Shark Week: Sharks in Venice

Hey all you wacky readers and welcome back to yet another installment of the creature feature theme of Shark Week and boy this one is a bit of a doozy.   Imagine if you combine a couple of Spielberg (Lucas not withstanding either) projects and make even less sense than possible. So grab your lost artifacts, scratch your chin with the back of your hand and get ready to dodge a shark and possibly a smooth boulder.   This is Sharks in Venice.

 

Coming for ya, Richard Dreyfuss.

There are spoilers in Venice??!!!  That is preposterous!

Nu Image Films (Cyborg Cop, Hollow Point, Shark Attack, Alien Hunter, SharkMan and S.S. Doomtrooper) has 1 in 7 chances to creating something thought provoking, captivating and entertaining.   The vibe this time around screams stinker.

  

Dr. David Franks (Stephen Baldwin of Born on the Fourth of July, The Usual Suspects, Fled, Half Baked and Scar City) an archeologist traveling with his girlfriend Laura (Vanessa Johansson of Shifted, Reservations, Day of the Dead, The Objective and Skavengers) are meeting with the Venetian police to learn what happened to his father.   I am almost certain a long dead crusading knight and a diary are involved.  They travel by boat where David swears he saw the dorsal fin of a shark but as he glances back it was gone so he dismissed it.

The hell is my line?!

Franks and a scuba expert Rossi (Ivaylo Geraskov of Death Train, In Hell, Air Strike, The Russian Specialist and Mercenary for Justice) head underwater to reach a cavern when suddenly an immense shark swims out at attacks the men.  Rossi of course is eaten and Franks barely escapes to the cave with a shoulder injury.   The cave is decked out like the underground tomb in Raiders of the Lost Ark and he has yet another close call to find this vast treasure hoard.  Pocketing a brooch of gold and emerald he heads back to be hospitalized for the end of Act 1.   Seriously the wounds heal up is worthy of Wolverine.  Not goofy enough for ya, yet?   Well why don’t we throw in the Mafia demanding Franks’ undivided loyalty to fetch the treasure or they put two in Laura’s coconut?

Here are just a few of the many things that will annoy even the most average history buff.    Franks goes to his father’s apartment to investigate his death saying the 8^th Crusade was financed by Louis the XIV.  That particular crusade was conceived in 1270 three hundred years PRIOR the fair king’s birth.  Somehow the crusaders conquered Crete even though the island was under Venetian rule for more than 70 years.    Solomon’s hoard was brought to Venice on a Spanish Galleon???!!!!  A sea barring vessel 300 years in the future made a time jump to the past???!!   Sounds like a time traveling McGuffin or possibly a kooky Timelord with a quantum generator, a pot noodle and a series of rubber bands.  

Ah  Bulgaria..er..um...Venice I mean.

Worry not readers there are continuity goofs too.   Apparently 2^nd Unit Director was allowed all of two streets for a chase scene shot from different angles but you can easily realize how these streets look familiar.   Laura is hauled off in handcuffs by the Mafia goons and then in the cutaway she has rope wrapped around her wrists.  Franks gets his leg bitten off in the first scene and yet it magically appears in the next scene.   Whiskey Tango Foxtrot??!!!!   

  Save your brain cells, eyes and money folks.   This one is NOT a keeper.  Oh final FYI; we see the shark (Title creature) very few times throughout this movie but thank God for that Mafia link or we might have gotten bored.

Shark Week: Sharknado

Welcome back my readers to the absurd collection of tripe that is Shark Week.  For those just tuning in I am not referring to the informative and entertaining Discovery Channel week.  Oh no, this is the bottom rung of cinema shark movies that have such a farfetched plot device that you need a rod and reel to haul it back to some sense of reality.  But hey buck up!  They can’t all be THAT bad.   So grab yourself some goobers, a savory soft drink and relax in the easy chair.   This is Sharknado.

Hehe hides my woody.

Spoilers be in the water. Our spoilers.

From the collective asshats of Asylum Pictures (Transmorphers, The Terminators, Almighty Thor, Sherlock Holmes) comes a preposterous notion of a hurricane and from the CGI standing has to be a class 4 or 5, scoops up a wide variety of sharks from the sea and somehow hurls them about L.A.   SUSPEND DISBELIEF AND SCREW PHYSICS!!!!!   Now for those of you that may feel we are off to a very rocky start…well we are.  The Mockbusters have been difficult for me to digest as they take popular movies and make an even worse one. 

Do not bring your evil here.

Our movie opens with a shark fin soup connoisseur (Marcus Choi of Enchanted, Make Yourself at Home, Raising Hope, 40 Days and Nights and Graceland) and salty dog Captain Santtiago (Israel Saez de Miguel of Venom, Five, Green Card, Black Rice and Rise of the Dinosaurs) conclude a million dollar purchase of sharks as a giant hurricane (not a tornado) that proceeds to gobble up different species of shark and chuck them at 150 mph off the coast of Mexico and into Southern California.  Sharks come tumbling in buildings, bars, homes and around regions of Santa Monica without killing them outright from the sheer impact, speed and velocity they were traveling at.  SCREW PHYSICS!!!!!!

Eat it boy, eat it!

Our would be hero  surfer and bar owner Fin (Ian Ziering of Beverly Hills, 90210) whose Zen philosophy has him totally in tune with the waves points out the fast paced weather is not normal in that regards.  Like the calm seas and clear skies going suddenly cloudy and storm brewing.  Fin’s main earner Nova (Cassie Scerbo of Bring It On: In It to Win It, Dance Revolution, Make It or Break It and Teen Spirit) hold a secret loathing for sharks and her gill shaped scar indicates.  Looks like she was getting a wax with a cheese grater but no other portion of her leg or body had scar damage.  Oops.  One such homeowner is startled by the arrival of said shark April (Tara Reid of The Big Lebowski, American Pie, Van Wilder and Alone in the Dark) gets her living room up to about 4 feet of water and yet the swells managed to miss her front porch/ parking garage. Hmmm… oh right I forgot.  SUSPEND DISBELIEF!!!!

Tara over me? As if.

Okay just a few side notes on the film.  Given how laid back the Southern Californian is I had a bit of a difficult time buying them rallying and beating back the sharks.   Tossing a bomb from a helicopter to stop a hurricane seems logical too.  Oh did I mention John Heard (On the Yard, Heart Beat, Cutter’s Way, Home Alone and In the Line of Fire) in this as well?  Playing a rummy former surfer he belches his lines and sways.  

Oh weather is calm for a matter of 3 frames per second and then the skies darken like Gozer the Sumerian had arrived.  Continuity was not a big issue for this flick as streets varies on being bone dry one minute and then flooded the next. Oh and apparently Santa Monica beach houses have their own gyroscopic mounts or anti-gravity units because I didn’t see a single swell wipe them out…

Shark Week: Super Shark

Hello one and all and welcome to Shark Week: Bad Cinema Style.   This week will be reviewing the particular conglomerate of straight-to-DVD movies.  We will laugh, cry, curse and praise God that they are finally over and go out for a sensible meal.   So with that in mind let’s get this rodeo started from the title alone we are in for a world of hurt.  So grab your oxygen tank, prep your M-1 Garand and tell that fishy to smile you sonvua… This is Super Shark.

 

Screw you, physics!

Spoilers fly!!!

From the warped mind of Jiggly Girl exploitation be it sci-fi, horror or creature feature; Roger Corman’s protégé Fred Olen Ray (Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers, Venomous, Tomb of the Werewolf, The Bikini Escort, Solar Flare and Dire Wolf) dregs up from the salty depths of the ocean, YET ANOTHER prehistoric shark known primarily as the Megalodon due YET ANOTHER underwater oil rig drilling platform and releases and/or disturbs this ancient eating machine the size of two blue whales into a killing frenzy.   Relatively certain sonar would have picked that particular beasty up but hey we don’t need crazy things like logic and physics in our shark movie.

    

Think green ya jerks!

After ruthless Lex Luthor archetype Roger Wade (John Schneider of Dukes of Hazzard, Loving, Smallville, Lake Placid 2, Shark Swarm and Return of the Killer Schrews) finds his oil rig in tatters he gets violent and belligerent to all around him including his hapless comedic sidekick Stewart (Jerry Lacy of As the World Turns, The Young and the Restless, Dark Shadows, Play It Again, Sam, Chicken Soup for the Soul and Hatfields and McCoys: Bad Blood) screaming about the millions tied up in the investments and blah blah blah.    Meanwhile Marine Biologist Kat Carmichael (Sarah Lieving of The Hitchhiker remake, Cult, Carbon Copy, Lakeview Terrace, The Dunwich Horror and Mega Shark vs Crocosaurus) notices some vicious sea creature attacks in her findings that are previously unrecorded.  She will be our Matt Hooper archetype and try not to ignore her or she may swim up and bite you on the ass.  

Pretty sure my boy Clark will have this under wraps.

Of course this all takes place during a Fourth of July weekend so the beaches are packed with tourists, students and in general drunken yahoos.   Now come and suspend disbelief with me when we find out this shark can battle the humans on the land, the sea and even…the air.   Super Shark was not dropped in a self contained space ark created by Marlon Brando but appears to be a mutation or dare we say evolution in the species.   You will believe a shark can fly!!!  Well actually you will be more like myself in the many WTF moments this film projects.   Nigh invulnerable to bullets, bombs and other CGI vehicles this reign of terror shows no end in sight during the “Queen of the Beach” wrap party.   Oh and feel free to slap the DJ Dynamite Stevens (J.J. Walker of Good Times, Airplane, At Ease, Water and The Guyver) just for being in this turkey.  

The CGI is appalling with the exception of the underwater scenes,  our flying shark effects made me cough and choke on my sandwich as I viewed it and frankly the performances look very laxed.   Again if we were expecting anything but cheesy from a Fred Olen Ray film; then we clearly need to hang around more to the evolutionary bell curve and develop thumbs and brain cells.  Truly a Mystery Science Theater 3000 worthy material for mocking but do not view this film directly or you will have the IQ of a state senator or quite possibly a fairly smart cocker spaniel.

Git in ma belly!!!