Before there was Sharknado, there were the superior and often underrated Mega Shark movies. You always get a monster BOGO. Buy one monster, get one free! Oh, I just fucking adore these movies.
The first one came out in 2009 and stars Debbie Gibson and Lorenzo Lamas, two of the most fabulous icons of the eighties. In this debut, Mega Shark is pitted against his prehistoric archenemy, Giant Octopus! They are frozen inside Arctic ice in mid-battle, only to be defrosted onto the world by sonic testing gone horribly awry. Our heroine Emma, played by Debbie…sorry, DEBORAH Gibson (so mature), is right in the center of the action and we immediately get the impression she is a sassy and reckless kind of marine biologist, an electric youth if you will.
A Japanese offshore drilling rig gets tentacled to death by Giant Octopus. Mega Shark breaches like a mofo and chomps a commercial airliner. It becomes clear that this chaos has gone global.
Emma gets fired for being sassy and reckless but she just can’t shake her love…of the ocean. She finds a big hard thingy inside a washed up whale carcass. Together with her Irish mentor, ex-Naval paleontologist Lamar, she embarks on one doozy of a lab test montage. After lots of brightly colored liquids get mixed together randomly, blammo! We have a Meg tooth.
A Japanese scientist, Dr. Shimada, teams up with our pair and they all figure out we have two prehistoric leviathans swimming about and that cannot be good. Meanwhile, a Navy Destroyer tries to annihilate Mega Shark with disastrous results. But we are introduced to the amazing Captain of the Destroyer. Actually one of two Captains. One comes later but they are practically the same people. These guys are hands down the best part of this movie with memorable lines such as “Give the President my personal assurance. When we find the beast, we’re sending him to hell!” When he fails to hit his target, the cap’n dramatically whispers, “It rises!” So…much…fun.
Then, it gets even better when Lorenzo Lamas enters the film. Here comes Renegade with a greasy ponytail and a mouth that can spew forth racist and sexist commentary faster than you can say “King Trump”. Of course, he wants to kill the monsters but big-hearted Emma convinces him to try to contain them. She and Dr. Shimada end up knocking boots in a broom closet and have a eureka moment. Yes, they sex their way into an epiphany about using pheromones to lure the creatures to their respective traps.
As I said, I adore this movie but it does tend to drag on and on at times. There is a bit more lead up to the main events than necessary. Having said that, the characters are all really fun and likeable. There is even a sense of logic in the actions of these folks that is extremely rare for the sharksploitation genre. We spend a great deal of time on this entrapment scenario only to have it fail miserably. At long last, they all figure out why we all came to this movie in the first place. LET THEM FIGHT!
I refuse to give anything else away, folks. Only you can decide if seeing a Mega Shark fight a Giant Octopus is worth your time. If it isn’t, why the fuck are you reading my blogs? Shame on you. I feel violated.
Those of you with a soul, seek out and watch this movie with great fervor! Just make sure to turn it off before the end credits roll. The song…I threw up in my mouth a little just thinking about it. Why didn’t they have Debbie Gibson sing the…oh never mind.
See ya next time!
Director: Ace Hannah
Where to watch: Amazon Prime
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Exotic Meats and Inedible Objects by Rachel Rodman$2.99 – $9.99 -
Land Shark$4.99 – $9.99