I was asked to review the Twilight movies and I’ve decided not to do it at this time. The reason I don’t is three-fold: First, Twilight has been bashed a lot. I’m not saying it doesn’t deserve it, but there is such a thing as market saturation. Secondly, there are so many bad movies to do that I can push Twilight to the back burner (or into the freezer, if you will) and still have plenty of product to work with. And thirdly, I am not in posession of the Twilight movies and have not had the opportunity to watch them. I could easily get them from Netflix, but I don’t feel like putting them in my queue at this time.
I take the request as a compliment, though. I can make all kinds of jokes about how it would be torture and the like (and it probably would be) but by the same token I feel that the request was made in part out of respect about my opinions and writing.
So there you have it. I may do Twilight in the future, but not right now.
But please, continue giving me requests. I have a pretty good library of bad movies, so if you hit on one that I have, I just might do it.
Horror, Rated R for nudity, language and bloody violence.
Available on Netflix for streaming or DVD, distributed by The Asylum.
98 minutes
“If I was falling and you held up a poster of that movie, that would be the thing that would distract me enough to miss the ground and fly.” – My daughter
It’s not hard to imagine the plot for this movie based on the title, but I don’t think the makers were worried about being confusing about what the movie is about. A marine biology professor heads a summer class on a boat to teach practical marine biology. A two-headed shark begins picking off students left and right (at once!) as the class tries to survive.
In the opening scenes in the movie we see a boat pulling two buxom young ladies on water skis. Everybody is having a good time and one guy is recording video. A giant, two-headed shark comes from behind and in one bite from each mouth devours both our lovely ladies. This happens while the three people on the boat just happen to glance away during the attack. The shark then proceeds to make kindling out of the boat in one lunge and then eats all aboard with lots of jump cuts involving teeth crunching on people and lots of red coloring in the water. This is a BIG shark. Keep this in mind later on.
The movie cuts to the boat where most of the college students are acting like high school juniors laughing and tossing around a beach ball. The teacher, played by Charlie O’Connell, interrupts the festive atmosphere by talking about a sextant as if he’s continuing a lecture that started ten minutes ago. You can see here how the dialog is going to go through the rest of the movie. (Charlie O’Connell is the younger brother of Jerry O’Connell.)
Dramatis Personae: Cole, a self-centered guy who only cares about what his body looks like played by Geoff Ward (you should read his bio on IMDB (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1408784/bio); it’s hilarious). Paul, a know-it-all who is bringing up facts all through the movie and seems to know more than the teacher. I’m a geek and can get pedantic at times, but this guy makes me look almost normal. Kate, a smart lady who’s afraid of the water who is in the class to get over her phobia. Michelle, a stereotype angry black woman. There’s Lindsey, an uptight, nervous woman who has a minor panic attack when something isn’t going her way. There are other characters, but they’re pretty much filler and background scenery. They don’t factor into moving the plot forward very much. This includes the top billed actor, Carmen Electra, who plays Charlie O’Donnel’s wife.
Although the ship is actually run by Laura, Charlie O’Connell’s character (Professor Babish) is called the captain. The ship is crewed by a pair of non-English speaking men who seem to be able to understand English, at least sometimes.
The students are complaining that they signed up for a semester of partying, not learning when the boat gets hit by something. A couple of students look over the side and start screaming hysterically at the body of a shark. Paul, the know-it-all, tells everybody that it’s a big-mouth shark. The professor grabs the shark with a boat hook whereupon it gets sucked into the propellers and damages the hull.
Did you ever think that sharks could roar? If you said that you didn’t, don’t feel bad because they don’t. Except the two-headed one in this movie. It makes more noise than the T. Rex did in Jurassic Park.
Laura tries talking to the coast guard, but for some unknown reason the antenna gets bent all by itself until it breaks. The closest the shark has gotten to it is when it ate the shark that was clogging the props. So there goes communications. I guess they had to figure out someway to kill the radio, but a self-breaking antenna?
The students go to a small atoll to look for scrap metal for repairs. In the meantime Laura goes underwater to repair the hull. She waves a torch in front of the camera as if to get a “boat’s-eye-view” of the welding when she gets attacked and devoured by our antagonist, leaving only a disembodied hand. The shark then rams the boat. This is a big fish.
They explore the island and discover the carcass of some sort of fish on the shore of the island. Upon our professor declaring it to be the victim of a feeding frenzy, uptight Lindsey gets all uptight even though she’s out of reach of any shark. (At least for the moment.) Like I said, anything that’s not in her favor makes her get panicky and worried.
Our class comes across an abandoned fishing village where they look around before breaking up to explore the rest of the island to find scrap metal.
We shift to a guy and two girls, The guy convinces the girls to remove their tops (this is all the nudity in the movie) and they run into the water where they’re at most chest-deep in the water. For those into it, there’s a little girl-on-girl kissing but this is about the raciest the movie gets. While frolicking in the water the girls get attacked by the shark, the one that eats people whole, in water that’s at most four feet deep. It attacks completely submerged, without even the dorsal fin showing above the water. Our shark can magically change size! And it changes size according to circumstances. Instead of being scary it’s becomes comical. The girls stand in the water, shuddering and spitting up fake blood before they’re dragged under the water. The guy runs for shore but not fast enough because our huge, yet small shark pulls him under and chews him up.
So far, not counting the five people at the beginning of the movie, our shark had devoured one big-mouthed shark that was stuck in the propellers and four people in the space of maybe two or three hours. This is one ravenous beast. Where does he put all this food?
Our remaining cast gets back together at the abandoned village and look in the buildings. Lindsey, our nervous Nellie, picks up various items and examines them like she’s shopping in a thrift store. She picks up a funnel and finds a revolver which, without any reaction from her, is placed in her purse. As the gun is revealed, an ominous chord is struck in the soundtrack.
Meanwhile, our intrepid Professor and some of the students go off and find a pier with two motor boats. They debate whether or not it’s worth the trouble to put the engines into working order. Kate, our smart one, says that they’re not big enough to hold everybody and the professor says, “Two boats are better than none!” Did they forget the dinghy they came to the island on? It’s at this time that the island suffers an earthquake. The earthquake causes our professor to fall and get cut on his calf. He can barely walk when the cut looks no worse than than one might get falling off a bike. I’ve seen more blood from a scalp wound. He acts like this is tantamount to a broken leg in terms of pain. Over act much?
Two of the students put him in the dinghy and take him to the boat. He moans and groans and carries on like he’s got bone sticking out of the wound (which he doesn’t.) The two crewmen, who can’t speak English, discover that the captain is missing. The two boys who took the professor to the boat return to the island but one decides to make a detour because he sees something bobbing in the water. It turns out it’s the captain’s severed hand and as he reaches out to pick it up the shark comes out of the water and proceeds to kill both boys and shred the inflatable boat. The professor and his wife (uninspiringly played by Carmen Electra) see the attack and now we have witnesses. We also get to see the “real” shark for the first time, basically a huge puppet that shows just the teeth and part of one of the heads of the shark.
Meanwhile, back at the island, Kate has fixed the boats and some of the others have found barrel of gas to power the engines. Cole, our muscle-bound idiot, starts a boat and, with a couple of students, heads on out to the main boat followed shortly by Kate with a few others in the other boat.
Cut to the main boat and the professor notices that the island is sinking, apparently causing the instability which made him hurt his leg. Carmen Electra yells impotently at the boats coming over, trying to get them to get out of the water. There are still about five students left on the island, including Nervous Nellie and Angry Black Girl and they watch the two boats race to the main boat. Professor yells feebly, “Shark, shark!” The shark bumps Cole’s boat and knocks over one of the students who gets a leg ripped off by the shark followed by a munching of the rest of him. Everybody on the main boat (the Sea King), Kate’s boat and on the island witness this.
The shark goes after Cole’s boat and Mr. Know-It-All, who is on Kate’s boat, figures out that the shark is going after it because their motor is louder. Cole sees this and jumps out and the shark continues on to the noisy boat and proceeds to destroy the boat and eats the two students on that boat.
For some stupid reason, everbody on the Sea King comes over on an inflatable dinghy just like the one that got shredded. I mean the island is sinking.
So in order to distract the shark so they can get back to the Sea King they use a generator on the island to electrify a metal net in the water. Cole and Kate head to the Sea King to repair it so they can get the hell out of Dodge. Amazingly, the contraption works.
Kate, who is afraid of the water, who doesn’t know how to scuba dive, who has never welded anything underwater, jumps over to fix the boat.
The shark rams the electrified net, causing two more students to fall into the water and get eaten. Damn, this shark eats more than a food addict at McDonald’s!
Now that there’s no electric net in the water to confuse the shark, it heads towards the Sea King. Cole starts the boat and leaves Kate alone in the water. Kate swims back to the island and the shark goes after the boat. It rams the boat, causing cracks in the hull and the boat starts sinking. In a panic Cole tries to call on the broken radio. He spots another rubber raft on the boat and uses that to save himself from the sinking ship. Predictably, the shark attacks the rubber boat and eats Cole. And there was much rejoicing.
The island’s instability increases and the earth starts quaking continually. The shark starts ramming the island. Yes, you heard that right. Why? I don’t know. (Third base!) Oh, and the professor is running around as if nothing had happened to his leg.
The professor and his wife get separated from the rest of the people, end up on the beach where a huge wave sweeps over them while they kiss in knowledge of their shared demise. How romantic. NOT!
The island continues to sink and they go into a makeshift chapel to try to escape the shark. The shark rams the door down and comes into the building. Of course blood is spurted everywhere as students are taken down, but some escape out a window. Now there are just three students left. The students find the gas barrel floating around and they devise a plan to blow up the shark with the gas barrel. Kate swims out to try to attract the shark so she can lead it to the barrel. The other two students franticly try to light the fuse. The shark attacks Kate and she gets stuck between the two heads which is probably the safest place to be. The other girl sacrifices herself and manages to light the fuse and the barrel blows up, taking one head with it.
Kate and Paul get to the remaining boat and Kate sends it off, getting the shark to follow it. The shark bites the engine, it blows up (really?) and the shark is dead. So Kate and Paul are stuck on the island, but a rescue helicopter shows up because the Sea King had a transponder that activated when it sank.
So let’s get down to brass tacks here. The movie has bad dialog, bad cinematography, bad continuity, bad acting, bad CGI, etc. In short, it’s a bad movie. The characters rarely use each others names except at the very beginning but sometimes they fly by so fast you don’t catch them and it’s sometimes hard to tell who is talking about whom.
But for all this suckage, the movie isn’t as bad as it could have been. According to IMDB’s trivia section, the shark’s second head was supposed to mounted on the forehead of the first head. Somebody managed to convince the producers not to do it this way. Yes, it could have been worse.
However, this is a movie that’s bad enough to be fun to watch. If you like bad movies, you should enjoy yourself while laughing at how ridiculous this whole movie is. I had a lot of fun watching this, even the second time around for this review. If you don’t like really movies that are so stupid they’re funny then keep away. Otherwise you’l enjoy this.
This blog, as you can imagine from the title, is about bad movies. Bad movies have been around almost since the Lumiere brothers first projected movies onto a screen in the 1890’s, so you’ll be seeing reviews of movies from the entire era of film making, not just the latest ones. I’ll be skewering some sacred cows as well. I’ll be trying to put up at least one review each month and see where that goes. I’ll also throw in some good movies as well because I do like talking about the good ones just as much as the bad ones.
So what is a bad movie? That’s a pretty tough question to answer in a few lines. Some movies are bad because of awful or silly plots, some are bad because of horrible effects, some are bad because of stupid dialog. Some bad movies are fun to watch while others are pure torture.
Of course, this is all just opinion. What I consider bad others will consider good.
Any suggestions of future reviews will be gladly considered.
The Bad Movie Critic 