Seal Team (2021)

It's April Fool's Day again, and in that spirit, I'm doing a post on something outside the norm for the site as more of a joke. The thing is here, while this is a joke post, it also gets Dolph Lundgren another tag, so even when we're not serious, he adds to his record-holding number at the DTVC.

Seal Team is about some seals off the coast of South Africa--which explains why they look more like American sea lions, but anyway--who need to find some fish, but the problem is the sharks in the water are preventing that. When rogue seal Quinn strikes out on his own, his friend Benji joins him, and subsequently gets eaten by a shark--perfect for a kids movie, right? Quinn wants he and his fellow seals to get out from under the fin of these scary sea monsters, so he enlists the aid of a walrus--or maybe he's a seal with a mustache?--named Claggart (JK Simmons), who used to be a part of a military program where he, another seal, and a dolphin (Dolph Lundgren) helped find and defuse bombs. Now he's going to train Quinn and some other seals so they can fight back against these scary sharks.

While I understand that I am in no way the target demographic for this film, after watching it I couldn't figure out who was. When the friend Benji is eaten by the shark, it happens off-screen, so I thought maybe he just disappeared and he'd come back at the end. Oh no, the shark ate him. Wait what? And this is for kids? As you can see above, Dolph's character smokes a cigar, which is great for us as adults, but again, smoking cigars in a kids movie? But it's not an adult movie either, the comedy is the crazy over-the-top (Stallone-style) kind that wouldn't work for an adult; yet it also tries to have things for adults like Seal--yes, the singer, Seal--whose hits would've been before a lot of the parents of the kids watching this listened to popular music, other than maybe the song from Batman Forever, so his inclusion would be for the older uncle like me who drew babysitting duty? Same with the "jump the shark" joke they made. The other interesting thing is it was made for the big screen, and on the small screen as a streamer on Netflix, the fast moving chases scenes and other action moments didn't translate as well, and I think also would've made it tougher for younger audiences to keep up. The thing is, this isn't horrible, it's not some kind of train wreck thing, it's just that tonally I don't know if it has a proper identity or knows who the target audience is.

We got another Dolph bait-and-switch here. Not as egregious as Ambushed, but the fact that Dolph was only doing voicework does make it particularly galling. He's in at the very beginning, and at the very end, and that's it--yet that was enough for him to get his own title card before the credits? When I first got wind of this, I knew I would have to watch it because it has Dolph, and considering it was direct to Netflix here in the States, I figured I'd need to review it as well, so April Fool's Day seemed like the best place to put it; but when I actually got stuck in on it, the reality set in that I was going to be watching a 100-minute cartoon that technically was supposed to be for kids. I'm not one of those types who's like "oh yeah, Finding Nemo has a lot of stuff for adults in it too!" My Dinner with Andre that I reviewed last year for April Fools is more my speed; but we have this mission that we've been on since we started the site to get all of Dolph's direct to video films--and even some theatrical films--reviewed on here, so here we are, in the interests trying to complete this thing we've started. As an aside, I really like old Looney Tunes and Hanna-Barbera cartoons, so it's not like I'm a total stick in the mud, but for whatever reason this new type of comedy in kids' cartoons doesn't work for me,

This was a South African production, and as such, I think there were some areas where culturally they didn't know where we are in the US in terms of certain language. The best example of this was the word "stupid." This is not only a word that's not used around kids anymore, but they're taught from a young age that it's not a nice thing to say. And this isn't a new thing, I remember when my nephew was between 3 and 5 in the late 2000s/early 2010s, he'd say "that person said the 'S' word." It doesn't mean it's censored out on popular media like say another "S" word, "shit," but no one making a movie for kids in America would use that word in their script, especially not as often as this film does. The thing is though, if you're not culturally up on that here in the States, you'd have no idea. It's another way though that this film doesn't make any sense, because I'm surprised Netflix, whose executives would be up on that, and probably are teaching their children not to call people "stupid," wouldn't have asked them to fix that if they wanted it available on their site as appropriate for kids. Maybe they didn't bother watching it first?

As I mentioned above, one of the seals is voiced by Seal, who performs on some kind of stage for other seals. I appreciated it as someone who likes his music, but part of me thought it was a reference that I'm not sure many people watching this would've gotten. On the other hand, parents are having kids older now, so there are more people my age that have kids in this target demo--if this is even the proper demo, because I don't know if I'd show this to a 7-year-old. To be too young to get the Seal reference would've put them as being born in the mid-to-late 80s, and I don't know how many people in that age group have kids that were born in the early 2010s. I think even some of those older Millennial parents may only remember "Kiss from a Rose" though, which was everywhere in 1995. I tried listening to it for this review, and couldn't, because I still had, as the Germans say, my nose full of it from when it was played twice an hour on every radio station almost 20 years ago. At least this movie, when it did use a Seal song, went with "Crazy," which wasn't as ubiquitous when it took off and gave me a nice sense of nostalgia.

Even as an April Fool's post, I wanted to give Dolph his second paragraph. This is now 71 films for him, which makes him 12 clear of Gary Daniels, who has the second-most films, but also, unlike Daniels, Dolph's recent output been more robust. Since 2021, Dolph has had 9 DTV flicks come out, compared to Daniels's 4, of which one, Law of Destiny, I can't find on streaming in the States. So not only will Dolph be number one all-time for the foreseeable future, but the margin between him and second place will probably grow, to the point that maybe no one catches him. On top of that, he's combining DTV efforts with big screen efforts like Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, Expend4bles, and his highest grossing film ever, Minions: The Rise of Gru. We could make the case that this is a cheap tag for Dolph, because he's only doing voice work, and his character is barely in it at all, but Daniels also has his share of tags for very small parts, like in Final Impact. Essentially it all works out and everyone gets the tags they should. 

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can get this on Netflix. I honestly don't know if this is good for kids. It's definitely not good for adults. That just leaves Dolph completists, and something like this would be for the highest level completists--and if you're at that level, this won't be an easy sit.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8456190

And my newest novel, Don's House in the Mountains, is available now on Amazon! Click the image to buy.

Night of the Sharks (1988)

With Treat Williams passing away recently, I wanted to do a post in honor of him, and saw this on Tubi and thought it would be great. I also discussed this one with Ty and Brett from Comeuppance on their podcast episode that they did in honor of Treat, so you should check that out. In addition to us, Mitch from the Video Vacuum has covered this as well.

Night of the Sharks has Treat as a guy living on the beach in Mexico with his buddy Antonio Fargas. They live a nice life, taking people out on fishing tours, but there's this shark, Cyclops, who has been killing people and causing issues. He wants to take Cyclops out, but he's derailed by his brother, who has blackmailed some bad people by taping their phone conversations. He sends Treat the tapes, and plans to meet him in Mexico with some diamonds he stole, but the baddies blow up the plane when it lands. So now he has baddies to contend with, a killer shark named Cyclops, plus some diamonds underwater among the plane wreckage that could set him up for life. Of course Treat can handle it.

This was fun for sure, but it was also an interesting film, because it felt like something you'd have seen Robert Ginty in: Italian production, shot in a tropical local, a mish-mash of things from international intrigue action to killer sharks, with a dash of Christopher Connelly, this was made for Ginty. But then we throw in Treat instead, and it gives the whole thing a unique flavor, the kind of twist on a classic that a restaurant would be known for, while other restaurants would try to replicate it on their menus, but not get it quite right. Add in Antonio Fargas as the guy who, on some levels seems like he's always getting into stuff, but is more partner to Treat than just reprising his Huggy Bear character from Starsky and Hutch, which it turned out was something we needed when this film turns into a straight-up actioner in the last half-hour. It's an alchemy between the plot, production, and cast that just works well, and I don't know if it could be recreated with different parts.

We last saw Treat in 2021, when we covered the Mark Dacascos film Operation Rogue, which was more recent than I thought, because this is only his fifth film on the site overall, and the last time before 2021 was 2007 when we covered Gale Force. That's the thing with Treat, he did do some DTV stuff, but he also did TV movies, TV shows, and supporting parts or lead parts in big screen films, so with someone who does that kind of variety, we tend to not see them as much on the site as someone who is more a hardcore DTV'er. He does have some stuff like this though that we could do, we just need to get to it. This film reminds me of why we need more of him, because he brings that unique element to the proceedings. He looks the part of the leading man, but is a little more clean-cut--even when he's playing a beach bum like he is here--a little more well-spoken, has that upper-crust Connecticut breeding, so when he's inserted into something like this, or the Substitute films, it gives it a flavor that takes us out of the ordinary that we expect from the usual DTV 80s Italian production. Here's to you Treat, you were one of the greats, and we'll miss you.

Still with us is Antonio Fargas, and he's great here as Treat's partner in crime. When I went to tag him for this, it seemed off that I hadn't done any of his films before on the site, and it turned out this is his third film here, after Shakedown and Extreme Honor--how did I miss that he was in that! I think for him, he was trying to escape the shadow of Huggy Bear, but then later embraced it, and I get it: at first it made it hard for him to get work, and then later it became the thing that got him work. I remember some time ago ESPN did a feature on his son, who played for USC, because he and his friends were bringing the 70s look back evoking images of his father from Starsky and Hutch. I think his son ended up playing for the Raiders, but I'm not sure--and I guess I could look it up, but that's not what's important, I think it was just how cool it was to see his son celebrate his father's career like that. Fargas is still working, so I think, like Treat, we just need to get more of his stuff on here.

Someone else who's no longer with us is Christopher Connelly, and this film has the distinction of being his final movie. Unlike Treat, who's bringing something unique to the proceedings, or Fargas, who's giving us something more than the Huggy Bear we might be expecting from his role, Connelly is giving us exactly what we expect from seeing him in this Italian low-budget production. He's the anchor that reminds us what we're watching and where we are, the taste in the restaurant's twist on a classic dish that we look for, recognize, and appreciate. Because his life ended in the late 80s, we don't have many more films of his we can do, as he did most of his work in the pre-video age, but he is one of the greats, and one we love to celebrate here. While this is meant to be Treat's post, I think we can do a small here's to you Christopher Connelly, you were one of the greats as well.

Finally, this is our first shark movie since I tried doing a shark month back in 2020, and it didn't do so hot. Even the Dolph film we reviewed, Shark Lake, didn't get the views a Dolph film usually gets, and Sharknado 3 did the worst of any posts we've done since we came back from hiatus in late 2019. Like many things, I think people are sharked out (couldn't believe "sharked" wasn't flagged as not in the dictionary!), which is interesting, because this came out in the late 80s where there was an attempt to cash in on the Jaws thing that had probably run its course with how bad Jaws: The Revenge was; but we were in a new video store age, and if you could get movies with sharks on the video store shelves, people looking for more Jaws might rent them. Now we're in the streaming age, and sharks are used the same way to get us to choose something on our virtual video store shelves, but the thing is they can be pumped out much more quickly. Just type in the word "shark" on Tubi, and myriad results appear. I could literally do a "Shark Month" where I review a new shark movie every day in August. I won't do that, considering three Shark movies in the month of August were too much for everyone, I imagine 31 would have people saying "that's okay Matt, I was going to take a month off from your site anyway." The other thing though is the energy in '88 was different than it is in 2023. Sure, the cynicism is probably there--let's add sharks to this movie and it'll sell in America!--but there isn't the whole ironic, we're in on the joke thing we get today, which is what I think has everyone so tired of it all. There's something about a film like this that works in ways modern ones don't, but what's great is, in among all those modern shark flicks on Tubi, this is there too, which is fantastic.

And with that, let's wrap this up. As I mentioned, here in the States you can get this on Tubi. The version isn't the best--you can see from the images that it's close to a YouTube upload in quality--but it does what you need it to. And if you haven't yet, you can find the episode on Treat I did with the guys from Comeuppance over on their podcast--which you should be subscribed to if you're not already! Treat will be missed for sure, but he left behind some great stuff, this film among that.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100273

And if you haven't yet, check out my new novel, Holtman Arms, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

Shark Lake (2015)

With the third and final review of our own Shark Week celebration, what better one to do than a Dolph shark attack flick? Technically he's done two shark films, as he had a small role in Sharknado 5, but I figured it was better to do a Dolph featured flick instead. Let's see how Dolph's foray into the shark attack film went.

Shark Lake has Dolph as an illegal animal smuggler who gets busted and sent to prison. At the same time, Sara Malakul Lane, the cop who brings him in, is caring for his daughter--essentially taking his daughter from him?--and when he gets out she's not happy--because she's afraid she's going to lose a child that's not hers? Anyway, at the same time, we have some animal attacks near the lake, and they seem too aquatic to be a bear. Could it be a shark? When Dolph film mainstay James Chalke (I wonder if we should start tagging him?) shows up looking for the shark Dolph was supposed to deliver to him, we're able to put two-and-two together. Now the question is, can Lane figure out that Dolph's here to help him, and that his daughter isn't her daughter, in time to save the town from the shark in the lake?

I don't know exactly where to go with this one. The Dolph in a shark film novelty is mitigated some by the fact that he's not in it as much as Lane is--Lane is more the protagonist driving this, even if she has this unhealthy mom obsession with Dolph's daughter--more on that later. The problem we're seeing in a lot of these movies is, if Dolph's not in it much, when he's there he steals the show, and it's not always easy to keep the material compelling when he's not. Some films make it work, others suffer for it, and I think this was more of the latter. The other thing was that Lane's character, because she's playing mama bear to a cub that isn't hers, and is also keeping said cub away from its real papa bear, it makes her character less worthy of our buy-in, which is something we need to get us over the hump when Dolph's not there.

This is now 55 for Dolph. The 60 Club is within sight, and considering we have so many from the 2010s that I haven't done on the site yet, we know it's just a matter of time. It's fitting that he got a shark film like this under his belt, and was able to check off that "wrestled foam shark" box off his acting bucket list. Dolph actually ticks a lot of boxes, doesn't he? Marvel character? Check. Kids toy/cartoon character? Check. DC Universe? Check. Zombie flick? Check. Bond movie? Check. I could keep going, but I think the only box he hasn't checked is Lifetime movie, so when we get Gary Daniels into the 50 Club with him, that will be one area where Daniels has him. Come on David DeCoteau and Vivica A. Fox, get Dolph in one of your "Wrong" movies!

We last saw Sara Malakul Lane in the two Kickboxer reboots/sequels, where she also played a cop, but was more cop in the first one and more damsel in distress in the second. She's all cop here, but I think, as I mentioned above, the "keeping Dolph's daughter away from him when I'm not even her mother and just grabbed this kid because her dad was going to prison" element didn't come off well. If instead she was taking care of the child out of the kindness of her heart, and then it was more voluntary about the child staying or Dolph wanting her to stay, it would have played better. What that did was made it play out more like a Lifetime movie where a woman who can't have kids obsesses over someone else's and tries to take over as the mom, and the real mom has to kill her in the end--maybe "The Wrong Mom" for a title. We needed her to be someone we could fully buy in on to make up for any lack of Dolph, and by the time the story allows her character to win us over, it's pretty late in the game for it to fully work. As an aside, this isn't her first foray into the shark film world, as she was in the first Sharktopus as well.

I will say one thing about this film I liked was that it feels more like it's 90s predecessors than it does the modern shark attack film. None of this movie is being played for laughs, even if it has some laughable moments, and there's definitely not a sense that anyone is in on the joke. If you look at Sharktopus for example, that came out in 2010, and was almost the logical conclusion of the shark-centric "Mega This" vs. "Colossal That" tract that the genre was following, led by The Asylum when they weren't doing Mockbusters; but it didn't end with Sharktopus, as we know Sharknado came in, and I don't know that, despite Sharknado's popularity waning, the trend overall has waned. Maybe it's possible modern audiences prefer their shark film that way, as over-the-top (Stallone-style) as possible, and filmmakers letting us know at every corner how much they're in on the joke; as opposed what we saw a lot of in the 90s, where we had DTV Jaws ripoffs that had more unintentional cheese, and what intentional cheese it did affect, it played it as straight as possible. For me, I prefer the 90s style, but to each their own.

Finally, this was the best shot I could get of Dolph wrestling the shark. Man that's a thing of beauty, isn't it? It took us 55 movies to get that shot, but we finally made it. And he's really selling it too, which is fantastic. When I saw Dolph on the tin of a shark movie, this was what I wanted, and while it's only for a moment, what a moment it was.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can stream this on Prime and Tubi, among others. For me, it's only for the Dolph in a shark film novelty factor, so if you're neither a Dolph completist or a shark film completist, I don't think this is worth it beyond that.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4416518

Shark Attack 2 (2000)

For the second in our DTVC Shark Week celebration, we have the second in the Shark Attack series. I thought I had already done this one, since I'd done 1 and 3, but when I looked I found it wasn't there, so when I decided I wanted an older shark movie to go with the two newer ones I was doing, I thought this would be a good deal--can you believe 2000 is now "an older movie" now?

Shark Attack 2 takes place in Cape Town, where a jerk is trying to open a massive aquarium/water park, and decides he wants his marine biologist (Thorsten Kaye) to catch a great white that was seen off the coast to have on display for publicity when they open. He does, but what he doesn't know is this is one of Dr. Craven's altered sharks, and soon enough it escapes. The jerk who was opening the park doubles-down on his jerkiness by bringing in an Australian TV show host to find the shark instead of Kaye. Now it's a race to see if they can stop these sharks before they terrorize the beaches and more people die--but will the jerk's jerkiness get in their way?

I think 2000 still feels 90s enough to be the kind of DTV you came for, if that makes sense. It's not amazing by any stretch, and doesn't have the Van Dien factor that part 1 had, or the Barrowman/famous line factor that part 3 had, and so it's easy to overlook this installment for the others; but that doesn't change the fact that this is a nice 90s DTV flick that has just enough of the late 90s in it to give you what you want. The hero is sufficiently lantern-jawed and hunky; the female lead is sufficiently blond and beautiful; and the Australian TV host is sufficiently Australian--wait for him to say "Absa-fuckin-lutely" ("Apes-a-fuckin-lut-ly"). I say it a lot, but this is the kind of film I made the site for, but also, when I started the site in 2007, this wasn't so old. Now it has the added nostalgia factor to make it that much more enjoyable. Also, in the modern movie world where shark movies are more about being as goofy as possible and letting us know how much they're in on the joke, it's nice to go back to 2000 where they played it straight but still knew hot to have fun.

The director is David Worth. Yes, Kickboxer, Warrior of the Lost World, Lady Dragon 1 and 2, that David Worth, not to mention DP on Bloodsport. I think it shows in how this is made, we get both competent shots, but also I think he makes it look better on a budget. In the 90s it was common for directors like this to come in and get it done, and we're seeing a move back in that direction rather than having someone who doesn't direct get the title and rely on their DP and have it cleaned up in post, which is what came later in the first decade of the 2000s into the 2010s. I think that's part of the reason why more of these movies from this time work than their counterparts do today.

Dan Metcalfe plays the Australian in this, and when I looked him up on IMDb, I found a link to his soccer academy for young players. I wonder if he shows this movie to his players, like as a fun end of camp breather. I also couldn't tell if the accent was his native one, or if he was affecting it, from his bio. He says he played professional soccer in England, but doesn't list the teams, and he doesn't say where he's from originally. Either way, he plays the Aussie well, I think a mix of Steve Irwin's Crocodile Hunter, which was big at that time, and your classic brash TV personality caricature. Again, it's touches like these that make a movie like this more fun.

As I mentioned above, this movie suffers from the fact that the first in the series had a big name like Casper Van Dien, and the third had John Barrowman and what was perhaps the greatest line in cinematic history, so this entry feels less remarkable. I was even thinking how you would place this if you were binging all 3 in a movie night. What would be there for your group of friends to latch onto? They'd be thinking "let's get to part 3!" And that probably explains why I had never done this one before. I usually go for movies that have names in it, because names get clicks and page views, the same way names on the tin get streams and rents. It's the kind of system that creates the impetus to get Bruce Willis or Steven Seagal to show up, film for a day, and not do their reverse shots or overdubbing, just so they can be featured on the cover and listed among the stars, causing us to give it a look over something else we're browsing by. I think it's too bad that that's where we are in our film watching ecosystem, but it's a reality we as reviewers have to face. Do we take the hit though to get more films like this recognition? Every time I say yes, I find myself doing another Seagal movie.

Finally, check out that Dolphins hat there. Not sure if officially licensed NFL gear was in their budget, but there it is, and it's interesting to see in 2000. As a Patriots fan, we were still a year removed from their first championship, and at that time the Dolphins were a heritage franchise, one of the most well-known, with two Super Bowls, one of which was an undefeated season, and they were just coming off of Dan Marino's reign under which they had around a decade and a half of relevance; while the Patriots, despite losing the Super Bowl in the '96 season, were one of the lowest rung of the league, forget an after thought, they were a "neverthought". And then the Pats won in 2001, and that was it, for two decades they won the division over the Dolphins, Jets, and Bills almost every year, while the Dolphins lost all relevance in the league in that same span. With the Brady Era officially done, perhaps it's time for the Dolphins to get back to what they once were.

And with that, it's time to wrap this up. You can get this for free on FawesomeTV or IMDb TV, which isn't a bad deal. It's a fun reminder of the late 90s, a nice time killer. As I mentioned above, it's nice to go back to a time when shark movies played it straight, and were just trying to bite (pun intended) on Jaws, as opposed to now where they're trying to be as big and as intentionally goofy as possible.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0222355

Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No! (2015)

We kick off our first annual Shark Week celebration with the third installment in The Asylum's Sharknado series. Though these are technically TV movies due to the deal The Asylum has with SyFy to release them, to me they've always been DTV in spirit, and the kind of film the site was made for, so worth us checking them out. In addition to us, our friend Fred the Wolf at Full Moon Reviews has covered this, so you can go to his site to see what he thought of it.

Sharknado 3 picks up where part 2 left off. In the aftermath of the last Sharknado, Ian Ziering is hailed as a hero and is honored in a ceremony at the White House with the Golden Chainsaw. As luck would have it, another Sharknado is building off the East Coast just in time to attack the White House and ruin the ceremony. This storm is headed to Florida, where his family is vacationing, so he needs to shoot down there and save them. In the process, he and his team discover that this is bigger than the other ones, perhaps becoming a Sharkicane! The only person who can help now is Ziering's estranged father, played by the Hoff.

The natural go to here is to say the franchise is jumping the shark, but I have a feeling that's exactly what The Asylum and everyone involved with making this want us to say when we see this, so I'm not taking the bait. (Though I guess I already did just by writing what I wrote...) When I looked it up, this one didn't do as well as part 2 did when it aired, so we could already see the wave cresting and the enthusiasm waning, yet they still did three more. It makes sense, because, with a $2.4 million budget, if over 2 million people watched it, those are a lot of eyes seeing advertisements, which necessitates at least a 4th to see how much further they can take it. And the next thing you know we've got six. For The Asylum as newly inducted members into the 30 Club--and the only non-Hall of Famer to be in--these Sharknadoes represent their biggest successes, and while there are others, like Android Cop, that I prefer, it's still nice to see The Asylum reach these heights, coming from where they did when we started this blog, covering films like Snakes on a Train and Transmorphers. In that sense, I feel like it's worth celebrating their success overall, no matter how one feels about whether or not by part 3 they've jumped the shark--but I get it too if you don't have that soft spot in your heart and you're thinking "enough already" by part 3.

Still the most fascinating aspect of this for me is Ian Ziering. Loved Steve Sanders on 90210, despite the fact that I think I was supposed to like Dylan or Brandon more. There are still shades of Steve Sanders in Ziering's Fin here, which makes it that much more fun to watch--not to mention the added touch of the car he's driving in this having the same license plates that his Corvette on the show had. Seeing him do well in this franchise post-90210 is as good a reason as any for me to root for this series to succeed, it's just hard with the rinse-repeat nature of it to keep the novelty going. But, as you can imagine, I'll still be back here at some point for number 4, and will still be reminiscing about 90210.

We did have a Hall of Famer in our midst, 30 Club member Lorenzo Lamas has a short cameo--so short, he didn't even have a still frame of just his head in the shot for me to get a good screen. True to our rule though, except for the time we couldn't find Don "The Dragon" Wilson in Siege of Firebase Gloria, we always get the Hall of Famer's shot in the review, so here was the best I could do. If you follow Lamas on Instagram, you'll see that he's looking to become a pilot, so this cameo role was made for him. I also like that he played a character named Sergeant Rock, both in reference to the great comic book of the past, but also to Lamas's role as Chilly D (short for "Chilliam Davis" I believe) in the film Body Rock. For a short cameo, this was a fun one.

We can now add Mark Cuban to the list of names who have played the President of the United States in a film we've reviewed here on the site, joining Roy Scheider, Rutger Hauer, Vivica A. Fox, Mel Novak, Charlie Sheen, and Jerry Springer. I know of him mostly as the owner of the Mavericks, but recently he's receded a bit from being the more outspoken and controversial owner he was when he first bought the team. In 2011 his Mavericks won the NBA Championship, the biggest irony of that being, before 2011 he was the guy fans most loved to see fail; but in 2011 LeBron went to the Miami Heat to form a super team, which made them the schadenfreude darlings of the league, so by the time the Mavericks made the Finals against the Heat, sentiment had done a 180 and everyone was rooting for Cuban and his Mavs, and I don't think he ever lost that luster fully after. All of that made his appearance as the President here much more fun.

That was probably more basketball talk than anyone would have wanted, but when a film intentionally jumps the shark like this one did, sometimes you run out of things to discuss. The thing is, when I compare this to some other DTV franchises we've looked at on the site, is it really any worse? By Bloodfist VIII they had devolved into just actioners featuring Don "The Dragon" as a guy taking on the world--and not even the same guy in each film either! The Kickboxers featured Sasha Mitchell in 2-4, with two and four directed by Albert Pyun, and then 5 had Marc Dacascos. By the time you hit that fifth one, we have a baddie from Space Mutiny forming his own kickboxing league, and killing anyone who doesn't join. And with the Bloodsports, by Bloodsport 4 we had Daniel Bernhardt fighting in a Dark Kumite run by Benjamin Franklin. I think the big difference between those and the Sharknado franchise, is those other ones played it straight, where as these ones they're in on the joke. I get it, how can you play a tornado of sharks straight? It just means the shelf life may not be as long.

And with that, I think this is a good time to wrap this one up. Right now you can stream it, and the rest of the Sharknado films on Prime. I don't know if they're binge-worthy, but consumed as one-offs, they can be a fun time. As you can imagine, we'll be back here at some point in the future to cover part 4.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3899796

Sharknado 2: The Second One (2014)

For our 25th DTVC Podcast, and our last one of 2014, Jamie and I decided to do Sharknado 2. Jamie had already seen it, but I hadn't, and its inclusion on Instant came at a perfect time for this last podcast before our two-week holiday hiatus. Among the many other blogs that have reviewed this film, we have ones from friends of the DTVC Fred the Ex-Ninja, TarsTarkas.net, and previous podcast guest Fred the Wolf at Full Moon Reviews, so check those out as well.

Sharknado 2: The Second One is an Asylum joint where Ian Ziering reprises his role from Sharknado, this time consolidating his empire as head of a Sharknado mob family. Meanwhile, the story of Ziering's father from the old county, played by Robert De Niro, is told simultaneously, and we learn how he first started fighting Sharknados from a young age. Okay, none of that happened, it was just a cameo-fest that was set in New York City with CGI sharks getting carved up all over the place.

As is often the case with Jamie and me, we agreed on this one: great first 45 minutes, blah second 45 minutes. Somehow the fun and campiness of that first 45 gives way to useless backstory and padding and less Sharknadoing. Among the egregious mistakes, some unresolved love story between Ziering and Vivica A. Fox that was useless and unnecessary. Not to mention, they try to use a slingshot to shoot homemade bombs into the Sharknado like Ziering did in the first one, and it takes 3 tries to figure out they need another plan. What? Two fewer tries with more Sharknadoing was what we needed. Also, while some of the celebrity cameos were great, by that 45-minute mark we'd reached our saturation point with them. Among the things I loved though: Ziering was great again; the use of the Today Show was fantastic, also Stephanie Abrams and the Weather Channel; and I loved some of the landmarks like the Mets stadium and the Staten Island Ferry. I watched the first 45 minutes of this film with my wife, and then she wasn't able to watch the second half. I think she may have played it perfectly.

Let's start with Ian Ziering as Fin, because it really is his film. While he definitely had fun with it, the whole backstory and building his history thing was a waste. All it did was pad the film. If they needed backstory with him, maybe play up the Steve Sanders thing. We never had any 90210 jokes, at least not any I can remember as I write this review. There was a reference to Ziering and Mark McGrath (who played his old buddy and brother in-law) being troublemakers in school. Why not have fun with that? "Fin, remember how you got that bottle of champagne for prom and our friend Donna got drunk and almost couldn't go to graduation?" "I do man, that was bad." "Yeah, only you fixed it by organizing that protest and convincing the school board to change their minds and let her graduate." [Sugar Ray puts hand on Fin's shoulder] "You know how to fix things when they're wrong Fin, you always have. Now we need you to fix this Sharknado thing."

This is the film of a thousand cameos, and if I put them all in here that's all the review would be, so I just included a few. As I mentioned above, I really liked the Today Show thing. They also did The Weather Channel and Stephanie Abrams, and Live with Kelly and Michael. What would've been great is if they did Hardball with Chris Matthews or something like that, and had a Democrat and Republican argue who was responsible for the Sharknado: Global Warming or Obama? I think if you need to pad the film, goofiness like that works over bad backstory every time. Among the others I liked: Judd Hirsch as the taxi driver, and Robert Hays as the plane captain.

Jamie and I discussed what we thought were the best sequels when we looked at the film for the podcast. In my mind it's The Godfather II, with maybe House Party 2 a close second. We also talked about best sequel names, and we agreed that Electric Boogaloo is far and away the top, with everyone else coming in a distant second. I think where this movie failed the Asylum, is that it rushed it out there, and maybe didn't proofread that second script enough. I think they also probably got a bump from the premier on SyFy with the Twitterati watching it well-sauced by that 45-minute mark (which is more like the hour mark on TV with the commercials), so they weren't going to pick up on the second-half short comings. I know Jamie talked about that, how she read all these great Twitter comments the night before, then watched it the next day and couldn't understand where that came from. We'll see what happens in part 3, maybe they'll get back after it. Jamie and I noted though that very few franchises get better with the third film, Nightmare on Elm Street 3 being one of the few exceptions. 

Finally, if you'll allow me, I need to exorcise some demons here. Let me take you back to 1986, a seven-year-old Direct to Video Connoisseur, excitedly following his Boston Red Sox as they made an impossible comeback in the ALCS against the California Angels, then getting all the way to Game 6 and 3 outs away from winning the World Series against the Mets. Then the wheels came off, culminating in the ball going through Buckner's legs. Even now, almost 30 years, three Sox World Series Titles, and the Mets playing in a new stadium in abject mediocrity later, I still had trouble when I saw the Mets. When I took Jen to the Fenway Park tour in November of 2013, I was able to exorcise some of those demons by looking at the display the Red Sox had up for it, but I needed Sharknado 2 to show me that I was truly over it. Thank you Asylum, I really appreciate it.

Like the ninth inning in Game 6, this review has truly gone off the rails, so let's wrap it up before the ball goes through Buckner's legs again. The best way to do this is with a good amount of booze, so that you're well-inebriated by the time the film loses steam at the 45-minute mark. The first 45 are a lot of fun, but the second 45 not-so-much. You can always check out the pod by subscribing on your favorite podcatchers, or checking out the links on the sidebar.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3062074/

Looking for more action? Check out my short action novel, Bainbridge, and all my other novels, over at my author's page! Click on the image below, go to https://www.matthewpoirierauthor.com/

Mega Shark vs. Mecha Shark (2014)

After doing the Drunk on VHS podcast a second time with Moe and Jon from the After Movie Diner, where we discussed the Rutger Hauer flick The Blood of Heroes-- among other things-- Moe offered me my own podcast slot in the 8-9pm hour on Wednesday nights.  I was excited for the opportunity, but for that first show, I didn't have much time to prepare or get a guest.  Fortunately, Moe connected me with Jamie Jenkins, of the podcasts Lycan In!, Devour the Podcast, Evil Episodes, and the Skeleton Crew, and she was willing to sit in with me for my inaugural episode-- a podcasting midwife, as she called it!  Anyway, because we had a short time to prepare, I figured we'd do a quickie Asylum flick on Netflix, and I chose this one because it starred one of my Asylum faves, Debbie "Deborah" Gibson.  Let's see how it turned out.

Mega Shark vs. Mecha Shark stars Elizabeth Rohm of Law and Order fame and Christopher Judge of House Party 2 fame as two experts of some sort called into action when another prehistoric mega shark has been thawed and is threatening our seas.  Their solution: a submarine that's shaped like a shark and has a computer that sounds like KITT from Knight Rider.  Now the angry mega shark is in heat, looking get a piece worse than The Situation in an early episode of The Jersey Shore, but instead of being a dick to his roommates, he's destroying aircraft carriers.  Can our heroes and their shark shaped submarine save the day?



My girlfriend (soon to be wife) wanted to watch this one with me, thinking it was going to be a fun time, and about 7 minutes in she was browsing Tumblr on her phone.  That just about sums up Mega Shark vs. Mecha Shark right there.  Of course, as your faithful DTV Connoisseur, I sat through the following 78 minutes of pain and ennui, trying to make sense of things.  One thing Jamie mentioned right away was that this should have been, and we both thought we were getting, a Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla shark extravaganza.  As Fred Willard said in Best in Show: "No-brainer right?  Turns out, not so."  Instead we got a shark-shaped submarine that made the penguin-shaped sub in the Batman movie look serious, and did nothing more than self-destruct at the end of the film and take the shark with it.  That's all ya got?  A series of perfunctory CGI sharks jumping out of the water and smashing things, a few overdone shark jokes (whoa, Christopher Judge just jumped the shark! wacka wacka wacka!), some slightly funnier Titanic jokes, and then all you do is self-destruct the submarine shark?  Why didn't you do that in minute 15 and save us the other 70 minutes!  This is a definite pass for me, as it was for Jamie.

Let's start with Debbie Gibson.  She's reprising her role from the Lorenzo Lamas Asylum flick Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus, which, if I'm not mistaken, was one of the first of these Asylum large animal disaster flicks.  The problem here is that she's barley in two scenes.  What?  This movie should be all Debbie Gibson.  Piloting a submarine, saving stranded children, performing her songs in a musical interlude-- all of the things we needed and never got.  The 8-year-old me who thought Debbie Gibson was just "girl music" never could have imagined the 35-year-old him on a blog in 2014 saying a film needed more Gibson, and needed her performing those "girl songs", but he's doing it.  That's right 8-year-old me, I wasn't as cool as you thought I'd be-- we also didn't get flying cars.  (I let 8-year-old me down!)



As far as shark movies go, this is very low on the totem pole.  As far as I can tell, we've done about eight shark movies on here (this would be the ninth), though I haven't always been good at tagging shark movies, so I may be off.  Of those eight, this isn't exactly the worst, but it may be the most unremarkable.  It just seemed like such an afterthought, which I think is the most frustrating.  It's like they took all the second-unit footage from another movie to make this one.  I get that these are supposed to be silly and low-budget, and that's what I want from them, but I also want something from someone who tries.  It's like going to a restaurant and getting burnt food or under-cooked food.  I'm not looking for Bergman or Bocuse with every movie or meal, I just want a good effort, both from the food and the film.  Is that too much to ask?

Christopher Judge is only in this slightly more than Debbie Gibson, and while he looks cool, he also has this quality in his characters that is almost like "I'm going to go play D & D after we shoot this."  His best scene was of him almost lighting a thin cigar while wearing sunglasses.  For Judge, in my mind anyway, his pinnacle as an actor was in House Party 2, when he said "If you're not giving up the rhythm, you got to go."  That's movie gold right there.  If this movie just had that, or even a Pajama Jammy Jam, I would've been happier than what I got here.  Ain't gonna hurt nobody...



As I said above, this film had many Titanic references.  First off, Judge and Rohm, who play a married couple, are "Jack" and "Rosie".  Then, one of the carriers is split in half by the shark, and as it sinks we're treated to people sliding off the deck as they did in Titanic when the ship was sinking.  My experience with Titanic came in college.  We had a campus movie channel that would show four movies a week, each once a day, on a rotating basis, and Titanic came up a few times during my five years in school.  One of the times my neighbor came by at 12:30 to ask me if I wanted to get baked and watch the ship break apart, as Titanic was showing in the midnight slot.  I agreed.  He had this massive glass bong, one that sat on the floor and came up to my chin as I sat on the couch.  There were about five of us, and we got pretty stoned, and then the scene came, and I was in awe, mouth agape, watching the faux destruction happen on his 19" tube TV.  Eat your heart out Joe Friday, weed is good!

So the movie is a pass, but the podcast isn't, and you can check us out from 8-9pm EST, live, every Wednesday at www.mixlr.com/2nd-unit.  You can also check out the RSS feed here on the blog to download if you miss it live, or our archives at: http://www.talkshoe.com/tc/134494. I say "we" and "our", because Jamie has since agreed to join me every week as my cohost, which has been great and the show's been a lot of fun.  So while the movie itself was a bust, the podcast worked out.

To download the episode for this movie, right click here and select "save link as".

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3152098/

Sharknado (2013)

When this first aired on SyFy and generated all that buzz on Twitter, you knew it was only a matter of time before I reviewed it, and the wait was really for me to finally get it on DVD.  That's the thing with The Asylum blowing up on SyFy, we at the DTVC have to wait for them to finally make it onto DVD now, whereas before we got first crack at them.  That's okay though, we're notorious for being late to the party anyway, but hopefully when we finally get there we add something to the festivities.  Speaking of friends who have already been here, we have Fred Dixon, the Ex-Ninja, Fred the Wolf at Full Moon Reviews, and Tars Tarkas.NET, so you can go and check out what they thought of this too.

Sharknado has the great Ian Ziering as Fin, a retired famous surfer who runs a beach side bar.  When a massive storm destroys it and threatens the rest of LA, he knows he needs to get to his ex wife and daughter in Beverly Hills to safety.  The ex wife is played by none other than Tara Reid.  In true Asylum style, this ain't no ordinary storm, as tons of sharks are washing up in the flood waters and tearing people apart.  But that's only the beginning, as tornadoes are popping up from the flood waters too, and it looks like they might be picking the sharks up with them.  Will Ziering and crew all make it out alive?



This movie is a lot of fun.  I should warn you that the actual Sharknado doesn't appear until near the end, so on some levels it's a Sharknado bait-and-switch, but everything else is The Asylum doing what The Asylum does right.  It's a good mix of cheese, send-ups of older films in the genre, homages to other greats, and some pretty sweet satire.  I love the references to Bad Taste and The Shining, which you can find on your own as you watch it.  There are probably some others you've seen too that I missed.  Ziering is great in the lead, and the supporting cast around him is great too.  Reid isn't in it as much, but I enjoyed her role as the mom of two teen kids in Beverly Hills, and she and Ziering were good together.  I also loved how The Asylum has reached a great balance between schlock silliness, and quality work, whether it's the special effects, or the high level of some of the humor.  The Ferris wheel rolling down the boardwalk looked great; and the scene where the waitress at Ziering's bar, played by Cassie Scerbo, relates how she got the shark bite scars on her leg is hilarious.  If you're like me and you've seen a ton of these, you might wonder what the fuss was about, because it's not better than some of The Asylum's best work; but it was a great moment for them to get some shine like that, and the movie is plenty of fun to boot.

It's amazing how far The Asylum has come in the six-plus years we've been doing the DTVC.  This is the 27th film of theirs we've reviewed, and what's happened is that we've gone from most being misses with the occasional hit, to now almost all being hits with very few misses.  We've also seen them score more and better acting talent, plus they have this contract with SyFy so that their DTV movies are often TV movies with a bigger audience.  I can't help but note too though the many times the Sharknado destroyed classic Hollywood landmarks, like the Hollywood sign or the outside of Mann's Chinese where the actor's hand prints are.  Is there a veiled message for us about how they feel about big Hollywood?  Either way, it's been fun to watch The Asylum's transformation, and I can't wait to see what they have for us next.



My man, Ian Ziering, aka Steve Sanders from 90210.  This is big for him, he's finally cast as Brandon Walsh, and he nails it.  Actually, it's more accurate to say that his character is a mix between Dylan McKay and Brandon Walsh, but either way, Ziering is no longer the supporting character, and it was nice to see him pull it off.  It's possible that because he was Steve Sanders for so long, not the Brandon or Dylan, that he could play this role that The Asylum had for him, which was a combination of the classic hero and a send-up of the classic hero, and play it so seamlessly.  He's both in on the joke and playing it straight at the same time, and without both, I think the film wouldn't have been as enjoyable.  As someone who loved him in 90210, it's great to see him top billed and do well at it.

We've done our share of shark attack films in our time at the DTVC, and I think this one is up there as one of the best.  Maybe not Cruel Jaws or Shark Attack 3, which I hold up as the standard, but I'd slot it in right below that.  One thing about this is that there are tons of sharks here, and they start killing immediately.  It's like a mix between the old insect swarm film of the 50s and the modern shark film, which is a unique take on it, but The Asylum makes it work.  And there all kinds of different ones, so it's like those Shark Attack fruit snacks we used to have in the 80s and 90s that I used to love getting for my lunch, I could be like "oh, there's a hammerhead!"  Man, those were so good, weren't they?



Look at who that is.  It's Cousin Oliver!  I know, can you believe it?  There has to be someone at The Asylum who loves The Brady Bunch, because we also saw Greg Brady, aka Barry Williams, in Bigfoot.  If you don't know his real name, it's Robbie Rist, and he only has a small role as a bus driver with a bus full of kids that Ziering rescues.  Then we had Tara Reid as Ziering's ex-wife.  She wasn't in this quite as much as the buzz made it sound, but I liked the idea of her as the Beverly Hills mom.  I think she'd be great in a role like that in a CW teen drama, like maybe with Ziering as her husband.  What a cool show that would be.  John Heard has a small role as a bar patron at Ziering's establishment, kind of just dirty old man humor, but he's good at it.  Baywatch alum Jaason Simmons plays Ziering's bud.  He'd be great in that capacity if the show I'm proposing with Reid and Ziering were a sitcom instead.  Finally, I mentioned Cassie Scerbo above.  She's like the next Jennifer Esposito, which I think wouldn't be a bad career for her-- in fact considering how young she's starting out, she may ultimately do Esposito better than Esposito.

Okay, let's wrap this up.  I don't know if this still airs on SyFy, but I'm sure it does.  If you don't want to wait, you can rent it on DVD at all the usual suspects.  The buzz is more for people who don't usually watch films like this, but considering you're here, it means this kind of thing is probably old hat for you, and if that's the case, then this is just a fun way to kill 90 minutes, which I think is all you're really asking for from The Asylum anyway.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2724064/

2-Headed Shark Attack (2012)

I'd been hearing a lot of great things about this one, and couldn't wait to make it happen. Then Netflix Watch Instantly aided in the process, and I had no more excuses, the time was now. Before we get into my take, three of our buddies have hit this as well: Mr. Gable at Mr. Gable's Reality, Tromeric at Guts and Grog Reviews, and Mitch at The Video Vacuum. Go see what those guys are up to, you won't be disappointed.

2-Headed Shark Attack is about some semester-at-sea program that looks like it came from one of those "universities" that advertises medical assistant programs during Maury and Jerry Springer episodes. As you can imagine, with something that well run, there wouldn't be any problem with a bunch of college kids out on a yacht in the middle of the Atlantic-- er Pacific-- Ocean, especially with a 2-headed shark lurking in the water. That's right, one shark, twice the killing power, and a whole smorgasbord of co-eds served up by professor Charlie O'Connell, who doesn't know his head from his ass. But hey, if you survive the semester, you get to wear scrubs and work in a doctor's office!



I don't know where to go on this one. Loved the last 30 minutes. Didn't care for a good chunk of the first hour. Useless scenes of bad, poorly acted dialog, that got us nowhere, and, most importantly, left us severely bereft of any 2-headed shark attacks. Also, this film starred Carmen Electra, and she was woefully underused. How did you drop the ball on that one Asylum? That last half-hour though, that was what I came for. Where were you all my life? I loved the camp aspects, the bad Jaws rip-offs, the CG and rubber sharks, all of that worked, I just wish there was more of that and less of college kids reciting bad dialog poorly. I was looking for something to rival Shark Attack, Shark Attack III, or Cruel Jaws, and unfortunately, I didn't get that.

That lack of Carmen Electra might be one of the most egregious mistakes this film made. Come on Asylum, you do a great job with Tiffany and Debbie "Deborah" Gibson, but all you do with Carmen Electra was give her one sunbathing scene, and a few other lines? This should've been her show. She should've been the professor, not Charlie O'Connell. Seriously, Charlie O'Connell? What, were Don Swayze and Frank Stallone busy? But I do see that you had no qualms about making Carmen Electra top billed despite the fact that you gave her smaller part. After how amazing last year's Mega Python vs. Gatoroid was, I was looking at something in that ballpark. While this wasn't horrible, it wasn't that great either.



In any shark attack film, it's important to discuss the main villain, and I think this 2-headed variety wasn't half bad. The problem for me, is that this shark film, unlike the ones I enjoyed, is that this one went away from what made it great for a good chunk of time-- the shark. In those other films, we had a scientist (O'Connell's character loosely qualifies) on a beach location, called into confront a problem, and trying all the tricks in his scientist toolbox to save the day; all the while, on a pretty steady clip, people are being eaten. The way this started off, I thought we were in for the same thing. But, because they had this silly semester-at-sea construct, we were stuck on the boat for an inordinate amount of time, then stuck on the island after the boat's hull was breached. Sometimes, just keeping it on the beach is the best way to do it.

I'm not sure I've watched a movie for this blog that was harder to capture images for. Fred Olen Ray's son, Christopher, directed this, and it looks like it was all shot on a handi-cam. Either the camera is moving at all times, or the actors are. Hey, I'm all for dynamic shots, but there's a point where you need to cut back on the Red Bull. Leave the jumpcuts and constant motion for the attack scenes, and let me relax my eyes for a second the rest of the time. Hey, people have blogs to write and images need to be captured in the process. Can you help us out a little?



I wanted to quickly mention Brooke Hogan's character, because I like what they did with it here. Normally her part would've been played by a guy: the total dick who's also kind of heroic and can save the day. I liked that they gave it to Brooke Hogan, and I think she did pretty well with it. It would've been much better though if her character wasn't the one this hinged upon. We needed Carmen Electra as the scientist and shark expert. And we needed this on a beach. And we needed Electra to want to close the beaches. And we needed mayor M. Emmett Walsh to tell her that's not possible during the peak tourist season.

Okay, so we've seen a lot worse from The Asylum, but we've seen a lot better too. Netflix Watch Instantly is the best place for this, because, at 87 minutes, it's not the longest investment, and if you can stream it, all you're investing is time. It's quite possible that the good in that first hour will outweigh the bad for you, but it didn't for me; on the other hand, there is a very solid finish, and that might be enough to get you to the church on time.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2043757/

Shark Attack (1999)

This is yet another of the Stars Play 11. As you may or may not know, we did the third film in this series, Shark Attack 3: Megalodon, complete with its famous line, and I've always wanted to go back and see where this saga begins. When I was notified that Netflix was dumping it from Watch Instantly in the Stars Play purge, I knew I needed to make it happen, especially for the Casper Van Dien factor.

Shark Attack takes place in South Africa, where a shark scientist colleague of Van Dien's is killed in a freak shark attack, prompting him to rush to the scene and see what he can do. Things go a little deeper than he expects though. The sharks are crazy, they're killing the local fishing trade--which helps local entrepreneur Ernie Hudson, who is buying up all the local businesses--but the shark's behavior is very un-shark-like. Van Dien's old shark studying buddy Bentley Mitchum, who has his own lab in the town, is suspiciously coy about all this, while Van Dien's dead buddy's sister looks like she'll make for a good love interest. Will CVD manage to solve this shark mystery and get the girl before the credits role at the 88 minute mark?

You know it. I liked this movie. I don't know how to describe it, because it isn't exactly a shark attack movie, despite its name. It has sharks, and sometimes they attack, but there's more Scooby Doo style mystery going on, with some B-movie action elements thrown in, and then the occasional foot dangling in the water what's gonna happen to it that we want from a shark flick. I don't know what you make of that, but in a weird way, it worked for me. Also liked Van Dien, Hudson, and Mitchum; plus Jennifer McShane, she who the great line in part 3 is directed at, plays Van Dien's love interest, so that made things even more fun. I guess that's how best to describe this, just a fun flick.

If I were the Made for TV Connoisseur, Casper Van Dien would be an inaugural member of our Hall of Fame. Looking at his IMDb bio, he has tons of TV movie credits--even this one is listed as a TV movie, but I made an exception because I can do that. You gotta like Van Dien in a role like this. He's like a combination of Fred from Scooby Doo, the hunky scientist type from the 50s monster movies, and your more common 90s action star, the third one being what you probably most expect from him after Starship Troopers, but the others working well too. Van Dien's usually pretty solid in whatever he's in, it's more a matter of how good he material is he has to work with, and I think here it was a lot of fun, and he was able to make it more fun.

Ernie Hudson, something of a villain in this. I know, you'd think in a movie called Shark Attack, it'd be the sharks, but no, it's him. He has this South African accent that he affects here and there rather inconsistently, which is good. If you're going to affect an accent, I always say do it halfway. I believe this is the first time we've seen Hudson as a villain here at the DTVC, which was a good change of pace from the supporting role as the hero's buddy that's more common. Also, I didn't know this, but he was born in Benton Harbor, Michigan. All Mitchell MST3K fans will get that reference.

Talk about your awkward situations--or maybe not--Casper Van Dien's ex wife's brother is Bentley Mitchum. According to IMDb, Van Dien and Mitchum's sister filed for divorce in 1997, and this was released in 1999, so you do the math. Were they shooting during the break-up? Was the on-screen tension between their characters the result of some real life tension? It's interesting, because I see these facts in the IMDb listings, and they're so antiseptic and matter-of-fact, that it takes a second to go "hey, in Bentley Mitchum's bio, it said he's the ex-brother in-law of Casper Van Dien. That's kind of pertinent to this review." Or as I said above, maybe it isn't.

Is that CVD hitting the climbing wall? Even though the scene is barely a second long, any climbing I see I have to get on here. I have to confess, I'm still very much a novice, and I don't have very much experience. But the way they were climbing, just going for any foot and hand-holds as opposed to hitting a fixed route and difficulty, that's something I could definitely do. It's always good to see some climbing in a movie, even it's only a small cameo.

If you can get this used on DVD or VHS, or if it airs on TV, I say go for it. It will satisfy your B-movie cravings, definitely a fun watch. Sometimes you see a movie like Shark Attack on the shelves or on your TV guide, and it looks like a good time, but then you watch it and it doesn't deliver. Well, this one delivers.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0161970/

Looking for more action? Check out my short action novel, Bainbridge, and all my other novels, over at my author's page! Click on the image below, go to https://www.matthewpoirierauthor.com/

Cruel Jaws aka Fauci Crudeli (1995)

I think we sometimes forget that The Asylum didn't invent the rip-off (or for those late to the party, SyFy). The rip-off has been a part of the movie industry for as long as there's been a movie industry. And in the 80s and 90s, Italian director Bruno Mattei made it into an art form. With this one, he even had the audacity to label it Jaws V, as if it were a sequel as opposed to a rip-off-- not that the other sequels weren't rip-offs of the original in some way too.

Cruel Jaws takes place in a small town near Miami, where a marine biologist comes to visit some old friends, and is pressed into duty when people are found eaten by a shark. A rich landowner in the town doesn't want panic to set in and threaten his windsurfing race or the area's tourism, so he filibusters the sheriff and the marine biologist's attempts to close the beaches. As the sheriff so eloquently points out, "it's like an all you can eat buffet for the shark!"



This is riff-tastic. One of the ultimate bad movie night flicks. In fact, you could pair it with Shark Attack III, and it would be perfect. It's everything you'd want in a Bruno Mattei rip-off film: bad dubbing, bad dialog, bad acting, music ripped from Superman or Star Wars, scenes ripped from anything that already had sharks, bad edits, stuff that comes out of nowhere-- in short, 90 minutes of pure awesome. This is what you wanted baby. I could go into all the amazing moments, but as I usually do, I'll leave that to the comments section, so I don't give too much away. (Even though when I do that, I often get the "oh my God, how could you have not mentioned this!" Well, now you know why.)

This is the fourth Bruno Mattei film we've done, the other three being Robowar, Strike Commando, and Strike Commando 2. For those three, he went under the name Vincent Dawn. For Cruel Jaws he went with William Snyder. I wonder where he gets these names from? Vincent Dawn is almost porn star or action lead, while William Snyder, in it's full form is like a baseball player, but using "Bill" instead sounds like an accountant or local contractor. "Hey, did you talk to Bill Snyder and get that estimate?" In some ways, it's a window into how Italians view us Americans by the fake names they choose to make themselves sound more like us. "Ah, you'ah know, ah-Willeeum Snyderr. Dat sounds-ah verrry Americano, no?"



The thing I love about the shark movie is, as good or as bad as it's done, it's always a fun time. I think that's because sharks make such great baddies. As the movie states, they're like genetically engineered killing machines. All they do is swim, eat, and make babies. You can't bargain with an enemy like that, it doesn't care if you're young or old, if you're in the water, you're fair game. Plus, they're real, and people really have been attacked by them. One of the interesting things about this is, as much as it has that "throw everything in and see what happens" quality, Mattei does a great job of building suspense, especially in the early going. It's the shark attack itself, of course, that leaves something to be desired and is so funny.

Our hero's girlfriend is not a nice person. She's upset that he has to help deal with a killer shark menacing the local coast, which is understandable, it is their vacation after all. What she does in response is a bit much though. She cheats on him with the main heel. Really? I wonder if Mattei is telling us anything about what he thinks of that, or if maybe he had a woman in his life cheat on him, and what he wanted done to her. You'll have to watch the movie to see for yourself.



Finally, loved this guy who looked like a guy dressing up as Hulk Hogan for a kid's party. The Fu Manchu is the best part. I had a buddy tell me once that he thought I should grow out the Fu Manchu, James Hetfield style. My thinking was, I couldn't really pull it off, and the only scenario it would work would be if I were called to be on Maury. You could see me in the greenroom with all these punk kids with their whisper thin fuzz on their upper lip, then I show up with the Hetfield Fu Manchu, all like Larry Bird in the Three-Point Contest: "Okay, which of you boys is coming in second?" Otherwise, the Fu Manchu wouldn't work for me, not like it did for that guy up there.

I guess used VHS is the way to go, or maybe DVD, especially if you're a Region 2, because I know there you can get it both in English and Italian with English subs. You could also do the Japanese VHS, which works here in America, and like their cars, the Japanese VHS is much sturdier that ours. However you get it, just get it and make this happen. You won't be disappointed.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112747/

Mega Shark vs. Crocosaurus (2010)

I'd been waiting for this one for a little bit. After the original, Mega Shark vs. Giant Cocktopus, I needed to find out... what?... oh, it's "octopus", not "cocktopus"? Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus, that makes much more sense. Anyway, Mr. Gable's Reality had been keeping us up-to-date on it's goings on, how far along it was in the production process, etc., but also keeping it fresh in my mind so I wouldn't forget it, and I didn't.

Mega Shark vs. Crocosaurus takes place sometime after the original. Everyone, except Jaleel White, thinks the large shark is dead, but he knows better, and he accidentally signals it to eat the Navy ship he's stationed on, killing everyone but him. At the same time, a Crocodile Dundee type (though English instead of Australian) in Africa comes across an enormous Crocodile, which he tranquilizes and tries to ship to the US. Thing is, it's having babies, i.e., laying eggs, and the large shark wants to eat them. Now the crocodile and shark are getting after it, and blowing up tons of shit in their wake. Will Jaleel White and the Poor Man's Crocodile Dundee be able to stop them?



This one wasn't so bad, in fact it was pretty fun, which I guess is all you want. It did lose steam near the end, which again is a constant issue with Asylum films, even if they are only 90 minutes long. 70 is a better number for them. But, compared to a lot of their other efforts, this one worked much better. It managed to combine the hilarious footage of CG animals launching themselves into city buildings and causing explosions, with some funny moments in the down times, especially with Jaleel White, Gary Stretch (the Crocodile Dundee guy), and veteran character actor Robert Picardo. Definitely a group movie, and though I wouldn't put it up there with Shark Attack 3, it's not horrible either.

Anyone whose been rockin' with us for a little while knows we have something of a love/hate relationship with The Asylum. Sometimes (okay, not very often), they hit it out of the park, while others feel like they should be so great, and don't quite pan out. This one had that potential to be one of the bad ones, and had it not been for the actors I mentioned above getting us through the lean moments with no sharks or crocodiles, it would have been. I don't really get it, but The Asylum has this affinity for being annoying. One clear example came with this white dude with dreds, who worked with some guy that was going to transport the crocodile for Gary Stretch. He keeps repeating over and over how he needs his 10 percent cut. "I get my ten percent, right?" "Don't forget my ten percent." Why? Why would you do that? Why annoy us? Don't you want us to like your movies, Asylum? At the very least, like them and tell people we liked them? Though Mega Shark vs. Crocosaurus was able to overcome annoying us, others-- Mega Piranha comes to mind-- weren't so lucky.



When last we saw Jaleel White, he was in Beach Kings (aka Green Flash), a volleyball movie where he played a sporting goods store manager. This was definitely a better deal for him here. He had a few weird moments, not his fault, but because the script was bad, but he went with it very well, which in a sense made it even funnier. Though I love seeing former pop stars, or actors that I've only seen in other Asylum pictures, getting real professionals like White, who are used to working as an actor and have done it for a while, does make a difference. Of course, as we've seen in the past with The Asylum, it doesn't always make all the difference. Either way, I'd love to see White again in another one of their movies-- or another DTV flick.

One thing that surprised me about Mega Shark vs. Crocosaurus was the actual landmarks it used in the film-- commercial landmarks at that. First they had The Orange Bowl in Miami, into which a helicopter crashed and exploded, and then they had Sea World, where the shark swooped in and ate Shamu and all the other killer whales as they did their routine for everyone-- or maybe it was the crocodile. Usually, Asylum films take place in these liminal spaces, a cinematic purgatory, if you will, so to see Sea World was very exciting. It was almost as if The Asylum had made it.



How do you not love this guy, veteran character actor Robert Picardo? I don't see how you can't, right? When they showed him in the making of featurette and the blooper reel, he looked like a ton of fun to work with too. Maybe the best casting decision The Asylum has ever made, and that includes a couple they did with Lorenzo Lamas in them. We need more Robert Picardo in anything.

I think this one will satisfy the fun quotient, which is all you want with The Asylum, I guess. Still, it did have small pockets of annoyance and probably went on for about 20-30 minutes too long. I think we forget that those horrible 1950s sci-fi movies that MST3K made fun of were probably painfests to get through too if Joel or Mike and the 'Bots hadn't been there. Maybe The Asylum forgets it as well, hence what we're hoping will be awesome ends up not being such. Anyway, this isn't a bad deal for a Red Box with some friends.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1705773/