By Ed Garea
2-Headed
Shark Attack (The Asylum, 2012) – Director:
Christopher Ray. Writers: Edward DeRuiter (story), H. Perry Horton
(s/p). Cast: Carmen Electra, Charlie O’Connell, Brooke Hogan,
Christina Bach, Morgan Thompson, Anthony E. Valentin, Gerald Webb,
David Gallegos, Geoff Ward, Ashley Bissing, & Mercedes Young.
Color, 88 minutes.
There
are good movies and there are bad movies. And then, there’s this
atrocity, released direct to video for reasons that become obvious
when one watches it. It seems the company that made this gem is in
competition with the SyFy Channel to see who can make the worst shark
movie, and, based on the terrifically cheesy graphics, I can say this
one takes the cake (such as it is).
We
know we’re in for a bad movie experience once we see the cast. With
stalwarts such as Carmen Electra (the ex-Mrs. Dennis Rodman), Charlie
O’Connell (brother of Jerry and whose career is pockmarked with
other works of art on this level), and Brooke Hogan (who is every bit
as good an actress and her father, Hulk, was a wrestler), all we need
is a bad script and lousy direction. But wait! Included in this movie
are some of the worst special effects I’ve ever seen.
As
for direction, behind the camera is Christopher Ray, son of legendary
Z-movie director Fred Olen Ray, and living proof that the acorn does
not fall far from the tree. The screenwriter, Horton, received an MFA
in Creative Writing from Naropa University’s (Colorado) Jack
Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, whatever that means. He could
have saved himself a lot of trouble if he simply took a
correspondence course in screenwriting instead.
We
open with a group of young people wakeboarding (a combination of
water skiing and snowboarding). Soon they become a tasty meal for our
title creature. Cut to a boat called The Sea King, where a group of
students, led by married professors Franklin and Anne Babish (Carmen
and Charlie), are studying marine biology. Electra as a marine
biologist. Now this is science fiction. From the
dialogue she spouts in the movie one would surmise that Carmen thinks
marine biology is studying the private parts of Marines. Not to
worry, for this collection of students is even more brain dead than
she.
The
gang is cruising along merrily; Jerry points out the local sights in
the ocean and the girls and guys relax on deck, showing off their abs
and silicone. Suddenly, Anne, driving the ship, hits an object in the
water. Professor Jerry spots it as a Megamouth shark. Wait a minute,
he tells the students, Megamouths are deep-water sharks. Not only
that, he’s also dead. This is an attempt, and a poor one, at
creating some sort of early tension. They try to bring the shark
carcass on board, but it drifts back and is sucked into the boat’s
propeller, damaging the hull and causing the boat to take on water.
(Things happen fast in a Z-movie.) This is where the cheesy special
effects come into play. We do not actually see the shark torn apart,
but rather something akin to a shadow cutout of a shark in front of
the propeller and a lot of red water gushing forth.
Jerry
ponders why all this is happening. Suddenly, our two-headed hero
appears and attacks the boat as well, conveniently breaking the
ship’s radio antenna. Co-captain Laura (Thompson) is prevented from
summoning help. The group then spots a deserted atoll nearby, so
Laura and Anne pilot the boat close enough to the shore as to allow
Franklin to take the student to the atoll via a dinghy while Anne and
Laura remain on the Sea King, along with the ships crew, Han (Webb)
and Dikilla (Valentin).
While
the Prof and the gang explore the atoll, looking for scrap metal with
which to repair the hull, Laura enters the water to see if she can
make repairs. This gives the shark an instant meal and a taste for
silicone. Now, for reasons known only to the writer and director,
three of the students decide to take a break and go skinny-dipping,
giving our shark even more of a meal. Meanwhile, the group finds and
repairs two small speedboats as an earthquake strikes the atoll,
injuring the Prof, who is brought back to the Sea King by students
who are later devoured.
After
a few more students are eaten, Anne, the Prof and the crew leave the
Sea King for the atoll. Suddenly, another earthquake hits, and Anne
and the Prof begin to suspect that the island is collapsing on
itself. What a plot device. In the meantime, Kate (Hogan) and Cole
(Ward) return to the Sea King and fix the hull. Cole, a thoroughly
disreputable sort, drives off in the Sea King, forcing Kate to swim
back to the atoll. The two-headed shark attacks the Sea King and
sinks it, causing it to send an automatic distress signal. Cole
attempts to escape in a lifeboat, but the ringing of his cell phone
attracts the shark, and exit Cole. Helping the atoll to rapidly sink
is our shark, who is eating the atoll from below. The Prof and Anne
then spot a small tsunami coming (What else?), which overtakes the
atoll and leaves the Prof and Anne as a meal for the hungry fish.
After all, he has two mouths to feed.
The
survivors flee on the shrinking atoll to an abandoned hut, but the
shark breaks in and devours another four. Now only three are left:
Kate (Hogan), the nerdish Paul (Gallegos) and Kirsten (Bissing). By
using a gasoline tank they found earlier, they manage to blow their
visitor to kingdom come, but not before losing Kirsten. A helicopter
rescues Kate and Paul, the only survivors in a group of 23 people, as
the movie mercifully ends.
The
only reason for a bad movie fanatic to want to see this is for camp
value, but there’s precious little of that. Simply stated, it’s a
movie that’s so bad, it’s bad. I’ve seen better special effects
made with an Etch A Sketch; although most of the cast is devoured,
it’s done in the same fashion as when the Megamouth hit the
propeller. We never actually see the shark eat anyone. All we do see
is their bodies in front of the shark, accompanied by a lot of blood
fogging the water, and later perhaps a totally unconvincing hand or a
leg. As for the shark, it’s predictably ridiculous, and seems to
increase and decrease in size during the movie: one minute, the cast
is being attacked in shallow water, while later they are safe because
they are in shallow water. At one point the shark is big enough to
smash against and sink the atoll, while in the next scene he’s
small enough to fit in the tiny hut along with the surviving
students.
As
for the plot, it has more holes than a wheel of Swiss cheese.
Students wander off and on, doing the dumbest things. The writers
seem to have collected every obvious plot device and even a few more
that defy logic. For instance, at the end, the gasoline bomb has a
wet t-shirt for a fuse and Kate manages to light it anyway. Earlier,
a crowd is standing in the water wondering what to do. “Why not
climb the rocks behind you?” I say to myself. After all, even this
shark cannot climb rocks. But no, they decide to swim for it instead.
If your idea of dialogue is “Wait a minute! What was that?” or
“Hurry up! Go, go, go!” then this is the movie for you.
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