Mega Shark Vs Giant Octopus   Starring: Deborah Gibson and Lorenzo Lamas Metrodome RRP: £9.99 MTD5478 Certificate: 15 Available 10 August 2009

Whilst studying whales off the coast of Alaska, Emma MacNeil and her team witness a military sonar experiment which agitates the whales so much that they crash into the ice releasing a monstrous shark and a giant octopus from their frozen slumber. As the creatures go on a rampage of destruction no one will believe MacNeil, so she turns to her old mentor Lamar Sanders, the only man who believes her...

Mega Shark Vs Giant Octopus (2009 - 1 hr, 25 min, 07 sec) is a disaster B-movie, which was written and directed by Jack Perez. Those of you who are old enough will remember that Debbie Gibson started her career as a teen pop singer and whilst she has continued to record she has successfully branched out into theatre and film.

The film feels oddly dated, given that this type of story used to be produced a lot in the nineteen fifties and sixties, it’s difficult to know who would constitute an audience for this genre of film now. The special effects are a little below par, even for television, though there are some inventive moments. The most enjoyable, and the high point of the film, being when the shark jumps out of the water to bite a commercial airplane. Very silly idea but well executed. Though quite how the shark was able to launch itself so high, or even why, is quickly passed over.

As you can imagine from the title, the story holds few surprises. Once everyone accepts the reality of the creatures, something which happens with little doubt or incredulity being displayed, the good guys are off in submarines hunting fish. There are the usual tussles with authority, until they get the two monsters to attack each other.

The quality of the acting is variable, though Gibson and Lawlor put in passable performances, where the rest of the cast swing between barely acting to excruciatingly over acting. The script is weak, the dialogue is some of the most absurd I’ve heard and the plot is shot full of holes as a B-movie should be.

What is missing from the film is the shark and the octopus, too much of the film is made up of cheaper shots of the main cast talking, ultimately the film just doesn’t live up to its own hype.

You get a choice of either a 5.1 surround sound or a 2.0 stereo audio track, but you won’t get blown away with either option. There are a couple of extras, starting with Making of Mega Shark Vs Giant Octopus (7 min, 51 sec) with a lot of the actors looking more than a little embarrassed talking about the film, interestingly there is no contribution from the writer/director. Next up is the Blooper Reel (2 min, 35 sec) with the actors fluffing their lines, which is less amusing than you would think, but at least you get the idea that the cast and crew had a ball making the film. The last extra is the trailer (1 min, 07 sec), which contains all the best scenes from the film, so you can save yourself an hour and a half and just watch the trailer.

On the plus side, at under a tenner it’s cheap; however the fact that it is not a very good film is a pretty big negative. It only gets four marks and three of those are for the shark eating the plane.

4

Charles Packer