Mega Shark Vs Giant Octopus (ww.the-usher.com)

"Those guys have been frozen in ice for millions of years. Wouldn't you be a little horny?"

When Emma MacNeil (Gibson) follows a pod of whales into a military test range in Alaska, her submarine and the whales are caught up in a bombing exercise that sees part of the ice cap fall into the see. She manages to escape but just as she moves away she sees something that she knows is impossible, two extinct giant sea creatures fall out of the ice and swim into the Pacific. With no one believing her, this all changes when the coasts of Japan and North America suffer a series of devastating attacks. Consulting her colleague Lamar Sanders (Lawlor) and Japanese specialist Dr. Seiji Shimada (Chao), they conclude that the two creatures are two extinct monsters of the sea, a megalodon or mega shark and a giant octopus. With conventional weapons not able to stop them, Emma and her team have come up with a plan to stop them. Get them to fight each other.

There was a time when the B-Movie was king but it has been a long time since their heyday in 50s and 60s but can the B-Movie be given a modern twist?

The B-Movie used to be home to appalling acting, dreadful visual effect but stories that punched well above their extremely small budgets. With the advent of new, computer aided visual effects, better cameras and more comprehensive training for actors and actresses you would think the B-Movie would have died a death but you would be very wrong.

When the trailer hit for writer/director Jack Perez’s ‘Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus’, the Internet was a buzz with excitement and the hope that a true B-Movie had returned. Pitching two extinct goliaths of the oceans, the megalodon, a sixty feet long mega shark and a giant octopus, against each other sounded like a stroke of genius but the execution harks back to the very worst of the B-Movie era to produce a film that even Ed Wood would be ashamed of.

A low budget, B-Movie will never attract a big name star but they can bring in someone who you might have heard of. For ‘Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus’, writer/director Jack Perez has gone back to the 80s and hired a woman who was a teen sensation. With hits like ‘Shake your love’, ‘Only in my dreams’ and ‘Foolish Beat’, Debbie Gibson was the Britney Spears of her generation. Now, known as a more grown up Deborah Gibson she has turned her talents to acting but she need not have bothered. As Emma MacNeil, you are expected to believe that see is a marine scientist who can save the world from a giant shark and an octopus by pouring different coloured liquids into test tubes. With your Pop Princess on board, she is joined by other performers who shouldn’t have a space in the life raft. Vic Chao is awful as Dr. Seiji Shimada, the love interest for Gibson and Sean Lawlor is just as bad as her mentor Lamar Sanders. The worst of the bunch is Lorenzo Lamas, who just wants to be the new Steven Segal and he has the ponytail to prove it.

Awful acting could be forgiven if the visual effects were good but unfortunately they make the 50s and 60s B-Movie look good. When you call your movie ‘Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus’ you really want to see a mega shark and a giant octopus but they are only ever shown in quick flashes and repeating footage. This is unforgivable because even with a very small budget, most of this should have been spent on making these sea creatures fight.

‘Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus’ is a title with potential but is extremely poorly realised. Awful acting, a dread plot and astonishingly bad visual effects combine to make this a B-Movie that won’t win any fans. While some maybe attracted to its title, this is a monster movie lacking any real bite.

PICTURE & SOUND

Presented in Widescreen 1.85:1 Anamorphic with a Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack, the transfer is good.

BONUS FEATURES

The Making of Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus (7.51 mins)
Deborah Gibson, Sean Lawlor, Vic Chao and Lorenzo Lamas take you behind the scenes of the making of the movie.

Bloopers (2.35 mins)
You wouldn’t believe it but the cast and crew did make mistakes on set and you can see some of them here.

Trailer (1.07 mins)
Watch the trailer that previewed the movie online

OVERALL

The DVD treatment for ‘Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus’ is as disappointing as the film. The featurette is short and the bloopers are standard fair, making this a lacklustre DVD release.

DVD

Dragon Wars

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2009