Monster of the Day #1315


Watch out, Rosie Grier and Ray Milland!

I’m sure there’s ten seconds of the CGI shark swimming that we see 40 times. And the practical shark prop is silly-looking and doesn’t match at all. But it’s lovable. Lovable, I tells ya!

  • Beckoning Chasm

    Pretty much everything I’ve seen from The Asylum makes me tired. They always sound like such fun concepts but the execution is lacking. I’ve only seen one I’d consider as “good” and that was really only in the context of “for a film by The Asylum.”

  • Eric Hinkle

    I’d have to say that the Sharknado films are at least comically stupid.

    And why is it that every time we see someone getting eaten up by monsters in horror films, they start spewing blood? It reminds me of a zillion or so chop socky films from the 70’s. You know — guy get smashed in the chest? Blood from mouth. Guy gets stabbed in the gut? Blood from mouth. Guy gets his foot stomped on? Blood from mouth. I begin to wonder what sort of weird anatomies people have in these films.

  • bgbear_rnh

    A water-proof Zippo? Where do I get one?

    Did she manage a “Yippee-ki-yay, MF” before she expired?

  • SteveWD

    Agree. Is it just me or do these kind of movies work best when they play it as straight as possible? Any by “work” I mean in the so bad it’s good kind of way. The second a movie lets on that it’s in on it’s own joke (like Sharknado, 2, 3, etc….), it just looses…something. My own personal “favorite” Asylum movie is Mega Piranha.

  • Flangepart

    And there’s the point where someone gets bitten, by a wee beastie with 6 inch teeth!…and then someone comes by and nobody asks ‘Eww…what’s with all the blood?”

  • I like sharks. I like movies with sharks in them. I like movies with sharks in them where the sharks are the main antagonists.

    However, as monsters, they do nothing for me. Your Megashark, your Roboshark, hell, even Sharktopus, all leave me cold as monster movies. They tend to blur together in my mind. Even when they have two or three heads.

    I think part of the problem is that I grew up watching Godzilla and Gamera movies. Specifically Gamera movies. As goofy as those monsters were, they had style.

  • The Rev.

    I agree. Megapiranha, while extremely silly and fun, does manage to refrain, for the most part, from winking at the audience. I do have some fondness for the first two Sharknados (haven’t seen the third yet), but I think that’s more because, despite the “in on the joke” vibe, they’re kind of going for the Japanese/Hong Kong “one damn thing after another” style that I tend to love.

    I’d probably go with Megapiranha as my favorite of theirs, but the best of their movies I’ve seen is Zombie Apocalypse, which is the closest thing they’ve done to an actual movie. While it has the typical crappy CG effects, it’s played straight, has actual characters and plot (not great ones, but serviceable for a zombie movie like this), and climaxes with a type of zombie I’ve never seen prior, which they manage to make threatening instead of silly as you’d expect from the Asylum. It was quite a shock. Hell, it’s better than quite a few zombie movies I’ve seen, and not just ones from Italy or Germany.

  • The Rev.

    On the Asylum scale, this is an okay movie. Which means it’s still pretty bad. It manages some fun moments (mostly when the goofy prop shark is chewing on people, which I never got tired of), but mostly it was just dull, or full of characters I didn’t like screaming at each other and making me wish the shark would hurry the hell up with the devouring already. Also, having Brooke Hogan as your lead is going to sink you before you get started.

    My understanding is that the follow-up to this is bloody awful; this has only made me more certain than I already was that I don’t need to see it.

  • Gamera977

    Well, if you’re crazy enough to ‘jump the shark’ first make sure the shark isn’t double-wide.
    And don’t even think about ‘punching the shark…’

  • Gamera977

    It would be better if Brooke Hogan’s dad made a special guest appearance to wrestle the shark. And then get eaten. On the other hand if it were Ric Flair wrestling the shark he’d totally kick it’s ass- if a shark had an ass of course.

  • Rock Baker

    The only one like this I watched was SHARKTOPUS, which was every bit as dreary as the title indicated. Poor Eric Roberts. Who did he tick off, anyway?

  • Beckoning Chasm

    Megapiranha was fun, but I thought the best of what I’ve seen from them was the C. Thomas Howell “War of the Worlds.” It had terrible CGI, the aliens looked like window treatments, it was difficult to tell what was going on, but they had actual characters and those characters developed over the course of the film! I was pretty astonished.

    Don’t get me wrong, you do not need to put it on your Netflix queue, but it did what it set out to do and I found that impressive. FOR THE ASYLUM, I mean.

  • The Rev.

    I haven’t seen that one, or its sequel, but you’re not the first to be fairly positive about that particular offering. I may need to get to that one.

  • The Rev.

    I don’t know if I’d want to take the blame if you disliked it, but I’d suggest Ghost Shark. I liked that one. Despite the ridiculous premise, it’s played quite straight throughout, and I found it actually worked…which makes it a bit disconcerting when most of the kills seem to be played for laughs, or at the very least are too absurd to evoke anything but laughter. I was able to get past that, though. The two egregious cheats (including what may be the most blatant, nonsensical Death Exemption I’ve ever seen) are a lot harder, because they really stick out in a movie that manages to maintain a good deal of internal consistency. Also, if you give it a go, watch the opening credits carefully; a name popped up that shocked the hell out of me, even more so when it turned out that, yes, it is actually that person. (Don’t want to spoil it, naturally.) I nearly punched the shark when I saw it. (And I’d like to thank Gamera for bringing that back.)

  • Eric Hinkle

    I have to agree with this. Yes, I like Sharknado, but that’s more of a very weird natural disaster. I don’t see those sharks as ‘monsters’. The endless series of monster sharks and the near-endless series of monster snakes before them were just dull.

  • Eric Hinkle

    Even better, make the hero Shark Boy from TNA.

  • Beckoning Chasm

    I don’t want to oversell it. Just keep in mind Dr. Johnson’s quote about a dog walking on its hind legs.

  • The Rev.

    Sweet Shub-Niggurath, we need to make this happen.

    Four-Headed Shark vs. Shark Boy. I would pay all the money to see that. GIMME A SHELL YEAH!!!