Ghost Shark (2013)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

Company: Active Entertainment

Runtime: 84 mins

Format: T.V.

Plot: When reckless rednecks on a fishing trip kill a great white shark, its spirit comes back for revenge, and soon turns its sights on the nearby town of Smallport, where this 'ghost shark' can now hunt wherever there's water - both in the sea as well as on land.

Review: To say that shark movies are a very tired and overdone corner of the B-Movie market would be one of the biggest understatements in the history of mankind. On the surface, Ghost Shark may seem like a new and unique entry in that overcrowded corner, and while that is true to an extent for reasons I'll get to later, when you dig deeper into it, it really isn't a whole lot different from any number of the other low budget shark-themed B-Movies.

Stripping away the whole supernatural angle and taking Ghost Shark to its basics, we've seen this movie before, dozens upon dozens of times. A large killer man-eating shark wanders into a town that is not quite accustomed to such things, on the eve of some big town-wide celebrations, and those that know about the danger (in this case it is a group of cardboard cookie cutter teens that we get in almost all of these movies, with the exact same diverse personalities as in all of these) are running around town like crazy people, being ignored and threatened to remain quiet by the town officials such as the Sheriff, Mayor, ect for fear of causing a panic during one of their popular times of year, and ultimately the teens have to take matters into their own hands if they want to save their town. Seriously, if you've seen one of these shark movies you've literally seen them all.

However, I'd also be lying if I said that the supernatural spin they add to it didn't make me forget about all that, at least for portions of the movie, and didn't result in a decently fun ride. The one main area where this movie sets itself slightly above the pack are the really fun and unique death scenes, which could not have been accomplished had it not been for the fact that the killer animal here is indeed the evil vengeful spirit of a shark as opposed to a flesh and blood creature, and with that comes a whole new set of rules for it – it can move about in any water in the area, not just the ocean. And by any water I mean things such as circling around someone in a bathtub (in a scene that slightly reminded me of a similar scene from the first Nightmare on Elm Street movie), its fin coming up from a paved street where water sprinklers are set, appearing on a slip-and-slide while someone races down it, having an all-you-can-eat buffet of sexy young girls in bikinis at a car wash, being drank through a coffee cup only to rip the person apart from the inside, launching out of a toilet, and even capable of gliding through the sky during a thunderous rainstorm. And that's only a portion of some of the shark attack scenes offered by this movie! With a new attack scene seemingly every few minutes, this movie is full of cheer-worthy cheesy moments of spectral shark goodness and it goes a long way, like I said above, to making you forget just how mundane and paint-by-numbers the actual plot and characters really are. 

The movie also benefits from the fact that the effects seem quite above-average for such an affair as this. With the shark being a simple see-through spirit, I expected the level of detail on that thing to be next to zilch, yet to my surprise, the level of detail (in addition to the quality itself) was some of the best I've ever seen in a made-for-TV B-Movie, beating out (by far) the level of detail on most low budget CGI physical sharks from any other SyFy Channel Original. In addition to that, the bright glistening blue glow and accompanying sound effect of when the shark was around (an almost whistling kind of noise) were both excellent touches that weren’t exactly needed, but I'm really glad they were included.

The one thing I wasn't glad was included though, was the character of the crazy old man that everyone is nervous around but who seems to have all the answers to everything going on in the movie. Seeing as how the Scooby-Doo gang of teens went to the museum and spoke with a local historian (in addition to some other things in the movie), they pretty much found out most of what they needed to know on their own anyway, and mostly all this character did was reiterate stuff that both we as the audience, in addition to the characters, either already knew or would be finding out on their own again shortly after anyway. He also came with a pointless subplot of longing for his dead wife who still roams around the area as a ghost. It leads nowhere at all, adds nothing more to the movie, and if anything it just took time and momentum away from the main meat of the movie. In my opinion, neither him nor his subplot was needed at all. 

Crazy old man subplot aside though, while Ghost Shark retreads overly-familiar ground with the same basic cardboard cut-out characters, it manages to do so in a unique and fresh way that allows you to forget, at least temporarily, that you've seen this exact movie a dozen times before, while adding an extra layer of fun small touches that is not required or often seen in these types of movies, but is very much appreciated when it isdone. 

As far as fun, cheesy, stay-in-and-watch-on-a-rainy-Saturday-night made for SyFy Channel B-Movies go, you can do a hell of a lot worse then Ghost Shark. 

6/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

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Rise of the Zombies (2012)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

Company: The Asylum

Runtime: 90 mins

Format: BluRay

Plot: A group of survivors hide on Alcatraz Island to escape from the rising zombie hordes. When their refuge is overrun, and upon hearing that a scientist hiding in the middle of the city may have discovered a cure, they leave the island to seek him out.

Review: A couple years ago the SyFy Channel and Asylum got together for a co-produced project for Halloween called 2012: Zombie Apocalypse. I ended up enjoying that one quite a bit, even though I felt it got really repetitive, had no plot to speak of, and the zombie actors were pretty terrible. Well it seems Syfy and Asylum joining together for a zombie flick is becoming an annual Halloween tradition as they did it again last year with the just-as-bland titled Rise of the Zombies.

Luckily, the saying 'Practice Makes Perfect' rings true here. While the movie itself may not be perfect, it's certainly a nice improvement over an already decently-entertaining previous movie. For starters, the zombie actors were a lot better this time, never once taking me out of the movie and making me go 'Wow, that person is trying way too hard to act like a zombie' like what happened multiple times during 2012: Zombie Apocalypse. It also helped quite a bit that the make-up and prosthetics looks much better this time around; A lot more realistic and less like, well, make-up – plus they also threw in some really unique and chilling zombie designs for the occasional one, to keep things fresh. Actually, there is one scene with a zombie that has a very contorted body that was just genuinly creepy to look at. I don't think there's a single zombie movie that has had even one scene that creeped me out in the last decade (with the exception of the 2004 Dawn of the Dead remake), but the scene in this movie with that contorted zombie managed to do just that.

Actually the effects all around were heavily improved this time, and not just the make-up effects. CGI zombie head shots as well as an awesome car crash near the beginning were both improved over the CGI from the previous year's flick, and this one even had some pretty entertaining, albeit gruesome, practical zombie kills. Hell, within the first two minutes of the movie you see a zombie get its head smashed right in with a giant wrench and beat to a pulpy mess, and all throughout the movie you get super gory shots of zombie hordes ripping people apart and feasting on their intestines and other inside organs – and all of this in a made-for-TV movie! In all honesty, in terms of violence and gore, this movie is right up there with AMC's The Walking Dead, including an extremely disturbing and uncomfortable hard-to-sit through baby delivery and what follows directly after. This is weird to say about a TV movie, but there were points in the movie where it almost felt like they were taking things a bit too far in order to make things as disturbing and depressing as possible, and I actually could have done with a tad less of some of that. The baby scene I just mentioned is actually a prime example of that, as I felt it was done in a bit of bad taste and seemed to only be included purely for shock value and to see how far they can go with some things.

In terms of plot, parts of this movie isn't far off from The Walking Dead either. Much like with the current season of that show that was airing during the time of this movie's release, Rise of the Zombies has our main band of survivors holed up in an abandoned prison for a portion of the movie, though they do end up having to leave and head out into the nearby city in order to locate a specific scientist’s lab where they know he had been working on a vaccine, so they can get his notes and research from before he had died. It certainly doesn't have any great in-depth thinking man's kind of plot or subtext to it like what you would get in an early Romero zombie movie, but if you're just looking for a nice SyFy Channel B-Movie to watch some weekend night with a couple beer, and you're in the mood for some gory zombie mayhem, this one comes highly recommended by me. Plus this kind of plot paved the way for a variety of fun settings for some of the zombie action to take place in, settings like both inside and outside of the prison, through abandoned city streets and small neighborhoods, inside rather large and luxurious-looking homes, a secret underground government facility, and (just like the previous movie) a shipyard and dock. Actually, if I had any major complaints with the plot it would be that it kind of devolves into just following the steps of the previous movie a bit too much during the ending, with the survivors having to reach the docks of the city in order to wait for a boat that will arrive to bring them to a zombie-free paradise, and of course the docks are not as 'clear of zombies' as they are supposed to be. Sadly this movie didn't have anything as interesting or unique as zombie tigers for their version of that scene, so not only was it just a repeat scene with different actors, but it also (for the first time this movie) wasn't done as well either.

Something else that, while better then the previous movie, also wasn't very good, was the acting - but that usually comes part and parcel with these kinds of movies, so that should always be expected here anyway. I was actually surprised however by how many recognizable faces were actually in this. Going in, I already knew about long-time actress Mariel Hemingway, Levar Burton from Star Trek: The Next Generation, and Danny Trejo in his second SyFy Channel movie of 2012 (the first being Haunted High, aka Ghostquake, back in August 2012), but I had no idea beforehand that Ethan Suplee (My Name is Earl, countless Kevin Smith movies), French Stewart (Stargate, 3rd Rock From The Sun), and Chad Lindberg (The Fast and the Furious, Ash from Supernatural) were all in this as well, in addition to some regular Asylum faces like Heather Hemmens (3 Musketeers, Hellcats) Madonna Magee (11/11/11), and Andy Clemence (3 Musketeers, 11/11/11, Air Collision). With so many great names, it's actually a pretty big disappointment that the acting on display wasn't better then it was, but I suppose everyone is allowed an off day every now and then.

All in all though, this was a highly enjoyable low budget zombie flick from the folks at SyFy and the folks at Asylum. Not perfect, because the acting was below what you would expect from this roster of actors, plus I probably could have done without quite so much of the totally unforgiving disturbing stuff that seemed only added in so they could see how far they could push the envelope and get away with it, but at the end of the day this turned out to be one of Asylum's better efforts and I was impressed more often then I was let down.

While I haven't done so yet, I imagine that Rise of the Zombies would make a great double-feature some rainy weekend night with 2012: Zombie Apocalypse, although watching both  back-to-back may give you the feeling of deju vu in some parts toward the end. Still, I think it'd be a fun experiment to see how well they mesh together, although you would almost have to put this one second just because it's the far superior film and I always like to end things off on a high note.

9/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

 

 

 

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Killer Mountain (2011)

REVIEW BY: Bobby Lepire

Company: Oracle Post

Runtime: 88 mins

Format: DVD

Plot: A rescue team is sent to find a missing expedition, which set out to recreate a 1954 lost mission on a forbidden mountain, only to cross paths with a ravenous creature, which is protecting something special.

Review: For some reason, it seems like lots of B-Movies open with pointless prologues, and 2011's Killer Mountain from the SyFy Channel is no different, and unfortunately things don’t much improve from there. Opening in 1954 Bhutan, a mountain expedition gets caught in a terrible snowstorm. One dumbass decides to go out into the storm, despite resistance from the others. We are not given any information about their expedition or how long they’ve been trekking, so Charles Wetherby, the aforementioned idiot, leaving in a terrible storm makes no sense to us as viewers. He then gets eaten by the creature of the movie, which is a sort of bug/worm/spider/wyvren thing. The CGI here, as throughout, is so bad that it’s astonishing that the SFX people, the director, the producers, and everyone else in-between saw them and said they were good to go. The other mountaineers then die of exposure and frostbite.

Cut to present, where the rest of the narrative takes place. The plot, when looked at objectively, is actually pretty fun - a rescue team is sent to save an expedition along that same 1954 path, with a secret mission. The creature is protecting what the expedition wants to find, and everyone is now in grave danger. Unfortunately, the greatest premise can still turn out awful if poorly executed. Here, the execution is amateurish at best, and entirely inept most of the time. For starters, most of the sets look and feel like artificial environments instead of authentic locations; I know the Millenium Falcon and Death Star aren’t real things, but the Star Wars movies made them feel real, and that is missing here. Early on, when we meet the leader of our rescue mission, Ward Donovan (Aaron Douglas from Battlestar Galactica fame), the forested area he’s teaching kids to climb in looks plastic and rubbery and not at all like any forest I have ever stepped into. When he almost falls, there’s a tree stump in the foreground that has a fresh coat of varnish on it. How did this get past everyone? How was this given the go-ahead? However, the least believable set is an ancient temple found atop the mountain. This thing looks like the set designer and laborers half finished it and walked away. It’s one thing to make something seem old, decrepit, and abandoned. It’s something else entirely to not even be able to finish the set, to make it look as such. The whole movie feels rushed and cheap, and it’s most obvious in the unconvincing sets.

The only thing worse than the set design is the CGI. While the practical snow effects look good (really, how hard is it to screw up snow?), all of the CGI is beyond terrible. The creature, while having a unique design and color palette meant to disguise it amongst the rocks, looks horrendous. It never has any weight, nor does it ever seem to occupy the same place as whatever it’s interacting with. When it nudges a crashed helicopter pilot to make sure he’s dead, it looks so unrealistic and unbelievable that it is actually painful. When it’s hiding on a cliff edge, it sticks out like a sore thumb. I am dumbfounded that the CGI is this bad when the movie is only two years old.

Director Sheldon Wilson also keeps things bland with a boring color scheme. Everything is white, grey, or black. It’s as if the cinematographer was a color blind narcoleptic. The few action scenes fail to generate any real tension or excitement, and all of these things lead to the greatest sin any B-Movie can commit: being ungodly boring. Boy, oh boy, is this movie dull. Thanks to the bland, unimaginative direction, a script written by people that must have never heard proper human speech before, and the worst CGI I have ever seen in a SyFy Channel movie, Killer Mountain fails to get the audience to invest in anything that's going on within it. With a plethora of pointless and frustrating subplots, the script is padded out like hell, and at less than an hour and a half, that is unacceptable. Had the film just stuck with the mysterious treasure plot, there could have been something interesting there, but there’s a million subplots: the “pretending to be a relief organization” plot, the “rescue mission” plot, the “ramifications of the 1954” prologue, and the “terrorists looking for the treasure” as well. Too much is going on, and none of it is engaging. It doesn’t help that, as stated above, the script never sounds believable or gets beyond the same tired old cliches and stereotypes.

Within this void of suckage though, there’s a sole silver lining. Excluding all the actors in the prologue, the acting across the board is excellent, with Aaron Douglas being the absolute best. He brings a lot of gravitas to an underwritten, uninspired role. As Kate Donovan, Emmanuelle Vaugier exudes confidence and can hold her own easily. Paul Campbell as the stereotypical jerk comes off as appropriately jerky and fun; You never totally hate him. Andrew Arlie as backer for the expedition brings a believable level of frustration and secrecy to the role. The rest of the cast do very well as well, and even if this were a higher budgeted, big theatrical release the acting here would be impressive, and far better than the movie deserves. It’s depressing though, because of how inept and dumb all the other choices here are. The good and striking acting is let down by everything else in the movie.

For a DTV movie, Killer Mountain has great acting, but it’s all for naught as at every possible turn ineptitude, stupidity, and boredom rear their ugly heads. On paper, this probably sounded great, but bland direction and terrible CGI hamper all the fun.

2/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

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Sharknado (2013)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

Company:  The Asylum

Runtime: 88 mins

Format: Screener

Plot: When a freak hurricane hits Los Angeles, thousands of sharks have no trouble terrorizing the waterlogged populace, but then when the high-speed winds also form tornadoes, nature’s deadliest killer rules water, land, and air.

Review: I know a lot of people love shark movies, but personally I'm just getting sick of them at this point, because the B-Movie genre is just getting over-saturated with them these last few years – they've become the easy go-to B-movie monster and I've gone on plenty of rants in the past about how we need to move away from them and give some other animals the spotlight. Luckily it seems that is finally starting to happen, seeing as how we've been getting plenty of good spider and dinosaur movies lately and a few less shark ones. Likewise, it's no secret that I'm just not a fan of Asylum's natural disaster movies. I give each one a shot, but I seem to find them all too similar to one another to really be of interest anymore and I also find that those are the ones that seem to have the laziest writing and the laziest acting and pretty much the laziest everything and I can't really muster up any interest for them anymore. 

With that stuff in mind, you can probably see where I'd be super cautious of Sharknado, a movie that combines both those genres into one movie – however, even I can't deny how damn eye-catchy and attention-grabbing that awesome title is, and when Asylum sent me a screener of Sharknado to review...well, I have no qualms in admitting that I was actually pretty excited to sit down and spend an hour and a half with this flick when I got home from work.

And boy, what a fast hour and a half it was! The movie started with a bang and never let up, only getting more and more insane (in a good way!) as it went on. It moved at such a quick pace that it was over before I even realized how much time had actually passed, and let me tell you – Sharknado doesn't waste any time at all. I was expecting the main event of the movie, the promise of the awesome poster art's flying sharks bringing down destruction onto a city to happen in the final 20 minutes or so as things often do in these movies, but I couldn't have been more wrong. It opens on a scene of sharks swimming in the ocean and getting picked up by the massively strong winds of a gigantic massive hurricane (Hurricane David, actually – which could be a coincidence but I'm willing to bet it was a nod to David Rimawi and David Michael Latt, the two main head honchos of The Asylum), which was directly followed by a scene of a fishing trawler getting caught in the whipping, whirling, teeth-gnashing shark-filled hurricane on its way to making landfall, and before the movie hits the 20 minute mark the hurricane and its army of hungry pissed off flying sharks has made landfall and rains destruction and chaos down, starting with a beach and its resident bar and boardwalk, and moving further inland from there, so literally from the opening seconds the movie has jumped right into its main plot and only escalates – no beating around the bush with this one!

Oh, and yes, the movie comes with just as many WTF moments as you would expect a movie called Sharknado to bring to the table; We have scenes of sharks flying in through windows, high winds knocking a Ferris wheel off its holdings and rolling down a street while at the same time sharks are falling down from the sky around it and trying to munch down on people, one of the sharks being knocked out by a bar stool being used as a bat, sharks swimming through a flooded Los Angeles and viciously attacking cars and chowing down on pedestrians, a shark shooting up into the air from out of a manhole only to get blasted mid-air by a shotgun blast, the main cast breaking into a hardware store and arming up on guns, chainsaws, and homemade explosives to battle the shark infestation, and of course the actual title mash-up itself of swarms of sharks being tossed around through the air by three giant F5-category tornadoes with all the damage, destruction, death, and fun moments of campy cheese that you would expect from such an amazingly unique sight!

The only part of these scenes that I found a bit iffy though, was during the flooding of Los Angeles, the water level as to how much of the city is flooded at any given time seemed to change from scene to scene. In some scenes the water was half-covering vehicles and deep enough for fully-grown sharks to be swimming around and playing Jaws in, while in other parts there's hardly any water (or even none) covering the streets, and certainly nowhere near enough for sharks to be fitting into. In addition, toward the end when the characters are trying to throw some bombs into the middle of the tornadoes to make them dissipate, both the people in the helicopter flying towards the tornadoes, as well as the people on the ground shooting up at the flying sharks, got waytoo close to the tornado – seriously, they were all pretty much inches away from these gigantic F5-category tornadoes and their hair wasn't even so much as blowing around, much less them getting sucked up into it, which is what should have happened being so close to the funnels. But hey, just some minor nitpicks in an otherwise uber-cheesy and just plain fun portion of the movie.

None of that cheese though would really be worth a damn if the special effects were utter crap, but thankfully they're not. There are a few weaker moments for it scattered here or there, but for the most part it's certainly above-average for the usual Asylum fare, though about on-average with the best of their 2013 selection (such as Age of Dinosaurs and the upcoming Atlantic Rim). Much like with 2-Headed Shark Attack they used practical effects for close-ups of sharks munching down on people and some of the shots of their fins moving through the water, but CGI for the wide shots as well as for the shots of sharks either swimming underwater or being whipped around through the air, and both types looked pretty good most of the time. Another part of the effects that certainly deserves a mention here is that the storm effects in the first part of the movie, as it approaches from the distance, were very well done. In retrospect that may have even been real storm footage that was just seamlessly integrated, or perhaps they actually filmed in front of an approaching storm, but if neither of those are the case then those dark skies and thick foreboding clouds were really well done CGI moments that had you almost feeling the humid winds approaching.

Another thing the movie surprised me with a bit was that it does a good job of very quickly establishing all the characters and making you care for them enough so that you're actually a bit sad to see them start getting offed. As I said above, the movie is in full-swing of its insane unique plot by 20 minutes in, and already by that point it has you feeling like you know the main cast and makes you genuinely care about what happens to them. And don't necessarily assume you know who will survive and who will die, because the movie has a knack for throwing some potential curveballs in there in that regard. I suppose that's also just as much a testament to the strong acting as it is the writing and directing as well – pretty much everyone here shines pretty brightly and never did take me out of the moment with any bad acting, which is made even more surprising by the fact that many of the characters are played by Unknowns that have very little previous acting gigs. 

Of course there are a few decent-sized names here as well, as there normally are in Asylum movies so they can slap their names onto the cover art. We have Ian Ziering as the main lead, most known for his voice work as lead characters on the classic animated series' Biker Mice from Mars and Godzilla: The Series, with Tara Reid playing his ex-wife that he does not get along with well at all. Sadly, Tara Reid is not aging all that well. She still looks beautiful with enough make-up on, but all those TMZ-reported-on nights of drugs and parties has not been so kind to her, making her look far older then she actually is. Admittedly though, she was a bit better then I was expecting her to be with this; I was totally expecting her to be nothing short of a painful trainwreck to watch and listen to, but thankfully she isn't. Hell, even though her line delivery is pretty bland most of the time and she may not be the best actor this movie has to offer, I'd still say she turned in a better performance here then she did in Uwe Boll's Alone in the Dark almost ten years ago. In addition to them, there's also John Heard playing a hilarious comedic relief character that's an old drunk who is a regular to Ian Ziering's bar that jumps in the car with them when all hell breaks loose, and Jaason Simmons from Baywatch playing one of Ian Ziering's friends and not nearly as much of a womanizing asshole as I was initially expecting him to be, and actually turning out to be one of my favorite characters in the whole thing.

And sure, most of these actors play their roles and act their way through all these insane shark-related situations pretty straight-faced, but sometimes playing things straight-faced in an otherwise really cheesy movie just adds to the cheese, in my opinion!

As I mentioned at various points earlier in my review, Sharknado may have a couple iffy parts here and there that made me scratch my head probably more then I was intended to as opposed to embracing it (changing water levels of the flooded city, characters getting within inches of a strong tornado with no repercussions, a couple minor shots of CGI that wasn't quite up to par with the rest), but the good far outweighs the bad, and with buckets of cheese just oozing from every pore of screen time. I never thought in a million years that if you took the two sub-genres that I'm utterly sick of, and combined them together into one movie, that it would result in a damn good time and just the revitalization I needed to feel for both shark movies as well as natural disaster flicks. Honestly, a movie like this is almost above review, because you get exactly what you expect a low budget movie called Sharknado to give you; If you love the title, you'll probably love what the movie has to offer, and if the title is something that makes you groan instead of laugh, then you're probably better off just staying away because the movie gives you all the cheese you would expect out of that title. Between Age of Dinosaurs already being out and Atlantic Rim coming out soon, followed shortly after (hopefully) by Sharknado, it looks like Asylum has a damn fine summer for 2013, with hopefully just as fine of a rest of the year to follow.

As to when you can expect to be able to add Sharknado to your home DVD and/or BluRay collections, sadly no release date (or even trailer for that matter) has yet to be announced, however if I was to take a guess I would place my money on late-July/early-August sometime, but that's nothing more then my own speculation. I do know however, that it will be airing on the SyFy Channel as one of their SyFy Original Movies and is currently set to air on the night of July 11th. As soon as a home video release date is announced though, along with a trailer, I'll be sure to edit this part of the review to include them.

In the meantime, enjoy another picture! (July 10th Update: Trailer added below picture now!)

8/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

 

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The Saturday B-Movie Reel Podcast

As a pretty big fan of podcasts, I tend to be subscribed to far more then I will ever have any hope of being fully caught up on. However, one of those podcasts that I make sure to always listen to the newest episode of as soon as it goes online is the lovely Saturday B-Movie Reel podcast, which is an offshoot of Tuning into SciFi TV, a podcast about various TV shows and such on the SyFy Channel.

The Saturday B-Movie Reel covers pretty much every movie that is a SyFy Channel Original Movie on a weekly basis, plus some older 'vintage' movies from the 70's, 80's, and early 90's about once a month, as well as a 'Could Be SyFy' section where they also cover direct-to-video B-Movies that come out that never aired on SyFy but probably should have.

The main host is a pretty cool guy named Kevin Bachelder who genuinely loves these movies and instead of just ripping them apart with savage hate like many podcasters and reviewers do, he actually talks about them with love and respect (well...for the most part. To be fair, some of these movies make it pretty hard sometimes - haha). Joining him every episode is a revolving door of special guest hosts that love these movies just as much as he does. I myself have been on a few episodes (Mega Shark vs Crocosaurus, 2-Headed Shark Attack, and Jurassic Attack/Rise of the Dinosaurs), and most of the guest hosts tend to return for multiple episodes so you get to know most of them just as well as you do Kevin, and you can tell that everyone involved just has a blast watching these movies, and just as much of a blast discussing them afterwards.

If you're interested in checking the podcast episodes out, you can go to the overall Tuning In To SciFi TV website which I linked to above, or go directly to the Saturday B-Movie Reel archive here, or you can do a search on Itunes for 'Tuning Into SciFi' and access the episodes through there, which includes the episodes for all the podcasts under the Tuning Into SciFi TV banner (including the Saturday B-Movie Reel episodes). You can also join the Facebook Group for the show, where Kevin, myself, and many others often frequent and have a few laughs, as well as post B-Movie-related articles and updates, or become a Fan and Like their official page. They now also have a Twitter feed dedicated to their podcast and all things B-Movie. Check it out and be sure to Follow them if you're not already.

Anyone who's a fan of B-Movies (which should be anyone reading this, otherwise why the heck are you on my blog?), I highly recommend this podcast. As for the episodes I've been a guest host on, you can find them listed below, along with links to those episodes as well as links to my own personal reviews for those movies.

May 23rd, 2013 Update: The newest episode in which I Guest Host on, the Jurassic Attack/Rise of the Dinosaurs podcast review episode is now Live! Check it out at the link below and enjoy!


Saturday B-Movie Reel Podcast Episode #34: Mega Shark vs Crocosaurus
You can listen to the episode Here.
You can read my own personal review of the movie Here.

Saturday B-Movie Reel Podcast Episode #55: 2-Headed Shark Attack
You can listen to the episode Here.
You can read my own personal review of the movie Here.

Saturday B-Movie Reel Podcast Episode #112: Jurassic Attack, aka Rise of the Dinosaurs
You can listen to the episode Here.
You can read my own personal review of the movie Here.

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Jurassic Attack/Rise of the Dinosaurs (2013)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

Company: Little Dragon Productions

Runtime: 83 mins

Format: Imported DVD

Plot: While returning from a military mission, a helicopter crash lands a commando unit in a dense, remote tropical jungle - a lost world populated by dinosaurs. Now they must find a way out of this isolated valley before becoming prey for the prehistoric predators.

Review: Continuing on with my week of dinosaur movie reviews, leading up to the release of Asylum's Age of the Dinosaurs, starting with Area 407 and followed by The Dinosaur Project, we now hit the recently-released Jurassic Attack, also known now as Rise of the Dinosaurs (see below). However, by recently-released I mean everywhere in the world except America. That's right, this movie came out back in February pretty much all over the world, except for us here in Canada and the U.S.. For whatever reason we still don't have it on our shelves at all. At this point, the closest we're going to get in the near future is a showing of it on the SyFy Channel (This weekend on May 11th, the very last Saturday Night Original Movie before SyFy's totally idiotic change in moving Original Movies from Saturdays to flippin' Thursdays), and it will be under the changed name of Rise of the Dinosaurs. Why on God's green earth SyFy changed the awesome Jurassic Attack to the boring and bland Rise of the Dinosaurs I'll never know. SyFy has a penchant in recent years for renaming excellently-titled movies to horribly bland titles, and I guess this is just another victim of that. When we do manage to eventually get it on a home video format (If at all – I've been waiting a year now for Arachnoquake and still no word yet of that one hitting over here either), hopefully it'll be under the original title and not SyFy's terrible one.

Title-drama aside, I actually thoroughly enjoyed this ride. Not without some large clunker points, that's for sure, but overall I enjoyed more then I didn't about this one. Right off the bat we have a pretty good B-Movie cast line-up – We have Gary Stretch, who I've been a rather large fan of since Mega Shark vs Crocosaurus, Corin Nemec from quite a few of these kinds of movies but most recently Dragon Wasps, and Vernon Wells who has been in countless things but I personally know (and enjoy) him most from Power Rangers Time Force where he played the main big bad boss villain Ransik. Upon hearing that these three would be in the movie together, I was really looking forward to them interacting with one another, especially Gary Stretch and Corin Nemec since those two generally tend to play the same kind of character and it would have been really fun to see them butting heads. Unfortunately, I didn't really get that. I did get butting of heads, and it was indeed between two of these actors, but not the two I was looking forward to. Corin Nemec plays some kind of military general that stays back in home base and barks orders over the radio to his team, led by Gary Stretch, while they are out in the field. Vernon Wells plays some kind of higher-up from him and those two butt heads the entire way as Vernon Wells' character just wants to bomb the entire location of jungle where our main team was last seen before all communications went down (to prevent the main villain from escaping with plans for a deadly WMD), but Corin Nemec is the one that keeps delaying and biding more time because he trusts his team will come through on top. Actually, with him staying at home base, he's never even in a scene with Gary Stretch, much less as any interactions with him, so that was pretty disappointing. Corin Nemec is known mostly for being in these kinds of movies, so I'm not sure why they regulated him to the kind of cameo role that's usually offered to actual famous well-established actors just to get their name on the posters.

Those three are also really the only good actors in the bunch, and sadly two of them have nothing to do by stand around in a small dimly-lit room and bark back at one another, but at least Gary Stretch is out in the thick of the action, and he rocks it every step of the way (hell, there's one scene where the dude stands his ground with his assault rifle and brings down a charging Tyrannosaurus pretty much all on his own without even flinching). Sadly, everyone else here is pretty bad in the acting department, but some of them have other attributes to at least even things out a bit. For instance, both of the female characters are pretty hot so while their acting may not be the greatest, at least they're really good eye candy (and it really is not long until the soldier one takes off her military jacket and goes the rest of the movie in a tank top), another of the characters is someone that has been trapped in this lost world for years so he's gone a tad bit looney and while he's playing his more crazier moments he does so in at least an entertaining way and those moments are some of the highlight moments of the movie. Most everyone else is just cannon fodder characters for the dinosaurs anyway, and don't have a whole lot of lines so their acting can be excused. 

The one that I found the worst though, with really no redeemable qualities, was the main bad guy – he was bad to the point of being eye-rollingly annoying and the one true weak point of the movie, in terms of the actors. It also doesn't help that, as I've mentioned in many previous reviews, I hate having a human villain in a killer animal movie as I feel it takes time, and the threat, away from what people are actually watching the movie for – the killer animals in question, but some times I can forgive it if the actor is at least fun to watch or the role is somewhat important, but neither is the case here. He plays a terrorist warlord from some South American country or another that has kidnapped the world's hottest bio-chemist (seriously, I am totally in the wrong career field if that's what the average bio-chemist looks like), and a military team is sent into the jungle to rescue her, with Plan B being capturing this warlord, which they do both of, and even after their escape helicopter is shot down by this guy's men and they crash in the thick of the lost world this movie takes place in, the warlord guy doesn't really do much but stay in their custody, following them around, and uttering threats and laughing at them. That's about it. He wasn't needed, IMO, and they could have easily still had the movie happen exactly as it does, without him. Have him get killed in the opening firefight in the jungle, but a couple of his troops still survive (as they do in the movie as-is) and shoot down the heroes' evacuating helicopter (as they still do) and the rest plays out exactly as it does, just without that character and laughably-bad actor. 

I really do not understand the need that so many of the makers of these movies feel to put in human villains. Trust me, people are not watching a movie called Jurassic Attack to see American soldiers chasing after a terrorist warlord, no, they're watching a movie called Jurassic Attack for one reason – American soldiers going up against rampaging hungry dinosaurs. This whole human villain sub-plot just takes time away from that and was totally not needed, especially with an actor as bad as that one in the role.

In a lesser movie, even more time would have been spent with the human villain at the center of attention then we already have here, and hardly any time would be spent with the main creatures of the movie (such as with Dragon Wasps – don't even get me started on that one). Luckily, we still have plenty of dinosaur action in this one, and it's all pretty fun and entertaining scenes. We have quite a few Raptor attacks, both by singular creatures as well as entire packs of them, we have two or three Tyrannosaur attacks and chase scenes, and we even have someone getting impaled on the horns of a charging Triceratops, and all of that is on top of some nice calm scenes of herbivore dinosaurs just grazing or sleeping around as well – if you like dinosaur action, this movie has tons of it, and it's all paced within the rest of the movie very well. Actually, watching this movie shortly after The Dinosaur Project almost makes up for that movie not having any T. Rexes, since this movie has not only a Rex, but a full pack of them that roam an area that's dubbed 'Death Valley'. There were such a wide variety of chase scenes and man vs dino action moments in this, it really did remind me of old B-Movie type stories I used to write as a kid, among which were some killer dinosaur ones that were very similar to this, and there were quite a few moments in Jurassic Attack that really did bring me back to my own stories and it just put a gigantic smile on my face, especially in regards to some of the Raptor attacks.

What did not put a smile on my face however, were many of the effects. The CGI models themselves of the dinosaurs were actually very well designed and rendered and some of the best-looking creature CGI models I've seen in a movie like this. However, the downside to them is that they really did not work at all in-motion; they moved and walked very unnaturally and stilted, and they interacted with the physical environments and the real humans very badly, especially in the scenes where they're killing people. Along those lines, the gun shot effects were beyond terrible, when used on both people and dinosaurs alike that are being shot up. The movie overall is quite a bit of fun, but these CGI interactions were just so terrible, you can't help but instantly be brought out of all the fun like a speeding car slamming on the breaks.

At the end of the day Jurassic Attack, aka Rise of the Dinosaurs, may be very far from perfect, what with the annoying human villain, mostly-terrible acting, and really badly-integrated CGI effects, but good lord it's still a hell of a lot of fun for those who just wanna see a mindless army soldiers vs dinosaurs in a lost jungle popcorn B-movie, of which this movie has PLENTY of entertaining scenes of, many of which remind me quite fondly of my own similar stories from my childhood. Did they make sense? Hell no, but they were filled with tons of fun mindless dinosaur carnage scenes, and this one follows suit perfectly. You want to see people get ripped apart from a pack of Raptors? This has it. You want to see someone get impaled on the horns of an angry Triceratops? This one has it. You want to see a Rex get its head blown off by an RPG? Yeah, this has that too.

Also surprisingly, the movie does not end with the 'lost world' being blown to smithereens like you so often see in these movies, which means there's good sequel potential there if they ever decide to go that route, which personally I hope they do. Despite all its faults, I still had a field day with this, and I hope I get to one day have a field day with Jurassic Attack 2 if the creators so deem it.

7/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

UPDATE: You can now hear me discuss this movie as a Guest Host on the Saturday B-Movie Reel podcast.

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Metal Tornado (2011)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

COMPANY: Capital Productions

RUNTIME: 97 mins

FORMAT: T.V.

PLOT: The Helios Project is a high tech facility tasked with storing and converting solar rays into an endless supply of renewable energy. After years of research and millions of dollars, it is now time to test the system out, which inadvertently unleashes a magnetic vortex on an unprepared world.

REVIEW: I'm not normally a big fan of the natural disaster type of B-movies. I love the scenes of destruction, but overall I find the movies are nearly identical to one another and pretty interchangeable and thus if you've seen one, you've seen them all. At its core, Metal Tornado is no different. However, it at least attempts to be a bit fresh by having the tornado be made of metal, thus making it even deadlier then a regular tornado. See, in this movie, due to a design flaw in this new potential way of gathering unlimited free energy from passing solar flares, an invisible vortex of magnetic energy is created, which of course then attracts anything metal - Hardware tools, storage shelves, propane tanks, chainsaws, even vehicles, to name just a few things we see; Anything and everything that has metal in it, all sucked in, dismantled, and taken apart in a matter of seconds, with the individual bits and pieces whipping around in a destructive roaring mass of metal, which as you can probably guess, leads to some very awesome low budget cheap CGI scenes of cheesy destruction and the very drawing point for these types of flicks. And yes, there is plenty here, all of which are pretty entertaining and fun. Hell, they even try to destroy it by firing missiles into it. Yes, you just read that correctly - they try to stop a tornado by firing missiles at it. That alone is reason enough for any B-movie lover to at least give this one a once-over.

However, the movie is constantly bogged down with too many scenes that take place entirely in the same couple of small enclosed rooms, as the main human characters sit around computers trying to figure out a way to track the tornado and put a stop to it. It also doesn't help that these are the exact same kind of characters we get in every natural disaster B-Movie, complete with the stereotypical sub-plot of single parent that works too much while also trying to raise a rebellious teenager. We do get a couple entertaining side-characters, such as a bad-to-the-bone biker chick, but they're far from enough to make the movie worth it, even if they do have a couple good scenes and some funny dialog. Even Lou Diamond Phillips, a man I normally enjoy the work of, even seemed pretty bored and 'blah' about being in this one, and doesn't really give us a reason to get excited here.

If you haven’t seen too many of these, then this is as good a one as any to start with, if not even slightly more recommended then most of the others, if for nothing more then the hilarious-cheesy premise and some of the unique destruction scenes. However if you're like me and watch multiple movies like this a month, then even though the disaster itself is unique and pretty fun, there's nothing else about this movie that sets itself out from the pack of hundreds of other nearly-identical disaster B-movies and you'll just find yourself bored as you've already seen these exact events and character subplots play out many times over before. 

5/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

 

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Shark Week/Shark Assault (2012)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

COMPANY: The Asylum

RUNTIME: 90 mins

FORMAT: Itunes

PLOT: A group of complete strangers find themselves isolated by a wealthy madman on his island compound. They are forced into a horrifying gauntlet where they must survive a barrage of ever-deadlier species of shark.

REVIEW: Even though I've gone on multiple triads over the last year about how sick I am of shark movies, there's still been some really good ones that came out this year (2-Headed Shark Attack and Jersey Shore Shark Attack being chief among them). It was because of that, that I actually wasn't as hesitant about checking out and writing a review of Asylum's Shark Week (also called Shark Assault in parts of the world and on some TV channels) as I perhaps may have been if it had come out earlier in the year. Sadly, I probably would have been more on the money had I stuck to my guns. While it's certainly not the worst movie I've seen this year, it doesn't even come close to the greatness of those other two 2012 shark movies I mentioned.

Shark Week (or Shark Assault, whichever it is for you) is kind of a mix of the semi-recent theatrical Shark Night 3D and any number of the Saw movies or Saw-style ripoff movies. In this, the leader of a drug cartel and his wife (played by the always-entertaining Yancy Butler) kidnap a group of people that he has a personal vendetta against, that all played a part in the death of his son, and as revenge he brings them to his secret island which is rigged with multiple extensive and deadly shark-related traps, of which they have to survive, one after the other, for 7 days in order to escape. Well, the plot for the movie said 7 days, but if that was the case, than the movie has a really piss-poor way of showing the passage of time, as apart from a couple of the attacks most of them seemed to take place in the same day and I kind of just assumed that they did while I was watching. It's supposed to take place over 7 days, but the impression I got while watching was that it was more like two or three days, at most.

In the acting department, the main cast of victims were competently-acted but nothing outstanding; It was about on-par for what you would expect from a 2012 Asylum movie. Of course there are eight of them, so some do a bit better/worse then others, but overall it was pretty even. What did surprise me though, was the characterization each of them got. Despite being such a large group, none of them blended into the background at all and each one stood out for their own reasons and were unique from one another. Even 2-Headed Shark Attack, which I loved couldn't even pull that off at all and it was my chief complaint about it. But back to the acting itself; While the main heroes of the movie were ok, the main drug cartel leader was pretty terrible and cringe-worthy (and honestly, the actor appeared drunk during most of his scenes), and sadly Yancy Butler was below par for what I've come to expect from her after her stints in Rage of the Yeti and the Lake Placid sequels. She seemed just plain bored with her role here and not really showing any emotion or anything other then monotone. She was a pretty big waste here, and I'd rather see her better utilized if Asylum decides to use her again in another of their movies. They need to check out the above mentioned Rage of the Yeti or especially the latest two Lake Placid sequels to see just how much fun she can be, if used properly.

The special effects however, especially when it comes to the sharks themselves, are the big surprise here - they actually looked really well-done, with the sharks looking like actual real sharks most of the time and not like badly-integrated CGI sharks like in most of Asylum's killer shark movies, so kudos has to go to their effects team for that. It was also great to see such a diverse range of the types of shark, as opposed to just the one species. Along those lines, I also have to give them props for including a scene with Hammerhead sharks - they've always been my favorite, but very rarely get any movie love (Great Whites and Tiger Sharks seem to have the market covered), so it was great to get some Hammerhead action. Unfortunately, while the sharks themselves are amazing, their attack scenes leave a lot to be desired. They're filled with  a lot of really annoying quick-cutting when someone is being killed by a shark, so the death scenes are pretty redundant and uninteresting due to that, and I'm not sure if that's an issue with the Effects team or with the Editor of the movie, but either way it was a pretty bad call, IMO, as death scenes are sometimes all these movies really have going for them, and in one with the effects as good as this it baffles my mind as to why they would fumble the ball with that.

Also getting in the way of really enjoying it as much as I would have liked, are some really puzzling script-related decisions. For example, in one scene they survive a school of baby sharks and their prize is a key. They move onto the next portion of the 'game' where they get to sleep on dry land for the night. They then (for unknown reasons that make no sense) wait until the next day and after they've already traveled a distance, before A) checking to make sure no one was badly hurt from the attack the night before and B) checking to see if the key they received unlocked their chains and handcuffs that they were bound by (spoiler, but not really - it does). Why the heck wouldn't they do those things the night before, the first chance they got? Why wait so long? There's also a scene with the characters running through a minefield and all these mines are exploding, yet none of the characters are anywhere even near the ones that are going off. Actually, now that I think about it, the whole mine field part doesn't make any sense as-is, since the movie's villain takes great joy in watching them go through the shark traps in a twisted game-kind of way, so why out of the blue try to kill off everyone at once in a mine field? The movie is filled with pretty ridiculous script choices like that, that left me trying to figure out 'Why' more-often then actually paying attention to the movie, and thus constantly taking me out.

But back to the positives for a bit to end this off on - it was a very beautiful movie to look at. I'm not sure what kind of camera they used to shoot it, but it looked great, and the background scenery of the island certainly didn't hurt it either. The excellent CGI of the sharks mixed with the beautiful cinematography definitely makes this movie really nice to look at (especially in HD), if nothing else.

All in all, I'd say Shark Week, aka Shark Assault is certainly nowhere near the Greats that Asylum has put out this year, but it's also certainly nowhere near their Worsts either - it's pretty smackdab in the middle, with maybe a slight lean towards the more positive side. If you're a fan of Asylum, I wouldn't go out of my way to watch it, but if the opportunity comes up that you can see it, I'd probably suggest giving it at least a one-time watch.

6/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

 

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Aladdin and the Death Lamp (2012)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

COMPANY: Chesler/Perlmutter Productions

RUNTIME: 84 mins

FORMAT: T.V.

PLOT: To save the world, Aladdin must wager everything to get an evil Djinn back into its lamp before it can open a Gateway that will unleash thousands of its kind.

REVIEW: With my recent new-found love for classic fairy tales (thanks solely to being addicted to the new ABC show Once Upon A Time), I've been eating up these fairy tale B-Movies this year (Gretl: Witchslayer, Black Forest, Grimm's Snow White, ect), and out of all those classic fairy tales, Aladdin is easily my favorite. So when I heard SyFy was doing their own Aladdin-themed movie titled Aladdin and the Death Lamp, of course I got excited to watch and review it, even though I was also a bit worried, knowing how some of their movies tend to turn out.

Right off the bat, Aladdin and the Death Lamp does an excellent job with combining 'fantasy fairy tale' (giant killer beasties, mystical amulets, and the magic of the Djinn) with 'treasure hunt adventure' (ancient book they discover that acts as a code to finding long-lost treasure, plenty of swash-buckling sword fights, and races against time). Actually, many parts of the movie felt very much like I was watching a low budget version of 1999's The Mummy, or at the least a low budget made-for-TV sequel to it; the movie included a protector that tries to stop the Djinn from being re-awakened, our main group of heroes that try to stop it once they accidentally unleash it upon the world, a meaner second group of people that wish to use the creature for their own means but don't quite understand its true power, and all of that is wrapped up within adventures through a desert and a race between the two groups to get to a mythical location first. If all of that sounds like it appeals to you, then this is probably one you'll want to check out. There's even a very Mummy-esque musical score which was put to good use throughout the movie, adding a very fitting tone to many of the scenes.

Even though most of the cast seemed to be unknowns (at least unknown to me and since, as of the time of writing this review, IMDB refuses to put up a listing for this movie, there's really no way to tell one way or the other), they were all pretty above-average for this kind of movie, never once taking me out. The evil bad guys were great at being evil without being distractingly over the top, while Aladdin and his group of heroes were charming and even funny at times. The only person I recognized here was Kandyse McClure from Battlestar Galactica (Dualla on that show), and she actually was the one weak part when it came to the actors. Not that she was bad per sey, just she didn't really have much to do other then stand around in the background most of the time (until the final 15-20 minutes where she finally came more to the forefront), and when she did speak, it just wasn't as good of a job as I've come to expect after watching her for four seasons on BSG. Still, it was nice to see her in something again other then one random episode of the Canadian-made show Republic of Doyle (side bar: check that show out if you can - hilarious, action-packed, and filmed in the city I live in!).

As for the Djinn itself...well this ain't no fun-loving match-making singing Robin Williams Genie, ohhh no, this is more like the evil Jafar Genie from the second movie, if he lost the ability to speak and communicated via growls and roars. This shapeshifting lizard-headed bad boy just loves tricking whoever its 'master' happens to be, causing evil mischief and killing people in inventive ways before sucking up their souls for dinner, all the while biding its time until it can open a gateway to Hell to flood the earth with his thousands of evil brethren. And while there's not too much CGI effects work to be had in this one, what we do get (which is mostly just the Djinn itself and his various magic trickery) looks pretty good and better then average for a SyFy movie, so kudos there; there's even a scene where it changes into a really cool-looking large tiger-like creature to rip someone's throat out. As a slight side note, I'm also really happy that they decided to go with the original name of Djinn and not the much-later, more socially known name of Genie, as Djinn is indeed what they originally were referred to before this last century or so. Sometimes it's the little details that can add so much weight to a movie. Of course they added in their own little B-Movie twists to the legend of how a Djinn and its powers work, but that's to be expected and it actually added to my enjoyment via the Cheese-side of things to see how all the wishes would backfire or be twisted. In that regard actually, parts of the movie seemed almost a bit like Wes Craven's Wishmaster.

Now, when it comes to the end of the movie (well, by 'end' I mean the final 15-20 minutes) they kind of start shooting out twists in the plot at rapid-fire, some of which are really predictable considering how some aspects of the movie played out earlier, but there were a couple really good ones in there that I was taken aback by – there's a death I knew was coming but came a lot earlier then I thought it would, an unexpected death, as well as double-crosses, triple-crosses, and hop-scotch-and-back crosses (Seriously, WTF did I even just type?), and while I knew that obviously Aladdin would come out on top by the time the end credits rolled, I was completely unsure of how he would pull it off and who exactly would be standing with him when that time came, so once again, kudos to whoever the writer was or writers were for actually keeping me on my toes for the last little bit of the movie, something that is quite rare for a SyFy Channel Original.

And while it didn't bother me at all, some people may find this movie has a bit of a slow start, as it's about half an hour in before the Djinn even shows up for the first time in his own movie (quick-cut intro aside), but that didn't bother me at all since that first half an hour was filled with some of those fun adventurous treasure-hunting scenes I talked about up above, and dealt with uncovering the mystery of this ancient tome that Aladdin and his buddy had discovered in a tomb (which of course ultimately leads them to discovering the lamp and letting loose the Djinn). But I feel I should probably mention it anyway, just for those who may not be prepared for that and are expecting evil Djinn hijinks every 5 minutes right from the onset. Also, if you're expecting any kind of faithful adaptation of the original Aladdin tale, then look elsewhere as the only similarities here is that there's a character named Aladdin and there's a Genie, of sorts, featured. But again, that's not something that bothers me personally because it was never advertised as being an adaptation.

From the moment it was announced, I was really hoping to enjoy this movie, and ultimately I ended up enjoying it even more then I had expected. Between my love for Aladdin stories and my love of the Mummy franchise, this movie hit all the right notes for me, and then threw a few extra ones in there for good measure.

10/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

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Dinoshark (2010)

REVIEW BY: Jeffrey Long

COMPANY: New Horizons

RUNTIME: 92 mins

FORMAT: BluRay

PLOT: A baby Pliosaur, a long-extinct prehistoric species of shark, swims away when the chunk of Arctic glacier that it had been frozen in breaks away due to global warming. Three years later, this 'Dinoshark' is a ferocious predatory adult and has made its way to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico where it starts killing tourists and locals just offshore.

REVIEW: Over the course of this upcoming weekend (August 18th and 19th), the Space Channel here in Canada is airing some kind of Killer Shark Movie Marathon, where-in they will be airing such classics as Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus and its sequel Mega Shark vs Crocosaurus, Sharktopus, Jersey Shore Shark Attack, Malibu Shark Attack, Dinocroc, Swamp Shark, and Dinoshark. Space was kind enough to send me a screener of Dinoshark for review, however I actually already owned that one on BluRay, so for the purpose of this review I'll actually be watching the BluRay copy in glorious HD! If you're interested in checking this one out for yourself, and you live in Canada, it will be airing at 6pm tomorrow night on August 18th on Space, but I highly recommend you tune in for the entire weekend of movies, because I've already seen each and every one of those and they all come pretty highly recommended by myself, even if I don't yet have reviews for all of them.

Now, the plot for this one is nothing special. In fact, it's a plot we've seen dozens of times over in dozens of almost-identical movies: Prehistoric shark gets thawed out from a glacier, makes its way to a beach-resort town and starts causing havoc (this time it's in Mexico though, as opposed to someplace within the United States, which was a welcomed change of locale). Of course our main ragtag group of  friends are the first to discover what's going on but nobody believes them when they try to warn the town, and with a big water-based event approaching, the town officials refuse to let anything get in the way of that event taking place, which of course leads to said prehistoric shark creating a massive bloodbath. Chances are you can name at least ten other movies with almost that exact same plot right off the top of your head at this very moment. And yes, while the plot is very uninspired and bland, the majority of everything else in the movie makes up for it and you don't even realize just how generic the plot is until after it's over and done with and you're thinking back on it.

A large reason for that is the fact that almost every character in this movie, from the main guy (played by The O.C.'s Eric Balfour) who's back in town after spending a long time away and he's living on his boat trying to find work, to his childhood pal who's now with Harbor Patrol and is stuck between helping his friend out and doing his job, to the ex-girlfriend/now-bestfriend girl, to the asshole Harbor Patrol Captain that hates the main character and goes out of his way to make things difficult for him and to try to pin crimes on him, to every other speaking-part in the movie – everyone has something about them that makes them enjoyable to watch and you can really have fun with this cast of characters. Helping that along are of course the actors who play them, who all do a surprisingly above-average job for a B-movie of this kind. I was also surprised to see Roger Corman have a pretty decent-sized role here. He almost always cameos in his own movies lately, but very rarely does he give himself such a large part as he does in this one, which was the role of a marine-life expert that has all the knowledge on this creature and helps the main cast out.

Another surprising factor is that because you enjoy these characters so much, you actually don't want to see many of them, if any, get killed (which plenty do, and not always ones you would expect) – it's actually pretty nice having a killer animal movie once in awhile where you actually aren’t rooting for the animal to slaughter every person on-screen. Between caring for the characters as well as finding out pretty early-on that characters you wouldn't normally expect to die, sometimes does in this movie, also adds an unexpected level of tension to some of the action and stalking scenes, which is another aspect that many of these fun summer popcorn monster B-movies normally don't bother to aim for. Also along those same lines of things these movies don't tend to do often, this movie had a really nice structured build-up. It wasn't just random scene after random scene that really could have been placed in any mix-and-match order, like say Piranhaconda or Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus, but instead there was a steady progression of intensity from scene-to-scene as the movie went on, and it gave a really nice natural flow to the movie that's not often seen in these.

As for the actual Dinoshark creature itself, overall both the CGI and practical effects looked really good and another above-average aspect of the movie, though the shark did tend to change size pretty constantly throughout the movie, depending on what the scene called for (in one scene it can almost eat a boat in one bite, while in another it's dragging a human carcass through the water in its jaws and the human body can hardly fit in its mouth), but after watching these movies on a fairly regular basis you tend to just get used to that sort of size-changing anomaly, to the point where I almost never even pick up on it anymore. It helps as well that you stay distracted from the size changes because unlike many B-movies, this one keeps your attention pretty well, leaving little to no time for your mind to wander to other things, such as the changing size of the creature - trust me, there are plentyof cheese-filled campy scenes with this beastie! Putting aside the opening scenes of it escaping the glacier and shortly afterward eating a diver, there's still many great gem scenes, such as the one where Eric Balfour drives toward it on a jet ski and launches himself into the air toward the creature while throwing a grenade at it, or where it propels itself out of the water and takes down a low-flying helicopter, or when it snacks down on the participants of an all-girls teen water polo match, and of course the bloody massacre that the entire movie leads up to.

I do have one slight issue, but it's not a mark against the movie itself but more-so with the BluRay. The video on the BluRay cut back and forth pretty regularly; When it was good, it was perfect and pristine and exactly the kind of thing HD was made for, but just as often it was also pretty bad with an overabundance of grain present, with no rhyme or reason as to why some scenes were great while others were beyond shitty like that.

Dinoshark may not have been as unique or memorable as movies like Sharktopus or the Mega Shark series, but I would say it's an overall better movie in almost every regard, and I find it's a great gateway movie to kind of introduce newcomers to the B-movie genre by including plenty of cheese but without letting it define the movie or overtake it, and both the acting and effects-work remained above-average throughout, so it shouldn't scare away newbies like many B-movies would with their horrible acting and effects.

All in all, this turned out to be an entertaining entry in the killer shark sub-genre, and one that I would recommend to both B-movie lovers as well as just casual people looking to check out their first B-movie.

8/10 rooms in the Psych Ward

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