Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus [Blu-ray]

I have to admit, I have a weakness for The Asylum films. You have to take your brain off the hook to enjoy them, but that's why you watch them in the first place.This one, Mega Shark va Giant Octopus, is the usual raft of Asylum badness. The live shots included the U.S.S. Missouri (billed as a "destroyer", which it isn't), and the NRP Antonio Enes F471 of the Portugal Navy (also billed as a destroyer, which it is). The ship interior scenes looked to have been filmed on exactly the same set (despite most of them being different ships) and the effects were underwhelming (especially watching the Mighty Mo "rapid firing" it's 16" guns with flashes that would have done an X-Wing proud, but paled in comparison to an actual firing of those weapons).But the cheesy sets, bad effects and overacting is why one pays the price of admission to an Asylum Film. It's impossible to take seriously, which means it's all in good fun.In this offering, the plot at least wasn't as outlandish as the presentation, and worked well with respect to continuity. Having tracked a lot of Asylum films, this one rates a bit above average just because of the consistency of the tropes they present.This is something to watch when you want to relax and disconnect from the world at large. In that respect, it does that quite well.

I saw part of "Mega Shark Versus Giant Octopus" when it had its cable TV premier on the idiotically renamed Syfy channel a few months ago. I knew I had to obtain it for my library. How could I not, it has all the stars in the cheese universe perfectly aligned: ridiculous title, ludicrous plot, complete lack of knowledge about sharks, octopi, or the military weaponry needed to fight them, preachy environmentalist plotpoints, terrible acting, and cast members that Ed Wood could only dream of, most notably Debbie (oh sorry, Deborah) "Shake Your Love" Gibson, and master cheese maker Lorenzo Lamas. It's a perfect conflagration.The film starts in the mountains (?) of Alaska, and after a very long credit sequence, progresses to oceanologist Emma (Debbie Gibson) driving a stolen submarine under a glacial icecap while a helicopter hovers overhead dropping a secret buoy into the water which makes a pod of whales get suicidal, and ram into a glacier freeing two long-frozen combatants, a huge shark and really huge octopus from millions of years of freezer burn. For some reason the helicopter crashes, and Gibson doesn't know about the buoy, but the helicopter pilot intones over the radio that it's a secret and that it could endanger national security. But Debbie hijacked the sub, right? So why is the secret government helicopter helping her look for whales? What? Huh? This is just the first five minutes of the movie. Unfortunately it gets way less lucid from there.Shortly Gibson gets fired from her job, and goes to live with her old brilliant professor, Lamar (Sean Lawlor) who was booted out of the Navy for running a nuclear sub aground to avoid hitting a pod of dolphins. Oh yes, there's more true-to-life backstory for you. Meanwhile, a deep-ocean oil rig gets eaten by the giant octopus, while the giant shark gets busy by jumping 30,000 feet in the air and eating a 747 in cruise flight. Truly, Asylum Home Entertainment really pulled out all the stops on this creature feature. And the CGI is so lifelike, too!There's a lot of extremely ponderous dialogue in the movie, much of it with a brain-addled environmentalist bent, but also lots of terrible pillow talk, ridiculous science talk, and perhaps worst of all, oodles of military and nautical jargon horribly misused by the screenwriters. A favorite example is when in a discussion of the release of the giant creatures Debbie says "Maybe this is our comeuppance." Why would that be? Oh, of course: it's because man is melting the polar ice caps with his global warming releasing these prehistoric predators. The shark and octopus dyad is also analogized to Hurricane Katrina. I am not even kidding.There are two scenes of shark versus battleship (there are no battleships in the active Navy inventory, by the way, but that is picking at nits) and at one point the shark manages to set a hijacked Finnish oil tanker on fire after it was hijacked by pirates. How did the shark do that? Some unnamed government agency headed by Lorenzo Lamas (as Allan Baxter, complete with ponytail) interrogates Emma, Lamar, and Emma's new love interest, the pointedly Japanese Seiji Shimada (Vic Chao, who probably turns in the best performance of the movie) in a room that Lamar accuses of having "the same lighting as Guantanamo". Got to get every popular anti-government jab in, no matter how laughably executed.After the eye-rolling exhortation "Sharkzilla's going to own the seas!" from Lamas, the scientists come up with a plan to corral them in San Francisco and Tokyo Bays for the shark and octopus respectively. But how to lure them? While working under armed guard, Emma suddenly feels...urges...and invites Seiji into the broom closet to help shake her love. It's then they get their "ah ha" moment...pheromones! They will synthesize giant octopus and mega shark pheromones to lure them to their respective bays "using UAV technology". Again...what?!? Really?After the gratuitous destruction of an F-15/F-14/F-18 (depending on which piece of the stock footage you were paying attention to) by an octopus tentacle, we get a load of pontification from Emma analogizing herself to Einstein and Oppenheimer and the decision to build the atomic bomb. (Seriously.) After some submerged action of a highly ridiculous nature, they release the shark pheromone with much ado, the shark accelerates to 500 knots underwater (marine engineers, feel free to chime in on hydrodynamics here) and the Octopus is cornered in Tokyo Bay by similar means. The shark promptly gets loose, eats the Golden Gate Bridge (why?) and Lamas considers the nuclear option prompting disgraced Irish former submariner Lamar to say that the nuclear option is preferred by the US government because "that's the military way." This only goes to prove not only the reflexive ideology of the filmmakers, but their total lack of grasp on actual US military policy, training, or strategy. Not that I should expect much from a movie like this, of course.Emma decides that the way to get rid of them is to have them battle each other, so a flotilla of navy ships and submarines puts to sea with more pheromones attracting the two combatants to each other. All goes about like you would expect, with massive causalities ("All five ships destroyed by octopus!") and Emma and Lamar taking their submarine through an ice floe to lose the pursuing shark (which is, of course, impossible if he can swim faster than most jets can fly). Obviously the final smackdown happens in good time, and amid clouds of ink in a ferocious battle, the two prehistoric killing machines sink out of sight. Are they dead? Wait for the sequel.The film ends with lovebirds Emma and Seiji planning their future dreamily on a beach (their chemistry is...uh...amazing) when Lamar walks up and requests their services to help identify another giant life form in the North Sea. Groan.The DVD comes with extras, notably a lame "making of" feature and some bloopers, which aren't especially funny. Feel free to skip both. I gave the film three stars. I would have given it four for camp value but the complete ignorance of the subject matter and portrayals of the US military as idiots lowered the rating. Submariners are not likely to mutiny by pulling a pistol on their skipper, but then again they aren't likely to battle a giant shark either. This film takes itself way too seriously for the subject matter, but would have made an excellent MST3K. This would make an excellent Christmas gift for the lover of cinematic cheese in your life.

Wonderful movie. My husband and I enjoyed it.

Give it a try and hate yourself later if you must. This is an Asylum production and of course very, very cheesy, however... This movie is one of those which is so bad in so many aspects that it becomes a lot of fun to pick it apart. I highly recommend a quick run through of the trivia section before starting to watch it in earnest.There should be multiple naval inaccuracies pointed out soon in the trivia section, all of them are so blatant that any blue water USN sailor will groan out loud when they see them. I did.The plot is very simple and notably loose regarding any science, which makes the movie worthwhile since all logic and reason can simply be disregarded.

From Asylum, but also meant for theatrical release, so I hoped for a cut above their usual movies. So one has to consider the genre the movie is in, and the fact that it will be low budget. When the shark jumped out of the ocean to take down a flying aircraft, that was quite a jump, and terrible CGI. The characters were likeable, and they threw in a love interest between Emma and Seiji. They did a lot of scientific experiments, and while there were actual scientific equipment and glassware, clearly the writers of the scene knew nothing about chemistry or science experimentation. But that is not unusual for movies. Just use colors and pretend they are doing science. And sadly, the salvos fired by the ships were terrible CGI, as anyone who ever saw a WWII naval movie would know. There are many disconnects in the movie, which is to be expected. The shark moved at 500 knots (575 mph), that is pretty speedy. But a lot of the disconnects led to a lot of humor, whether intended or not and gave a plus to the movie. And of course, there was the government ‘badie’. Towards the end, it seemed perhaps they ran out of money or ran out of script writers, and it sort of fell apart. But up to that point, they did come up with a logical approach to try and stop the creatures, and they certainly made them very, very big. But overall, watching the movie was enjoyable and fun, and yes I would say a cut above what I was expecting from Asylum. This is not a documentary, and while stupid, not offensive.

Waste of money, an absolutely awful film. You hardly see the creatures, the acting is ghastly, 'special effects' very poorly done. The film doesn't deserve any star rating at all, but it came in good condition, & very promptly, so hence five stars for the seller. This is one creature feature that should never have been made.

This is one of those films that you can't believe they made but you're glad they did. You get the feeling that the makers weren't exactly being tongue-in-cheek about it, they may even have taken the task of dramatising a fight between a Mega Shark and a Giant Octopus as a serious feat. So bad it's good, get everyone round with some drinks and nibbles and wonder at its amazing SGI (that could have been drawn by a primary school kid) and not at all wooden actors who have FisherPrice guns.

Mega shark vs giant octopus I thought this might be a bad film and it didn't disappoint, rubbish.

I know I have a pretty low bar when it comes to trashy B movies, but this really needs to try a bit harder. It started off well, when a truly ridiculous shark took down an aeroplane, but had to make the mistake of introducing a love interest that tried too hard to be a love interest. The film need more silliness and less schmaltz.

Just another shark move with it eating everything in sight even ships!! rough acting Usual ridiculous taking a chance to sort the problem save your money