Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus / The two prehistoric creatures were frozen together in combat

With a title like Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus, a connoisseur of the cheesy movie genre may find this straight-to-DVD flick completely irresistible on a humid summer night. The fact that it stars the ’80s Electric Youth herself, Debbie…ahem…Deborah Gibson (she’s a serious thespian now), doubles the curiosity factor for the Netflix queue. And with a gloriously stupid and self-explanatory title like that, one is surprised that a little more tongue-in-cheek didn’t go into the script, à la Snakes on a Plane. Of course, the movie is beyond bad, but what really disappoints is how precious little shark and octopus action we actually get.

As is often seen with movies of this type, the humans get in the way. Gibson–oh screw it–Debbie plays a marine biologist who accidentally witnesses a falling ice shelf that unleashes a Megalodon–a prehistoric shark roughly the size of Niihau. The shark promptly goes on a feeding frenzy, leaping into the air and chomping down on an entire passenger jet. Buddha only knows how many miles straight up the shark propelled itself.

As if that big fish wasn’t enough of a problem, also thawed out from the ice shelf is a Giant Octopus. That eight-armed freak is so big, it takes down a whole oil rig in a fit of arbitrary rage. Apparently the two prehistoric creatures were frozen together in combat, natural enemies suspended throughout time in the middle of a brawl. Man-made weapons from the military don’t work on these monsters–granted, that’s because the horrendously edited shots of attacking gunner ships show that they are pointing their guns in the wrong direction. That motley bunch of not-so-lovable seaman is led by Lorenzo Lamas, scowling and apparently in a perpetual bad mood because Are You Hot? turned out to be one of the very few trashy reality shows that didn’t get a second season renewal.

The two creatures don’t fight until the last 20 minutes of the dull, talky 90-minute picture. Beforehand, we just get Debbie and her academic buddies butting heads with Lorenzo and his soldiers of the sea over how to handle the situation.

What precious little we do see of our CGI title characters is not only sloppy and cheap (that’s to be expected of a production from The Asylum Home Entertainment), but recycled. We see the same shot of Giant Octopus wrapping himself around Mega Shark over and over again. We see the same fin menacingly speeding towards an aircraft carrier, perpetually not making any distance. The money shots are few and all too brief: a large tentacle swats a fighter jet out of the sky, the shark rises out of the water and chomps the Golden Gate Bridge and there’s the aforementioned airliner bite, but that’s about it.

Even more of a travesty, the film ends with an amateur love song, possibly made on the fly by a crew member with an iPhone app. How sweet and appropriate it would have been with Debbie’s “Only in My Dreams” running over the credits instead.

It goes without saying that Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus is a really bad movie. But seriously, folks, it’s a really bad movie.

---