepped it. Uh oh. Lots of funny throwaway gags meanwhile help keep the suspense and laughs evenly mixed.
TWO-HEADED SHARK ATTACK
(2012) Dir. Christopher Ray
**
There's a certain schlock director who long befouled the lines of Corman's libsploitation trawler. But this is made by his son, so it's paradoxically more mature, less 'augmented' and relatively less puerile. It's got bad editing but enough bikini clad heroines (young and natural, relatively) in professional jobs to make it almost worthwhile, the photography and scenery are good too. The story involves a large schooner hosting a semester-at-sea (though they're more like some shanghaied community college) who winds up crashed at an ever-shrinking island, circled by a two-headed shark. Pros: Carmen Electra earns a day's pay for lounging around on a yacht, pausing to help some of the kids on board when they're hurt. Brooke Hogan conveys a vividly realized characterization of the cliche'd, slightly 'out-of-her-element' shy girl, the sort able to fix a boat and load guns or whatever as the boys snicker and to to hit each other in the nuts, like they used to do in dad's films.
Cons: Theres's still way too much shouting and douchebaggery and--as with so many of these films (such as 5-HEADED SHARK ATTACK)--the douches don't get eaten until it's way too late to care.
DEEP BLUE SEA 2
(2018) Starring Daniel Savre
**
"Tradin' dreams for nightmares / drownin' in the deep blue sea" goes the interesting (low bottom synths) coupled score, with long vowels held in a style seldom heard outside out of Fast and Furious end credits. Danielle Savre is a sanctimonious sharkitecht named Misty, hired by eccentric billionaire Michael Beach (doing his best Denzel impersonation) to wrangle sharks for more underwater brain boost tests.Everything in the film seems like shitty CGI - even, hilariously, and sadly enough, the dressing room.
The eccentric Denzel drinks some unnamed nootropics and they make him see geometry problems; Jeremy Boado and Kim Syster are married science partners with trepidations about signing on ("we'll be rich."/ "we didn't go into science to get rich"). Throughout, the girls are the idealists and the boys are the practical ones (what a twist!), but at least these two do seem like actual scientists vs. the one-channel bitchy shark conservationist Misty, whose sole expertise seems to be acting all bitchy because "bull sharks are not lab mice!" (I don't think the sharks feel the same way about you, Misty). She's very pretty but it's like she forgot to make her character either interesting or appealing. Her complexion/make-up scheme seems to be straining against some long digitally-removed blemish; her hair tells the story of a stressful shoot. Meanwhile the Scott Walker (RIP - you beautiful himbo) role is filled Rob Mayes, a kind of hybrid Mark Wahlberg and Collin Ferell. And.. that's about it, man.
Pros: Always good to see illegal 'finners' get eaten. There is a memorable death in a flooding phone booth while the guy's buddy watches horrified from atop a bunk bed that's right at the water line. Cool.
Smart Tip: Never threaten the boss when you're alone with him while trying to escape a flooding complex.
DAM SHARKS
(2016) Directed by a pair of Kondeliks
**1/2
When a pair of nature photographers dive below the water line to check out a beaver dam, it turns out it's really a shark dam chock full of human corpses! It all takes place in a single long day along the long river, which works very well for its 'flow' as everyone farther upstream is heading right towards this climactic corpse pile. Jessica Blackmore is Kate, the game warden who teams up with Craig, an irascible fisher outdoorsy poacher, played by the familiar-seeming Robert Craighead (he once "saw a one-armed man fist-fighting a hare krishna"). An outdoorsy team-building software company's meanwhile, upriver and dwindling. Jason London is their smarmy stereotype software CEO, the type whose whole company seems to be an excuse for him to make people like him. Most everyone is eaten in fairly short order, no matter how much we like them. We hope London's shit-for-brains CEO be first on the menu. But his kind never are.
Because bull sharks can survive in fresh water, that's why.
Cons: When the game warden girl lets out a scream of rage after having to shoot a man getting ripped up by sharks, it's this weak high-pitched thing like she done seen a mouse in the kitchen. It gets pretty gross when Kabby has to endure the sweaty come-ons of the limpid uber-nerd (who won't be swayed in his ardent wooing, despite a buddy warning him off with a frank talk about staying in his league), I've hung out with girls of that same hotness level who've had to endure the same thing, as if their beauty requires them to endure one lame stuttering amateurish overture after another, which is why I hte John Hughes and Cameron Crowe movies (1). Even more insufferable than this dweeb parade is smarmy Jim and Pam of the office (Matt Beyond the Gates Mercer and Neka Zang). Will they ever get over their shyness to become more than close work buddies? Of course they will, but their passive-aggressive smirks and overly-indoor pallors are not appropriate for shark-bashing final girls. Why can't they be eaten first, so Kabby can live to fight another day?
Moral: When a hungry shark is in the water and you're safe on land - stay there. Then again, would there even be a movie if they did? Kabby!
Cons: When the game warden girl lets out a scream of rage after having to shoot a man getting ripped up by sharks, it's this weak high-pitched thing like she done seen a mouse in the kitchen. It gets pretty gross when Kabby has to endure the sweaty come-ons of the limpid uber-nerd (who won't be swayed in his ardent wooing, despite a buddy warning him off with a frank talk about staying in his league), I've hung out with girls of that same hotness level who've had to endure the same thing, as if their beauty requires them to endure one lame stuttering amateurish overture after another, which is why I hte John Hughes and Cameron Crowe movies (1). Even more insufferable than this dweeb parade is smarmy Jim and Pam of the office (Matt Beyond the Gates Mercer and Neka Zang). Will they ever get over their shyness to become more than close work buddies? Of course they will, but their passive-aggressive smirks and overly-indoor pallors are not appropriate for shark-bashing final girls. Why can't they be eaten first, so Kabby can live to fight another day?
Moral: When a hungry shark is in the water and you're safe on land - stay there. Then again, would there even be a movie if they did? Kabby!
See Also:
Wronger than the Storm: SHARKNADO (2013), THE REEF
+
The Old Man and the Feminist and the Sea: ORCA (1977)Blu Summer: BLUE CRUSH, INTO THE BLUE, MIAMI VICE (7/10)
Great Acid Movies 1/300: MOBY DICK (1956)
Prime Post-JAWS finds (up from the Amazon): SCREAMERS, GREAT ALLIGATOR, HUMANOIDS FROM THE DEEP, UP FROM THE DEPTHS, PIRHANA
PLUS:
Part 1: EMPIRE OF THE SHARKS, PLANET OF THE SHARKS, OZARK SHARKS, ZOMBIE SHARK, TOXIC SHARK, TRAILER PARK SHARK, MISSISSIPPI RIVER SHARKS, 5-HEADED SHARK ATTACK
NOTE:
1. Hughes teaches geeks that if you really love the prettiest girl in school (i.e. your naive enough to mistake your crush over her beauty for something unique to yourself) of course you'll get her, because you are special! So there is a constant parade of dumbass dorks and wallies, totally unconscious of their stepping out of their own class, hitting on her day and night, hoping their stuttering imbecile awkwardness will charm her with its mealy-mouthed sincerity, as John Hughes and Cameron Crowe promised.
Is there such a thing as a GOOD shark movie? Including Jaws? Yes I said it. Apart from Robert Shaw (an accomplished novelist by the way) it tanks.
ReplyDeleteHas there ever been a GOOD shark movie? And YES,I include Jaws. Except for Robert Shaw ( an accomplished novelist as well as actor) The film is an annoyance. The tales of Shaw's irritation with Richard Dreyfuss are quite believable. if only we had footage of Quint bashing the little punks skull in before tossing him overboard.
ReplyDeleteDale my lad, you are dreadfully mistooken. There at least three salty classics of the shark genre: PLANET OF THE SHARKS, SHARK ATTACK 3: MEGALADON, and JAWS - watching it today it's vital to put yourself in the headspace of being a kid at the beach in the summers of 75-79 - a kind of national hysteria gripped us in the most enjoyable way. Now it's the scene where Brody reads the shark book while camped out in his study overlooking the bay, seeing the bite marks and jaw sets. The world hadn't quite allowed sharks as a major force of unconscious menace into the mainstream - they were more like any other hazard of being a sailor but normal beachgoers were more worried about jellyfish. His sudden alarm over that book was shared all across the nation and the world - seen today it's still a brilliantly filmed adventure, marred only by John Williams' insufferably jaunty pirate motifs in the second half. (and don't forget Scheider's moment of manly great 70s dadhood
DeleteSorry,Erich. I believe I tried to comment twice here but nothing stuck. Perhaps I did something wrong or you didn't care for whatever it was. Maybe I wore out my welcome? If so,OK. I can fade out here. I enjoyed discovering the site and interacting while it lasted. Thanks for the ride.
ReplyDeleteHi Dale - weird - it was stuck as suddenly these all popped through at once. You can comment on everything as far as I am concerned!
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