I decided to dedicate this blog
entry to some sharksploitation flicks I’ve never seen before. I posted them in the order I watched them
instead of alphabetically…
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House Shark OK
Forget fearing sharks in the water. Now they can attack you in your home! What will they think of next for those toothy
aquatic predators? There hasn’t been a
clown shark yet. At least that I’ve
seen. This film does contain stock
characters as well as several parodic moments (unfunny at that), but I don’t
think you’re supposed to take a movie called House Shark or any of these types of films seriously. So was it entertaining? Kind of.
Sometimes. Enough. I don’t know.
Did it need to be 112 minutes?
Nope, nope, nope! You do get to
see the shark and to call it corny would be an understatement, but it is practical
(a huge plus for me) and seems to be part of the film’s overall eccentric
charm. Other plusses include good use of
color when showing the shark’s POV and some clever homages to Jaws, particularly in regards to the
first death in Spielberg’s blockbuster.
There is gore too, for those that may care. [If there happens to be a chance you haven’t
seen Jaws, I suggest you do
beforehand in order to get the references, and if you haven’t, I don’t know what kind of sheltered existence
you’ve been living in, or what the hell you’ve been waiting for!]. 4/2/2020
Super Shark B
Here we have a shark that can fly and walk on land with its
fins. It’s also really large. It appeared from underneath the ocean floor
after an oil rig incident and is once suggested to be a megalodon. [The plot bears a lot of similarities to The Meg, even though this preceded that
Jason Statham feature by 7 years, and if you thought The Meg was bad…]. It’s also
CGI. Not the worst I’ve seen, but that’s
not saying much given how much I hate CGI.
None of the kills were noteworthy nor any fun and there were numerous
ancillary characters being chomped on in between all the garrulous mumbo jumbo. I mean, I don’t expect these sharksploitation
movies to be masterpieces, but I still hope they’d be fun or at least
so-bad-they’re-good, and this one was neither.
Super Shark isn’t so
super. At all! 4/3/2020
Blue Demon B
Here’s a shark movie from 2004 that somehow bypassed my
“shark-movie loving” radar. I thought
perhaps maybe it has alternate titles and I saw it while called something else. I only say that because it has happened
before with these generally subpar creature features often playing on the SYFY
channel where I ended up watching the same movie with a different title. I didn’t recall any of this while watching
though and of course there’s a high chance I completely forgot about it because
it was so awful. Basically, a group of
scientists attempt to create a defense against terrorism in the form of sharks
and, naturally, said sharks escape the testing ground and feed on any poor
souls they come across. The attacks are
lame as well as predictable, there’s far too much loquaciousness overall, and
there’s a cheesy romantic subplot to boot.
I wish this would’ve stayed past my “shark-movie loving” radar because
said radar always suckers me in to any shark movie whether I think it’ll be bad
or not. 4/3/2020
Bad CGI Sharks B/EH
Promo art for this film contains a quote stating “the
ultimate answer to all those bad shark movies.”
If only that statement were actually true! There’s a clip in the beginning of a slasher
spoof with the shark as the killer and, sadly, that was the best part of the
movie. Fourth-wall breaking has become
old hat and often unamusing, even for parodies.
Parodies themselves have become old hat.
I think this is supposed to be a parody of sharksploitation films, at
least the title is very forthright in pointing out the primary fault of the
subgenre, but it was really just a story about two estranged brothers
reconnecting while a shark movie script they wrote as kids comes to life (a
similar concept was done better in another sharksploitation film called Santa Jaws). The entire film plays out on land, mind you,
even when the story concludes at the beach.
The primary CGI shark isn’t even that bad either and might’ve actually
been passable in an actual sharksploitation movie. The shark wasn’t given enough screen time nor
much to do (mostly just floating in the air), in addition to the only other
three CGI sharks that were cute cartoony types.
The aforementioned promo art features a giant shark eating a freeway in
the city---now that would’ve been fun to watch!
The solution was so obvious and I thought someone would’ve brought
attention to it much sooner than the ending.
Also, the “twist” at the end, if it even was a twist, was blatant right
away. I understand these types of movies
aren’t intended to be taken seriously (this film supposedly being a parody of
those films), but I can’t play along if I’m not having fun. There are so many ways this concept could’ve
been utilized amusingly, such as the giant shark eating the freeway, but the
film is ultimately just an empty waste. 4/3/2020
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If I were to tell you to waste your time with any of them, I’d say go for House Shark, but of course I’d tell you to just watch or re-watch better shark movies instead, like Jaws, The Shallows, 47 Meters Down, Bait, Open Water, The Reef, Deep Blue Sea (now there’s a movie where CGI sharks are done acceptably!), and I’m sure there’s more…
---Sean O.
4/4/2020
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