Last week I suffered a concussion from a car accident and was put on “brain rest”. The doctor told me to avoid watching anything that required any brain activity or cognition. This movie turned out to be an appropriate choice.
It opens with a chunk of ice calving off a glacier and quickly defrosting into a wee little fishy of some sort. This seems important to the plot. I made a note of that.
Three years later, the much larger fishy attacks a boat off the Alaskan coastline and eats a dude. We see our first glimpse of Dinoshark in slow motion. The creature is a mash up of a sturgeon, gator, shark, T-Rex and salmon. It makes a sound similar to my stomach when it spots a bowl of guacamole.
Now, we move to Puerto Vallarta where the rest of the film takes place. Since this is a Roger Corman film, I knew we wouldn’t stay in Alaska for long. Too cold. No bikinis. In Mexico we meet Trace, our “hero” and his peeps Luis, Rita and Carol. I recognize the douchey face of the actor who plays Trace but only with a foggy recollection of something douchey I must have recently watched. I write a sharksploitation movie review blog so that could be anything I watch on any given day. Anyhoo, Carol is a marine biologist and water polo coach. She is allegedly smart.
For a goodly amount of this movie, there is a valiant attempt at character development. However, this movie is called Dinoshark. We simply do not care to be treated to extended scenes of unimportant conversations. We would like carnage, if you please. Seriously, shut up.
That being said, plenty of attacks happen and sometimes out of the blue. There is a moderate amount of gore but nothing to write home to mama about (my family is a little…different). The starting pistol of the film is when Rita gets eaten, followed by every person, animal and thing in Puerto Vallarta. The local corrupt harbor patrol chief convinces everyone a tiger shark is behind the attacks. You know he is corrupt because he is greasy and sweaty all the time.
Trace and Carol (the smart one….cough) find a beacon that Dinoshark ate in Alaska and burped up in Mexico. It has little bits of tummy goo on it and Carol, being smart, decides it could be useful. She looks up the website of Dr. Reeves, played by Corman himself, that shows an artistic depiction of Dinoshark. At this, she whips off her shirt. I am not kidding. That happens. Wouldn’t be my reaction to confirming the resurgence of an extinct super predator that is currently eating my friends, but to each her own. She goes to see Dr. Reeves with a fresh shirt and the beacon belly blobs so he can sequence the DNA and learn some science-y shit that may help them kill the fishy.
For some reason, Carol keeps calling the beast a Pleisasaur, which should be pronounced Plesiosaur, except it is not even close to that either. All the other characters call it a shark. No one fucking knows anything in this film. How hard is it to identify a sturgeon/gator/shark/dino/salmon? Jeesh. Smart one, my ass.
The movie is filled to the rim with Trace and Carol riding boats hither and yon and Dinoshark consuming everything and anything. That bitch is hungry. My main complaint is the editing of the attack scenes seems as smooth as a schizophrenic with a strobe light. We don’t see some shit we should and yet, we see some shit we don’t really need.
The ending culminates with an epic battle and a one-liner that rivals even Martin Brody himself. I am fucking with you. It is not that at all. It is the opposite of that.
Maybe this movie was fun. Maybe it was flawed. Maybe I didn’t know whether to break down into convulsions from the bastardized science or drift into a deep sleep.
So my final opinion of this movie is that it indeed exists and is available to watch. I also highly recommend it during any doctor prescribed periods of “brain rest”. That is all.
See ya next time!
Director: Kevin O’Neill
Where to watch: Amazon Prime although I had to dish out 3 bucks to rent it. Don’t do that.
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American Cult Anthology$2.99 – $12.95