Viewing: Mega-Shark Vs. Giant Octopus

This was the second part of our movie double feature at Sunny’s place. You will see he’s already blogged about it over here. The first movie of the evening was Outlander (Howard McCain, 2008), for which my write-up is forthcoming, and starring James Caviezel (and the only other film I’d ever seen him in was Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ). Oscar has blogged about both films here.

First thing about Mega-Shark Vs. Giant Octopus: a film with no production value and a good script would be something like a low budget indie film. A film with top of the line production value and a crappy script is like a summer blockbuster. But what of a film that has neither good production value nor a good script? Well, that’s what Ace Hannah’s Mega-Shark Vs. Giant Octopus is.  (Wow, the IMDB page lists a dfferent director for this film; is Ace Hannah the new Alan Smithee?)

Thing is, despite the potentially fun critter film premise, the script is lame, and the film is so badly acted. If it were made to be campy, then hey, I’d accept that. But continuity issues abound, with the same few critter images used over and over, most of them really very obscure, and the same three or so rooms used as sets, thinly disguised as totally different places altogether.

This film is ridiculous. It’s just ridiculous. Thing is, it feels like its lead actors don’t know how ridiculous this film is. The premise could make for an campy critter film; secret military sonar makes a pack of whales go bezerk, they swim headfirst into a glacier, thus releasing the mega-shark and giant octopus, who’d been frozen there mid-prehistoric combat. In one scene, a commercial airplane is eaten in its entirety by the mega-shark leaping out of the ocean and how high into the sky? What the fuck? Why would a shark do this? Not like it could smell the meal contained within.

Three scientists must figure out a way to contain the giant prehistoric critters, rather than obliterate them as the military wants, and in the process of working in a laboratory filled with test tubes filled with colorful liquids resembling Otter Pops, the actors improv seriously, pouring these bright colored liquids from one test tube to another and shaking their heads as the desired result does not come. But what the fuck are they trying to do? It isn’t until later that it’s discovered what their course of scientific action is going to be. Asian American dudes everywhere will be glad to know that our Asian scientist (Vic Chao as Doctor Seiji Shimada) gets some nookie in a broom closet from the white woman scientist (Deborah Gibson as Emma MacNeil). And isn’t that all you wanted to know anyway?

I haven’t even gotten to Lorenzo Lamas and his asshole of a character, but there isn’t much to say here except that he is the only one who appears to be having fun here, deliberately overacting and proud of it. His best line was addressed to Deborah Gibson: “And you, little lady, you got a mouth coming from someone whose career is all washed up.” At this point, I was howling in laughter. Alas, if only there were more moments like this, in which the actors  as good sports self-efface, I wouldn’t be wanting those 90 minutes of my life back.