This is Post 2 of 4.
Our ZOOM-chat continues, but with a marked increase in shark attacks in the news this summer, we thought we’d rerun the following post, which was originally part of our November 2022 online meeting.
Enjoy. Again.
Steven Spielberg terrorized beach-goers in the summer of 1975 and initiated the modern age of cinematic blockbusters. His Jaws remains the epitome of shark movies. It has many imitators—The Reef, The Shallows—but no equals.
Some shark films, like Deep Blue Sea and The Meg, added science fictional elements to the formula and independent, low-budget, straight-to-video filmmakers soon dove into those lucrative waters, with mixed results.
Some adopted the idea of purposely producing so-bad-it’s-good fare as comically wacky entertainment, resulting in Sharktopus, Dinoshark, Sharknado, and other examples of brainless, B-movie, sci-fi/shark movies. The best of these basked in their absurdity and played as tongue-in-cheek homages to both the shark-adventure and science fiction genres.
At the bottom of the chum bucket are found the irredeemably botched SF/F shark movies, truly the worst, most unprofessional, hackneyed, nonsensical, substandard, misguided failures. Highlighted below are titles that we judged largely as such. Your mileage may differ.
Sharkenstein (2016)
A way-out, wild sci-fi/horror mélange of Jaws, Nazispoitation, and Frankenstein, Mark Polonia directs this earnest but unsatisfactorily executed movie, featuring a cast that includes at least a couple of moderately capable independent-film actors boasting a number of genuine credits within the low-budget horror genre.
The story involves a mad scientist’s scheme—the Great Experiment—to create from the body parts of Great Whites, Hammerheads, Makos and other man-eaters, the penultimate killer shark, into which will be surgically implanted the undying heart and brain of Frankenstein’s monster!
Having originated during World War II, the plan finally comes to fruition in present-day USA. Arriving in a small coastal town for a day of boating, three friends, Skip, Coop, and Madge, soon become entangled in the scientist’s dastardly plans.
While the writing and, in particular, special effects utterly fail to live up to the production’s central, high-concept idea, I’ll give the principal players kudos for, once or twice, expressing through their performances a knowing nod to the fatuous genre within which they are working.
At one point, Greta Volkova, starring as Madge, delivers a line of awkwardly scripted foreshadowing with the mock gravitas appropriate to the occasion. “I’ve never seen a shark like that before,” she emotes. “It looked like a grotesque combination of different sharks.” She later pays nerdy, loving tribute to the Frankenstein story, rattling off a list of classic Frankenstein films produced by Universal and Hammer.
And Jeff Kirkendall, affecting a clichéd German accent as the mad scientist, crowingly outlines his outrageous plan in detail for our three heroes, who find themselves his captives at one point. He and other neo-Nazis operating clandestinely across the globe intend to deploy an “indestructible and unstoppable” army of supersharks, beginning with the archetypal “Sharkenstein.” Eventually, the preserved brains of Nazi leaders, including Hitler himself, will be transferred into these abominations, thus triggering another World War, which this time, the Nazis will win! After a few silent beats to allow the horrendous enormity of the plan to sink in, he melodramatically intones, “This is the part where you tell me I’m crazy!”
All fun, if decidedly imperfect, stuff, in the spirit of the genre, marred further by the clumsiest possible compositing of a Sharkenstein puppet and blood-splatter with live action footage!
Planet of the Sharks (2016) and Empire of the Sharks (2017)
The Asylum, an independent film production house specializing in low-budget, straight-to-video projects, is the chief purveyor of “sharksploitation” flicks like these two. Both are from director Mark Atkins, Empire a prequel to Planet.
Set in a dystopian, Waterworld-like near-future in which global warming has caused the Earth’s glacial ice to melt, flooding the world, pockets of humanity survive on small floating islands of barges, wharves, and boats tethered together.
With ocean plankton unable to endure the warming waters, the ocean’s food chain is collapsing and almost all sea life is dying off, leaving only a great school of sharks, led by an alpha female. But with no fish to eat, the ocean’s apex predators must hunt for food above the surface. “And that’s us,” explains Planet of the Sharks’ Dr. Shayne Nichols, a scientist who is working with others to launch a rocket equipped with CO2 scrubbers into the high atmosphere, and so reverse the effects of climate change and lower sea levels. Yeah, that’ll work!
But first, an electronic gizmo must be dropped into a dormant undersea volcano in order to draw the threatening sharks to their doom when the team open fire with a laser, which will trigger an eruption. Or something.
There’s a lot of tedious, unnecessary detail, here, which causes the story to drag. And between brief and uninspiringly shot scenes of unconvincing CGI sharks leaping out of the water to chomp on people, far too much of the film’s runtime is spent on lengthy sequences of expository dialogue among the protagonists, just standing around talking to each other. There are also a number of completely superfluous characters, who contribute little, if anything, to the story, save only to further pad out the film’s runtime.
Empire of the Sharks is saddled with many of the same flaws, presenting audiences with countless interminable shots of characters staring intently or woefully at off-screen goings-on, or skimming about on various watercraft, or manoeuvering underwater with Sea Scooters, or aboard a submersible.
Something of a Mad Max on the water, the action, such as it is, follows a poorly realized young hero, who sets out to rescue his girlfriend, Willow, taken captive in the first reel by a ruling overlord. Martial law is imposed by way of a legion of sharks, which the antagonists control with what looks somewhat like a pair of gloves pilfered from the Rollerball set and wrapped in a string of Christmas lights. Each of this post-apocalyptic world’s small, floating communities are required to pay a regular tribute to the strongman, with ruthless punishment meted out to any who refuse, or defy him. Transgressors are held prisoner on his floating fortress and forced into slave labour, with those marked for execution tied to a float and fed to the ravenous sharks.
Long story short, our hero assembles a crew of mercenary types to help rescue the girl and overthrow the evil empire. She, meanwhile, possessed of an innate psychic ability, channels her powers to challenge the overlord for control of sharks, managing to turn them against him and helping to win the day. Like her father before her, she is a “shark caller,” and is celebrated as such as the film concludes.
A handful of the actors, at least, cast in these films have as much fun with their roles as dull scripting will allow, most notably Empire’s Jonathan Pienaar, who plays the overlord’s right-hand man with over-the-top, villainous relish.
Nary a farcical wink is offered to the inherent cheesiness of either movie, and so, these pictures are nothing more than pedestrian sci-fi/actioners. So if you like nonsensically bad science fiction films, you’ll have a better time with The Asylum’s hit, Sharknado, which fully embraces and lampoons the flavour of sci-fi B-movies and its own outlandish premise.
Ouija Shark (2020)
One would not be exceedingly surprised to discover that this movie was produced by a sixth-grader equipped with dad’s camcorder and I suppose that Ottawa-based actor/writer/director Brett Kelly was, once, some years ago, in the sixth grade. Kelly, who guested at ConCept in 2006, directs, here, under his Scott Patrick pseudonym.
Reportedly made for some $300, most of that budget apparently allocated to the titular shark, a rubber, dollar store-quality toy, one cannot reasonably expect very much, if anything, of this film.
Expectations met!
A group of girls enjoying a backyard pool party decide to experiment with an old Ouija board that one of them found washed up on a nearby beach. Inadvertently, they conjure up the ghost of a Great White Shark, which appears as a glowing spectre unremarkably superimposed into various scenes as, one after another, each of the girls is attacked by this phantom fish.
The cast are high-school-drama-club amateurish, a few especially so, the pacing often lethargic, and the production values carelessly inferior. But these factors, coupled with the sheer idiocy of the whole affair, might have been forgiven had the writers injected moments of self-aware pretense. Alas, we are offered but a few weak barbs, not nearly enough of a boost to elevate the piece whatsoever.
Kelly has produced better stuff under his actual name; this one is to be avoided.
Land Shark (2020); Original Title: Lù Xing Shā
Candygram.
The English title of this movie suggests a feature-film adaptation of that classic Saturday Night Live skit, but this is, in fact, a Chinese creature-feature budgeted at some $2 million. Rather derivative of such fare as Deep Blue Sea, The Meg, Tremors, and any number of kaiju films—there’s even a Free Willy moment included!—director Cheng Si-Yu helmed what proved to be a pretty standard-issue CGI-monster movie, reasonably well-crafted but tarnished by a daft premise.
A pharmaceutical research laboratory’s attempt to engineer an anti-cancer drug via genetic tampering results in the creation of a giant, beastly shark capable of terrorizing mankind in the water, and on land!
All of the stereotypical characters that populate such genre films are present, here: the take-charge hero, shark wrangler Song Yi, and his goofy friend and sidekick, Pang Yu, responsible for comic relief; the greedy, callous corporate executive behind the experiment, Qian Cheng; the noble scientist, young, pretty Ye Xin, also our hero’s romantic interest; her craven, morally bankrupt colleague; the leader of Cheng’s private militia, who begins to question his boss’ ethics; the cute kid; and a gaggle of others who serve as chum.
Early in the narrative, the lab’s team of scientists and technicians are surprised to discover that their test subject, an aggressive male shark, is pregnant, an incomprehensible turn of events. “Could it be possible,” asks the portly Pang Yu, “that the shark is so depressed because of being locked up, that it became a sissy as a result?”
I watched the English dub of the film, so I’ll allow that something may have been lost in the translation, however, such puerile dialogue did not bode well.
Later, it’s learned that the shark’s genetic material was augmented by that of earthworms, which reproduce asexually. This, apparently, explains the shark’s pregnant state, and its ability to move about on land and burrow through the soil in hot pursuit of the panicked laboratory personnel! There’s a lot of frantic running away, willy-nilly, until in a moment of respite, we hear again from Pang Yu, who unintentionally summarizes the entire movie. “What’s this even about?” he gasps, breathless. “The sea creature that swims on land! This is quite unscientific.”
Indeed.
Not to be taken seriously as the straight-up science fiction/action picture it aspires to be, but that said, Land Shark does have its charms.
Shark Side of the Moon (2022)
Another one from The Asylum, this stultifyingly lame sci-fi effort, is part Jaws, part Iron Sky, all stupid!
Shark Side of the Moon is a so-called “Mockbuster,” that is, a cheap and cheesy movie that capitalizes on the recognition and popularity of one or more critically-acclaimed and/or big-budget box office successes, often blatantly filching elements from the mainstream films that served as inspiration. Sometimes, this results in a charmingly silly, funny, entertaining, tongue-firmly-in-cheek, in-joke homage of sorts.
But not in this case. Not at all. Even remotely.
The title suggests an astonishingly ridiculous premise, and indeed, Shark Side of the Moon, released as a “Tubi Original” and part of the low-rent streaming service’s Bitefest, involves a colony of deadly human/shark hybrids who have established a technologically advanced colony on the moon!
Created by Soviet scientists during the Cold War, these creatures quickly escaped, but before they could wreak havoc, were lured aboard a space shuttle by one of the scientists for a one-way flight to the moon. Forty years later, American astronauts returning to the moon soon encounter these lunar shark-men, as well as the scientist—he remained aboard the shuttle as pilot—and his half-human, half-shark daughter!
The acting is shoddy and melodramatic, the dialogue inane, and the direction and editing lacklustre, with only the occasional visual effect offering a modicum of flair.
And I won’t even bother to address the film’s unforgivable misunderstanding of basic science, the dubious logic of proceedings, or the sagacity of characters’ motivations because, clearly, the screenwriters didn’t seem to think any of that particularly important, either!
Sharkula (2022)
Director Mark Polonia seems to revel in cut-rate sharksploitation projects; he tapped into the Frankenstein mythos in 2016 (see above) and here returns with a bat-shit crazy Dracula-inspired shark movie!
Set in present-day New England, in the coastal town of Arkham—a salute to Lovecraft—the story began centuries earlier. Count Dracula is chased by a “makeshift mob of uneducated farmers” to the edge of a cliff overlooking the sea, where he is stabbed. Wounded, he falls into the raging surf below and is immediately attacked by a large, blood-lusting shark. By way of “mind control,” however, the King of the Vampires succeeds in communicating with, and transferring to the shark his curse.
“If I served him, he would protect me,” Dracula explains later, as he recounts the tale to Arthur and Mina, two of the film’s leads, all of whom are named for characters in Stoker’s original novel. “We all serve someone, or something. Even the mighty Dracula!” he continues. “As those who serve me, I must serve it.”
“Sounds like a load of crap!” replies Arthur.
Precisely.
And the crap doesn’t come any more coiled and steaming than in this movie.
The writing is atrociously bad and the acting underwhelming, though a couple of cast members do strive desperately to make something more interesting of the material they’ve been given. Meanwhile, for some reason—maybe to put across a weird, cultish vibe but more likely to extend the film’s runtime—director Polonia returns often to non-sequitur shots of a leather-clad woman dancing on a beach at dusk twirling what look like flaming marshmallows on sticks!
There is really only one worthwhile thing to be found in this flick: a catchy, 1960s-style, surf-guitar piece by the Sea Demons, employed as Sharkula’s theme song.
Listen here:
Conclusion:
If you like your science fiction, horror, and shark movies cheap, cheesy, and stupid, drop your line in these waters!
All kidding aside, it’s easy to slam such efforts and poke fun, but even the most egregious examples often include a spark or two of creativity that, given more talent and money, may well have amounted to something.