Sharks Can Be So Cruel

Just because you have the proper noun Jaws in your movie title doesn’t make it part of the Jaws (1975) family. Nor does reusing dialogue, plot and swiping footage from the Jaws series (as well as Great White/1981 and Deep Blood/1989) qualify as an actual movie. More like cut ‘n paste plagiarism. The only thing cool about Cruel Jaws (1995/aka, Jaws 5: Cruel Jaws and The Beast), which is guilty by a jury of its peers of the above crimes against humanity, is its title. Everything else is just regurgitated bait.

A territorial 35-foot great white shark, thought to be the by-product of military fussing, is attacking and eating the flavorful folks in Hampton Bay, an affordable (at the time) small Florida coastal town. There’s an upcoming Regatta (a sporting event consisting of a series of boat or yacht races) party, and the marauding shark could chomp into their profits. The local sheriff and a teen shark expert (“Sharks swim, eat and make baby sharks…”, a line directly lifted from Jaws) go on the hunt for the “readily available on a moment’s notice” monster. The plan is to kill it. There’s the cruel part.

To bring an emotional element into the mix, they feature a little girl in a wheel chair. “Daddy — give that shark a punch in the nose for me…” That is SO cute. Then there’s a rich kid on a yacht with his friends, armed with guns and gasoline. May the yacht rest in peace. Elsewhere, one of the main characters looks exactly like pro wrestling legend Hulk Hogan, so a fair guess would be he’d use a folding metal chair to take down the mouthy monster in a no-holds barred shark cage match. You could have a zebra fish as the referee. Heh.

All that and the best scene comes when the shark, taking the bait (raw rump roast) dangling from a helicopter, ends up eating the civil aircraft and its occupants — as dessert. Sharks need roughage in their diet.

Cruel J seems to mark his territory around a sunken military ship, presumably where he was born and set free upon the boat’s demise. So this is where the squeaky clean teens and Hulk Hogan go to plant dynamite. (Sure hope the ref isn’t watching.) The ship, though, is loaded with valuables that local criminals try to retrieve. CJ cares not for thieves.

As painfully bad as Cruel Jaws is, you should probably watch it (on YouTube™ for free) and turn it into a drinking game. Do a shot every time you see a stolen scene/dialogue from Jaws; You’ll be passed out cold long before the part where a barking seal interrupts a crooked local amusement park owner’s hot-air balloon speech and knocks him into the dolphin tank. (They don’t show it, but the dolphins likely tore the guy in half and feasted on his land guts. I’m pretty sure of it.)

New York – A Killer Vacation Destination

Resurrected by an underwater electrical cable (a good source of power and vitamins for the dead), Jason Voorhees, the unstoppable hockey-masked serial killer is nearly showroom ready YET AGAIN. A believable though predictable beginning for Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989).

A boat load of dumbass high school dumbasses are pleasure boating up the coast to go spread their dumbassery around New York. Jason loves boats (kyaks in particular), so he grabs hold of the S.S. Scream ’n Die’s anchor and gets a Lyft™.

What few survivors left escape by row, row, rowing the rest of the way to New York, where Jason follows. Strolling the well-littered streets of Manhattan, Jason punches a mouthy gangbanger so hard, his head comes clean off. A bit dramatic, but hey, JV was just excited to be anywhere except Crystal Lake for a change.

In town with a few days to kill (heh), Jason takes in the sights: Times Square, the sewer system (kind of the same thing), and a nightclub (he skated without paying cover). The movie’s ongoing joke is that one of horror’s most prolific killing machines could walk mostly unnoticed among the city’s jaded residents.

Jason gets a taste of New York hospitality when toxic waste is poured into the sewer and his flesh dissolves like Alka-Seltzer™ after a long night killin’ it in the City That Never Sleeps. (He’ll be back.)

Say what you will about the Big Apple – you can’t get this kind of entertainment in Los Angeles.

Super Sci-Fi

Superheroes are science fiction. That incendiary statement is a big fat lie. Take Batman, for instance. He’s one of history’s greatest superheroes and is self made. No being born on a distant planet and being foster home’d on Earth, finding a power ring that didn’t come out of a Cracker Jack’s™ box, or bitten by a radioactive ick bug. Just a lot of time in the lab and gym, and a deep desire to smack criminals – or anyone even thinking about becoming a criminal.

By and large, though, superheroes are the stuff of sci-fi. How could you not punch buildings in the roof without breaking your knuckles, or stretch your arms around your body and give yourself a reach-around and not be borne of sci-fi? And this, along with some really cool characters and story lines, is what makes the current wave of superhero TV shows so dang fun.

Preferring to watch movies instead of TV shows, I was lured back by a whole punchfest of superhero shows delving into the re-imagined history of Batman, The Flash, Green Arrow, Daredevil and the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. in a way comic books (or “15 cent bibles”) of my youth only touched on. After binge watching a pile of these new TV series, here are a few overviews and observations…

GOTHAM
A clever spin on taking the Batman universe back to the beginning, when pre-Bat Bruce Wayne is just starting to grow vengeance pubes. It’s here they shake up the origins of B-Man’s greatest foes – Catwoman, Penguin, Joker, Riddler, Poison Ivy, etc. – and how they played a part in young Master Bruce’s pre-destiny. (Selina “Catwoman” Kyle is a teen here and quite the cutie, thereby introducing Bruce to his newest weapon, the Bat Boner.) Also, someone dies violently every episode.

THE FLASH
C.S.I. whiz Barry Allen was turned into the Flash by a particle accelerator explosion, changing him into a meta-human. The same science-gone-wrong blast also morphed a bunch of non-law abiding citizens of Central City into meta-criminals, each acquiring a unique sci-fi power of their own. This provides the Flash with a new super criminal each week to weave into the overall story arc. P.S. Kind of a well-intentioned wuss, Flash nevertheless cries every episode. And he also gets beat up a lot. Maybe they should call him the “Fastest Punching Bag Alive.”

ARROW
A heavy back story hot mess, Arrow nonetheless shows the transformation of billionaire twenty-something Oliver Queen, going from party fun boy cheating on his girlfriend with her sister (in his defense, sis is really hot), to the hooded/masked/eye makeup’d Arrow (or “Green Arrow”), a balancer of right and wrong. It’s here he puts to good use his peerless bow and arrow skills he developed to survive on that criminal-infested, desolate island for five years after his yacht sank in big wavy waves. In the beginning he actually killed people. Now he just wounds them. In every episode someone finds out his secret identity. (Notes: Oliver never seems to run out of arrows. Also, the show crosses over with The Flash. Pretty flashy.)

DAREDEVIL
Really dark – in lighting and mood – the sightless Daredevil brings blind justice (heh) to New York by night, and fights for due legal process as attorney Matt Murdock by day. (As he’s blind, how can Daredevil tell when it’s night and day? Yet another one of his unique abilities, I guess.) DD didn’t wear his famous devil-horned red costume for most of the first season, preferring to beat up criminals in his Old Navy™ street pants. Speaking of fisticuffs, the gritty fight scenes are amazingly orchestrated and extreme brutal ass kick. Everybody at work the next day just thinks those bruises on his face were from tripping over furniture.

THE AGENTS OF S.H.I.E.L.D.
The Agents of S.H.I.E.LD. is overflowing with super humans, super criminals, global conspiracies, betrayals, wicked fight sequences, secrets within secrets, occasional Avenger cameos, and really hot gals. The series, soon to be on its third season as of this e-barfing, stretches to keep the story arc from sliding all over the place. Doesn’t always succeed, but still one of the better genre shows going (my opinion only). The amazingly cool character of Agent Phil Coulson is brought back from the dead (he was killed in half by Loki, Thor’s half-bro in The Avengers/2012) with his dry humor intact, and picks up the pieces of the broken S.H.I.E.L.D. (see Captain America: The Winter Soldier/2014), and kicks ass in every cliff-hanging episode. I wish to be an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., if for anything to meet Chloe Bennet (aka, Agent Skye). You don’t have to guess what her super power is…

SUPERGIRL
Getting ready to air as of this super-blogging. But watching the promo short, I can tell this one isn’t for me, despite Supergirl being a super cutie.

This show is meant for 12-13 year old girls. Since I quit wearing sparkle fingernail polish last year, I’ll have to give the Captain America: The First Avenger (2011) sexy spin-off, Agent Carter a try…

GOTTA GET THIS OFF MY SUPER CHEST: SMALLVILLE
Airing from 2001 to 2011, this popular 10-year series followed the acne years of Superman. Yeah, I watched a few episodes in the beginning, only to fly away after seeing Super Wuss go through endless drama scenes of teen angst. (You’re over-thinking it if you get a tummy ache deciding if it’s morally right or not to look through Lois Lane’s blouse with your X-ray vision. Just do it, for crying out loud. (No pun intended.)

P.S. I didn’t forget Heroes. Just never watched it. I was busy painting my nails and… Oh crap – did I just say that out loud? Clearly, my super power is having a big mouth.