Dammit, Pete!

Oh, it feels good to write again.  I'm sorry for the extended leave.  It just... needed to happen.

ANYWAY!  Today we're revisiting Shark Week for a bit and stepping right into The Shallows.

Spoilers, fucking, ahoy.

The Shallows is the story of a girl who's given up on life and decides to spend her young adulthood hanging out with unreliable friends who get drunk and hook up with rando Mexican dudes when they're supposed to be all supportive when she wants to find this unknown beach that her mom used to surf at.  She's from Texas, so we don't expect her to be too fuckin' bright but she somehow managed to get into med school and is frittering away her scholarship in a quixotic quest to make her life meaningful again.

And also a story about Blake Lively's ass in a swimsuit.

For real, though, as a surfer, she should be aware of things like, oh, I don't know, high and low tide and the feeding habits of sharks.  Because the stupid bitch stays out too late in the water when her guide specifically told her "It's gonna get dark soon" like any concerned stranger who won't tell her the name of the damn beach from whom she hitched a ride because hitchhiking is extra goddamn safe, too.  I guess when you're an angsty post-teenager, you're allowed to be self-destructive.  "I'll just call an Uber."  Bitch, I don't know how you're getting a fucking signal to Skype with your fucking family to tell them "Don't worry about me, I'm fine, I'm not talking about why I'm dropping out of med school, stop hounding me, Daddy, Ugh! *angsty post-teenager shoulder slump*"  How the hell you're gonna get an Uber through the hour-long trek through the goddamn rain forest is completely beyond me.  HOW DID YOU GET INTO MED SCHOOL?!?

In case anyone is wondering, Great White Sharks do hang out in the Gulf of Mexico so the premise that one hangs close to a surfer beach isn't too far fetched.  What's far-fetched is the woman believing that she can do a whole lot of shit no normal human can do without being exposed to disease and fucking death.  Nancy (that's her name) decides that the first place she wants to get away from the shark after it has already taken a bite is ON A DAMN WHALE CARCASS!  That's just not sanitary. And, also, whale carcasses are FUCKING SHARK FOOD!

This is Pete.  His name isn't actually Pete but he's pretty much comic relief.

Then, she somehow makes it to this rock/island that only appears during low tide that her new surfer buddies (who still won't tell her the name of this damn beach, telling her "If I told you, I'd have to kill you" because that's not a giant fucking cliche or anything) told her about.  There, she steps on "fire coral" which is totally a real thing, look it up, I'm not doing your homework for you, and fucking sews her leg back together with her fucking earrings.  She was going to be a doctor, dammit.  And she uses that training to set Pete's dislocated wing.  Because Pete is just a parasite that wants people to take care of him. He's also rude and won't let the poor injured, dehyrated, hypothermic, gangrenous girl with the neoprene compression bandage sleep.

And the shark just kinda hangs out because the shark is petty. And eats would-be rescuers and people who try to steal Nancy's shit because... it's... protective... that way?

I'll watch your stuff, Nancy.  You just ripen in the sun with Pete.  I bet you taste like tan and rubber.

Many incidents with coral, later, she gets RULL STOOPID.

I can't give away too much of the movie.  Or, rather, I don't WANT to give away spoilers but... y'know... this happens:

Vague surfer is delightfully piquant.

And pretty much anything else that can go wrong in the fucking ocean happens.  Whale blubber is flammable, apparently, sharks don't like jellyfish, thin women from Texas don't seem to mind them so much and sometimes metal is not the shark deterrent we would hope it to be.  Also, gangrene isn't as devastating as we thought.

Shout out to Jaws in 3... 2...

All in all, this was a fun watch.  It was fun because it was entirely ludicrous but it was also exciting and an interesting take on every fucking shark movie trope in existence.  All that was missing was a goddamn voodoo curse.  I mean, I enjoyed hazing the hell out of it quietly so as not to offend other movie-goers but you may like it a lot.  It's not a BAD movie but it didn't get me into that whole "suspension of disbelief" thing that I like, unlike Jaws, which did so impeccably and still does or even Deep Blue Sea which was just such a ride that you didn't care about not believing it.  I just can't say that I loved this one.

I'm still freaked out by the ocean.

Stop Screwing With The Damn Sharks!

Sorry for the delay, kids.  I would have had this out sooner but my car is being a little bitch.

ANYWAY!  There are times when it gives me great pleasure to bring you something that I like, even if I like it for exactly the wrong reasons.

Such is the case with the 1999 Shark masterpiece Deep Blue Sea.

Granted, there isn't a whole lot to compare it to in the "killer shark" subgenre but, hey, I do what I can.

This tasty little snack showed up on the scene in 1999 with it's easter eggs and it's LL Cool J and its pre-Hung sexiness Thomas Jane all shirtless and wet and... ummm... wait.  I lost...  Uh... What was I saying?

OH!  Yeah.  Right.  Got a little distracted in my salty bits there for a minute.

SO... yeah.  I actually liked Deep Blue Sea a lot.  Not because it was Oscar-caliber.  Not because it actually set women's depictions in movies BACK a few decades.  Not because it had awesome special effects (which it did, for the time, but that's beside the point).  No, none of those things.  I liked it because, as much as it tried to be brainy, it was easier to take if you didn't think about the WHY and focused on the HOW.

Like HOW can I get Thomas Jane shirtless and wet in my bedroom?

Here's the sitch with the story.  Samuel L. Jackson owns a pharmaceutical company.  He wants to know how Saffron Burrows is doing with her miracle Alzheimer's research because, duh, everybody's all interested in that shit.  (Shut up!  That link is totally appropriate there.)  Thomas Jane is the bad boy smuggler all turning his life around and pulling license plates previously swallowed by other sharks from the jaws of deadly Tiger sharks and being all swoon-worthy and shit.  LL Cool J is a damn cook.  Because racism.  Stellan Skaarsgard is the absent-minded professor who pees where everybody can watch.  And some other people.

See?  People.  Being all science-y.

Of course, in classic Hollywood style, nothing can just be fucking normal so a perfectly normal day trip to Sharkschwitz to visit the workings of Mrs. Mengele turns into the storm of the fucking century and, OHNOES!  The sharks have the average intelligence of a fucking toddler thanks to Burrows and her decision to be a damn deity and, therefore, are fucking ninjas.  They not only figure out how to get out of their respective areas in the compound, they figure out how to get INTO the compound and have the idiot monkeys blow up the pylons for them so they can get out of the compound altogether (since the titanium cages that held them (with no roofs) will now be underwater) because THESE experimental animals were never meant to be sterile and the whole world needs a swarm of hyper-intelligent sharks who will therefore be our aquatic overlords because you KNOW those bitches will be figuring out head-lasers and robotic legs right-fuckin'-quick.

Hell, they already figured out how to cull the herd.

So, anyway, the whole movie is "How do we stop the sharks?  No, wait, how do we get out?  No, wait, how do we stop the sharks?"  It's like the horror movie equivalent of Benny fucking Hill.  I expected Yakkity Sax to start playing at any moment!  But, you know what?  That's OK.  If THEY'RE confused, I'M amused and that makes having to put up with Saffron Burrow's neoprene-ensconced Victoria's Secret bearable.

Her secret?  No silicone in THOSE jugs.

Now, to be fair, she DID use the rubber suit to insulate herself from electrocution.  I said she was anti-feminist not stupid.  Well, maybe a LITTLE stupid since she didn't stop to consider the consequences of, oh, I don't know, TRIPLING THE COGNITIVE RESOURCES OF AN APEX PREDATOR IN ITS NATURAL ENVIRONMENT.  Well, not its natural environment but close enough to it to legitimately plot an escape route and follow through on that plan!

With as much stupid as there is just lying around like a frathouse after a kegger, the plot is pretty tight.  There aren't any large plotholes and, frankly, any movie where I get to see Sam Jackson get nommed on by a genetically-enhanced Mako shark is fuckin' A-OK in my book.  Not because I dislike Mr. Jackson.  I just like to see everybody get their share of the stupid.  I'm a giver.  It's what I do.  It's what I LIVE for.

Tastes like chicken and waffles!  (Ooooh, that's racist.  BAD BOB!  Bad.  No cookie.)

So, to wrap this up, Deep Blue Sea is not better than Jaws and, frankly, if Sharknado didn't exist, this would still only be in the top ten.  As it stands, though, this is probably my third favorite shark flick after the first two Jaws movies because it's silliness-on-a-stick and I don't think it cares that it looks foolish.  I appreciate that in a shark movie.

I say haul anchor and sail this one on home, boys and girls.

Yarrrrr.

How the Mighty Have Fallen

We've talked a lot about Peter Benchley here but this isn't about him.  It's about how producers and directors completely forget how to fucking feed a cash cow.

After Jaws 3-D came out (which was fucking brilliant in its suckitude), I don't think the world WANTED a new Jaws film because, seriously, the next step was either gonna be Disneyland or this.  We got this.  A shark REVENGE film.  It says so right in the title.  "This time it's personal" it says.  A shark, who been done wrong by humans, follows the Brody family in order to eat them all like the tasty tidbits they really should have been two movies ago.

It manages to get one of them and, fuck you, I cheered.  What police officer goes out on a boat alone KNOWING that he's been face to face with the shark that his dad electrocuted AND had it's spawn follow him and his brother to Sea World.  SEA WORLD!  In case you're wondering, not ONCE does Sea World get mentioned in this fourth installment and, goddamn it, I want to know why.

So does Ellen Brody.

Speaking of Jaws 3-D, why the hell did they replace both of the Brody boys with actors that were much younger than the versions portrayed in the previous film?  Oh, that's right.  They wanted to pretend the third movie never happened.  Assholes.

So, yeah.  The shark follows a grieving mother and her family to the fucking Bahamas where, it's said, they don't go.  Which is kind of a lie because they've been found in nearly all coastal and offshore waters that have a temperature between 54 and 75 degrees Fahrenheit.  ANYWAY.  It FUCKING FOLLOWED THEM because it had a vendetta.  Sharks, to date and to all known science, are not fucking telepathic.

Greetings, Starfighter. You have been recruited by the Star League to defend the frontier against Xur and the Ko-Dan armada.

Michael Caine needs to have not been anywhere near this one.  His "paycheck pictures" are legendary but fuuuuuck.  I'm surprised they haven't made the producers edit him out of the movie, yet.  For serious, the man skipped out on ACCEPTING HIS OSCAR because he was filming this trash.  And Mario Van Peebles?  I have no idea why he's even in this because the fucker wrote his own part.

Lorraine Gary and Michael Caine's matching hairdos think this is hilarious.

This movie, by the way, is comedy gold, even if it does suck out loud.  Richard Jeni's act in the 80s used Jaws: The Revenge as a substantial part of his act.  Because no comedy writes itself faster than a stupid horror movie with an unacceptable premise and horrible acting on all parts.

I would have been perfectly OK with seeing the kid get eaten, here.

From the Banana Boat girl whom you can SEE actively puts her leg in Bruce's mouth to the airplane water landing that should have killed all of the passengers, the sheer unbelievableness of this is what kills me.  Yeah, we expect the rubber shark, although, it probably should have shown up much less and I think it's only there so some effects guy can say "There, I fixed it", but fuck, really?  You couldn't have just written new characters or expanded on 3-D?

Laziness.  Pure fucking laziness.

Once again, do not make a drinking game out of this.  You will die.  A lot.  Your liver will actively go on strike and walk out of your body under its own power.

It's known as "The Worst Sequel of All Time" for a goddamn reason.

Peter Benchley is a Little Obsessed.

Peter Benchley, as you all should know, is the author of Jaws and deserves his place in shark movie history.  After that, though, it was all shitty, unauthorized foreign remakes and sequels that were not... ummm... good.  We'll get to that later this week. 

The late 90s, though, for some damn reason, were all about the Peter Benchley miniseries.  Well, at least two of them.  First, there was The Beast in 1996, all about a giant squid and 1998s Creature took a step beyond "shark".  It's still Shark-Adjacent, though, so that's why it's here.

Now, before I get into the movie, the book it was based on, White Shark, was kind of fucking amazing and is definitely worth a read even if it's just a "guilty pleasure" book.

No, seriously.  Read the book.  Because it's better than this half-assed TV movie.

We're pensive...

So, here's the dillio in the movie.  The Navy's been playing around with DNA and creates a human-great white hybrid.  It gets loose and it's up to Craig T. Nelson, his (ex?) wife and their unruly 15 year old on roller blades to stop it with the help of their islander cabana boy and the crazy dick that let it go to begin with.  Plus the Navy wants to make sure this story never gets out.

It takes about three and a half hours to tell this story. 

Badly.

But it has some awesome props.

Well, not too badly because I was at least able to sit through it and the creature effects were kind of awesome in that "obvious puppet" kind of way but it's certainly not anything to write home about.

Don't get me wrong, I love me some Craig T. Nelson and Kim Catrall but fuck if this wasn't some middle of the road trash saved only by the presence of Stan, the Monster Man, Winston.and his totally phoned in creature effects.

Now, in the book  the experiment was decidedly World War II German in origin but I'm thinking that the studios couldn't put an obvious "Nazis attempt world domination" plot on the tube without damaging relations with Germany and starting some kind of Aryan resurgence because they think people are stupid and can't wrap their heads around the fact that the Germans really did some fucked up shit and would have a hard enough time with accepting that this thing survived 25 years rather than 60 without getting all freaky with an actual shark.  This plot point, by the way, is only mentioned once and is promptly forgotten about.  Because dumbness.

In the meantime, though, we have the wife's research which takes up about 5 minutes of screen time to A) provide a MacGuyver moment that ends badly and B) to show Kim Catrall playing with a sea lion.  (You may Rule 34 this for yourselves.  I'm not playing that game today.)

How YOU doin'?

Plus the editing left some things to be desired.  I kept seeing jumps that led me to believe that there were serious continuity flaws that were either created or horribly covered up.  They pained me.

So, yeah.  If you need to kill time or you have a need to make fun of late 90s board shorts, this is the movie for you.  It's really nothing special and it had the potential to be awesome.  It just fell flat. 

Meh.

We're Gonna Need a Bigger Blog.

IT'S SHARK WEEK, KIDS!

That's right, bitches, we're covering the reason we won't go into the water all week.  Sleek, blue aquatic missiles with teeth.  Apex predators who want to eat our faces.  Well, maybe not OUR faces in real life since more people die of bee stings and lightning strikes every year than shark attacks but you know what I'm saying.

So, yeah.  In preparation for this week, I sat my happy ass on the couch and turned off my brain, yesterday (FINALLY) and binge watched BOTH Sharknado flicks for you.

Syfy movies have caused me to lose faith in humanity, for reals.

"Hey!  Let's take something that's already awful and horrifying and combine it with something EQUALLY awful and horrifying and put them together like an awful and horrifying Reese's cup and make a movie about it!"  This appears to be The Asylum's go-to strategy and, fuck if I know why, it works for them.  Those bitches HAVE to be laughing all the way to the bank.

Now, let's get this straight right off the bat, kids.  These are PAINFULLY bad movies.  So let's keep that in mind as we move along, shall we?

Hey, look.  A lifeguard working on an ex-Baywatch alum... who doesn't know what a tourniquet is.

Sharknado starts with a completely throwaway thing about a shady fisherman and his equally shady Asian business associate who are trying to out-shade each other without knowing that the titular sharknado has already begun (Yes, tornados can suck up sea life, by the way... it just doesn't remain living while it's in there and the worst thing that would happen is you getting smooshed by a couple hundred pounds of dead fish).  Both of them get their faces chewed.

Then, there's bad surfing by Ian (pronounced EYEan... like a douche) Zeiring whose character's name is Fin (fucking seriously?),  the handsome, Tasmanian best friend, Baz, getting nibbled on enough to get him a big bandage (and the keys to my bedroom but that's only because Jaason Simmons is hot and plays for my team), the girl who's all shark-hatey for some vague reason that isn't explained until almost the end of the movie and the main guy getting all "shit's going down but we don't know why so I have to save my family even though Tara Reid and her giant saggy nipples still can't act her way out a paper bag and hates me now because we divorced for some stupid reason that's never fully explained."

She likes guns.

Then it's all OHNOES!  Los Angeles is flooding, Los Angelinos apparently gather in small groups when things get wet and then complain about the non-existent traffic problems and people that live near a beach know nothing about getting out of the water!

By the way, can someone tell me how a house on TOP of a hill gets flooded enough to garner a fucking shark in the living room?  One that is shown to have adequate drainage just below it? 

So, yeah, off to rescue more people.  Tara "Unfortunate Boob Job" Reid gets all "You're saving people and this is why I divorced you" and Cousin Oliver has a lame panic attack and gets smooshed by the Hollywood sign.  They reach the field where the eldest child is taking flight lessons (also, really unexplained) where they gather their forces and plan to send explosives into the sharknados.  Because science.

Then this happens.

Wait, what?

And this:

Yep.  Jumps right up in there.  Like Jordan with a chainsaw.

Freaky birth analogy happens because that shark he jumps into?  It's the one that ate shark-hater girl.

ANYWAY!  On to round two where there's already been a book published and the reconciled couple goes to New York for TV appearances and, basically, everybody and their damn mother wants a fucking cameo and that's what the second one is about.

Nope.  Still lost in that paper bag.

Yep.  Sharknados take Manhattan.  Like the damn Muppets.  Which is totally funny because the CGI guys need to fuck right the hell off.  Because their CGI-Fu is weak and the sharks look less convincing than a Muppet.  We could have had Elmonado and it would have looked better.

Did we mention the cameos?  They got the entire fucking Today show cast, Biz Markie, the dude from Shark Tank, Judd Hirsch DRIVING A TAXI, Kelly Osbourne, Kurt Angle, Downtown Julie Brown, Billy Ray Cyrus, that Subway asshole, Perez Hilton, Kelly Ripa, Rachel True, Richard Kind, Andy Dick, Sandra "Pepa" Denton, Robert Klein, Robert Hays (The pilot?  Really?) and anybody else they could get 5 minutes with in New York.  TOO MUCH!

Plus Vivica A. Fox looking all street 'n' shit and being named "Skye" because combined the two characters, had they married, would have made "Skye-Fin" which is just way too deep for this movie.

Oh, and did I mention Mark McGrath with his ALSO horrible plastic surgery?  Because he's the brother-in-law.  Why did Syfy make me stare at his ugly mug for 2 hours?  Why?

So, anyhoo, all of this is a giant clusterfuck of delicious awfulness.  Every single one of these people just phoned these movies right the fuck in and I'm kind of glad they did.  It lent to that intentional unintentional hilarity that you would expect from movies with Sharknado in their title.  I don't ever want to watch them AGAIN, mind you, but these movies and a couple of Hot Pockets kept me entertained for a few hours.  Badly entertained.  Because they seriously strapped a buzzsaw to Tara Reid's arm and made this happen on the roof of an F.D.N.Y firetruck all Matrix-y.

I don't know HOW the Hot Pockets people don't get sued for mouth damage, by the way.  You can let those fuckers chill out for an hour and you'll STILL burn your lips.

Yeah, so, uhhh... I'm not saying to skip these because you get what you pay for.  In fact, I'm saying to watch them because the awfulness is so hilarious that it could bring a suicide back from the ledge.  You think YOU'VE got it bad?  Take a look at the careers of THESE assholes.