Shark Alarm

In Shark Attack In The Mediterranean (aka, Hai-Alarm auf Mallorca/2004)A helicopter pilot’s wife was sampled by a huge shark, which left him grief-stricken and unable to take his leather coat off in the hot sun. So he moves his supermodel-in-training daughter to the Mediterranean (Mallorca, to be exact, but I don’t know where in the ocean that is) and flies a different helicopter around while his daughter takes tourists on super fun shark-diving excursions.

Then there’s his police officer best friend whose wife is dying of cancer stuff. Then there’s a jet-ski race. Then there’s a supermodel marine biologist who just happens to go for guys who wear leather jackets in the hot sun. She ends up working for a science firm giving enemas to sharks to find out why those mindless eating machines don’t get cancer. (See how this is all starting to tie together?)

Bodies start to wash up on the beach, which makes leather coat man all uptight, especially after he pulls a tooth the size of a hubcap out of a floater. Now all he has to do is convince everyone he’s not crazy by running down the beach yelling, “Shark alarm! Shark alarm!” He does this 11 times (I counted). 

When you do get to see the shark, it’s somewhat impressive (i.e., it doesn’t look too fake). It swims as fast as Aquaman on crystal meth, though, which means if you get in the water you’re gonna end up as ocean lasagna. The mega gripe here is that most of the time is spent on the tedious sub-plots and not what we paid good money to see, which is the giant shark’s digestive system in action. 

Where it gets good for 30 seconds is when Megalodon swallows a jet-ski. Too bad there wasn’t anyone on it, a sea hippie perhaps. And leather coat man? He totally pulls a Batman and hangs from the struts of a helicopter to take a rifle shot at the shark, which doesn’t seem to have a problem launching out of the water like a Crest-sponsored Polaris missile.

So if L-coatman was dangling from the copter, who was flying it? Why, his supermodel marine biologist girlfriend, of course! And you thought they only taught about stinky fish in oceanography school. You must feel pretty dumb right about now. The best line in the whole movie: “He’s young and Spanish — no wonder my daughter is attracted to him.” ¡Conseguido eso la derecha, gringo!

Water-Proof UFOs

A gigantic UFO is discovered in the middle of the ocean. Actually, under the middle of the ocean. It’s determined that the spaceship, which is the size of downtown Manhattan, has been there for 288 years, give or take a work week. A team of specialists has been called in to see what up. Transported via a mini-sub several miles beneath the surface, the military has already built an aqua habitat, so that they may study and blog about the UFO.

All the scientists put on high-pressure swim-suits and find their way into the spacecraft. That’s weird—there are recycling bins and uneaten packs of Smokehouse Almonds™ laying around. They find the ship’s log and, upon playing it back, discover the craft experienced an “unknown event,” which looks like they got sucked into a Black Hole. (Holes don’t come in any other color except black.) Exploring further, they find a gigantic gold sphere, the surface of which undulates and looks like rich man’s bath water. It doesn’t do anything except float. All that trouble and expense to find it, and the darn thing just sits there. Stupid aliens. Or are they?

A binary message transmitted from the UFO is translated and they’re being greeted by an alien named…Jerry. I can believe a giant UFO has been at the bottom of the ocean for nearly 300 years, but an alien named Jerry? That’s just weird. Even more weird undersea weirdness happens: one million poisonous and extra-large jellyfish sting one of the habitat divers into swollen pudding. Then a football field-sized squid attacks the habitat and breaches the hull’s integrity. Then the place catches on fire and roasts the face off the astrophysicist. Then the Navy captain is severed in half. Then more messages from Jerry. And he’s not happy.

To go any further would cause YOU mental grief as I’d have to wreck it all by telling you the spaceship is not alien, but rather a vehicle from our future and… Crap, sorry. Sphere (1998) gets really intense, and while you have to pay the heck attention, clues are all over the place to explain the monster squids, toxic jellyfish, and trillions of fish eggs that look like and are the size of sea potatoes.

There’s a tedious subplot involving the psychologist and the marine biologist, who had an affair (another clue). But since they don’t show any sea boobies, it’s just something you’ll have to put up with. The movie will hold your interest, though. And after you’re done, go stick your head in a sphere…it’s fun!

Squishy Horror

Don’t you hate it when you’re out deep sea diving in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean shopping for succulent breakfast clams, when your quest is interrupted by an unearthly creature? Man, that just sucks.

But that’s just what happened to Olive, a young marine biologist in the upcoming horror sci-fi movie, The Dark Below. But it’s not like the unearthly underwater creature just swam up to her and hopped into her to-go bag. Nope, there was a traumatic accident not related to eating bad clams.

So she smuggles the monster home with every intent to study it, feed it, probably give it a cuddly name like Squishy and have someone/something to talk to besides her boyfriend. As the movie’s press release tells us, “Whilst struggling to re-adjust to landlocked life and recover from her recent trauma, Olive begins to realize that she and the creature share a symbiotic bond that drives her to carry out its sinister will.”

Sounds groovy, but it gets better…

“Plagued by gruesome nightmares, her fractured memories of what happened during the accident in the depths of the ocean begin to unravel and reveal an eldritch horror far older and malevolent than she could ever imagine, one which she has unwittingly set free. Olive’s obsession leads to madness as her discovery consumes her entire humanity, with deadly results for those around her.”

An eldritch horror – that term means weird and sinister or ghostly and, as it’s inspired by H.P. Lovecraft, suggests the creature is gonna be all tentacle-y ’n stuff. (It could be a mutant clam with, like, five arms or something.) Just gonna have to wait – The Dark Below’s website says its coming out in 2016. Dang – I might be sober by then.

P.S. Don’t confuse The Dark Below with The Dark Below, another underwater horror sci-fi movie with the same title coming out sometime in 2015/2016. I wrote about it on June 15, 2015. As I recall, the seas were rough that day…

Jaws In Your Bathtub

“You’re going to need a bigger toy box…”

A re-casting of the famous line in Jaws (1975) in which Roy Scheider’s character Chief Martin Brody is chumming the sea with fish guts and Jaws pops out and causes Brody to pollute his pants.

Coming soon is a new Jaws ReAction toy figures by Funko™. Their website says it’ll be released in July doesn’t line up with Amazon.com’s available date of September 30. No worries – Korea will probably bootleg this thing and have it for sale by the end of today.

A Gremlins (1984) set is being released at the same time as well. But I never liked those little trouble-making toilet brushes, so put me in the “not even close to being interested” column. Nope, I want me some Jaws.

The coolest part is the air tank accessory, which fits as nicely in Jaws’ mouth as action figure/shark hunter Quint. (For realism they should’ve added a beer can accessory to go along with Quint’s harpoon.) Then you have marine biologist and all-around wise-guy Matt Hooper. Oddly, he looks built to the scale of Quint and Brody. In the movie Hooper is a little dude, a veritable Scooby snack for Jaws.

Each uneaten figure is sold separately for $19.99 and Jaws for $24.99 (on Amazon), or buy ’em altogether for $49.88 + $4.99 shipping. Seems reasonable given how much fun time you’ll get in the tub with these guys. OK, that didn’t come out right. Really wish they would’ve made Quint’s boat, Orca. Now I’m gonna have to use a cereal bowl carrying his next three meals for Jaws to attack/kill/eat.

Giant Mexican Cephalopod

Pffft – some monster; it looks like an octopus made out of a meatball with one eye and tentacles that seem to be waving at eight different clams at the same time.

So while you/me/we breathlessly wait to see this oven baked creature (total screen time: 13 seconds spread over three “sightings”), we have to put up with a chick vacationing in Mexico who, upon hearing about said water devil, becomes obsessed with finding it. Not sure what she planned on doing with it once located. Maybe to give her much-needed acting lessons.

Her new marine biologist boyfriend, who smokes nutritious cigarettes and plays the acoustic guitar (a cross between a tone deaf James Taylor and worn brakes), doesn’t share her belief system as all he wants to do is snorkel in her sea grotto.

Then there’s a half-baked attempt to pad the plot even more with a concerned local with territorial community spirit who wants to keep the monster around to eat tourists. Now who will buy those novelty day-glo sombreros?

You already know how this ends – with you wanting a full refund. Monster from the Ocean Floor (1954) will give your eyes “see food” poisoning.