SHARK ATTACK 3: MEGALODON - Ed Wood's "When Sharks Attack!"

I have always enjoyed When Nature Attacks movies, like Jaws or The Swarm or Alligator. I have always loved Doctor Who. So when Who co-star John Barrowman turned up on DVD in a "Nature goes amuck and eats people" movie, I knew it was my destiny to own this movie.

I was not disappointed!

The story - and I use the term very loosely - opens with Ben and his appropriately ethnic (and therefore doomed) partner Sy out doing their life guarding duties when they dive for lobsters. During the dive, they discover a Trans-Pacific fiber optic cable that has been damaged. . .by a shark! Ben removes a shark tooth that was imbedded in the cable and puts a photo of it on the Internet Shark Tooth Database (ISTD.com?), trolling for scientists.

Meet our other co-star of the flick, Cataline Stone (played hawttie Jenny McShane), paleontologist. She recognizes that the tooth is not from a great white like Ben thought, but rather from a shark that has been thought extinct for the last 50 or 60 million years - the Megalodon! As it turns out, the fiber optic lines are giving off electromagnetic energy*. It seems that the Evil Developer (is there any other kind?) laying the lines is using poorly insulated material, cutting corners to save billions of dollars - with the side effect that the cables are drawing these beasts up from the depths of the ocean to the surface so they can dine on all sorts of new and exciting foods!

* Do I need to point out the logical impossibility of this, since the nature of fiber optics is to not leak energy? That's the whole point of the technology! So no electromagnetic energy, no sharks.

And so Cat and Ben (along with a crew of redshirts) head out to sea to try and tag the beast. And during the ferocious battle with the Megalodon, our heroes discover that this is only the baby. And if this shark is just the baby - then where is the mother. . . .?

Ok, let me get this right out of the way. This is a dreadful movie - absolutely horrible! Hear that thumping noise? That's Peter Benchley hitting about 157 RPMs in his grave.

The acting is average to poor, save for John Barrowman, the only person on the planet who could be charming and fun to watch while delivering lines like "I&#146m wired. Let take you home and eat your pussy". (Which, I gather was not scripted, but an ad-lib on set by John, who wasn&#146t intending for it to make the final cut - but there you are). Oh, and I love salty seaman Chuck 'Fucking' Rampart, submarine driver and owner of a war surplus torpedo (handy, that). He and his liberal usage of the word "Fucking" as punctuation or hyphenation (as in abso-fucking-lutely") every line out of his mouth almost steal the show, if not for John already stealing the show left right and center.

Speaking of Mister Barrowman, I'm shocked and amaze (and of course pleased) that he managed to make the leap from B-movie actor to lead on Torchwood, one the BBC's biggest shows. The man knows how to act and it's the only really legitimately good thing about the movie. The rest of the cast feel more like the days footage was swapped with an early dress rehearsal and nobody noticed in the editing booth until the film was done.

Yeah, but we're not here to watch Captain Jack get laid or the acting chops of some Bulgarian extras. We're here to see some sharks eating people! That's what we paid for, after all!

When it's not shamelessly ripping off Jaws, it's offering up some of the worst special effects I've ever seen in my life. No - seriously. When the Meg shows up and swallows an entire patrol boat (complete with ethnically appropriate secondary character) the effect is achieved not by the use of intricate computer CGI or elaborate miniatures, but by someone in the editing suite taking some stock shark footage and overlaying the Helpless Victim with an adobe desktop publishing program. I kid you not.

The end effect is so gloriously bad, so mind-blowingly silly, so "What the hell was THAT?!?" that it's fantastic. The kills are so . . . words fail me. Honestly, this movie is like the Matrix, when I cannot tell you what it is, just that you have to experience it for yourself! It's that astounding!

The shark growls. Not a huge roar, but every time it appears there's this grunting "Hungh!", like a dog bark or something - EVERY TIME we see the shark on screen we get a "Hungh!" - by the end I was rolling and couldn&#146t breath.

THE DVD -
The quality is about what one would expect with a no-budget direct to video release. The color look pretty good, and there is some dirt and speckles, but the disc looks fair overall. The stock footage takes the hit, showing the worst of the damage.

Not outstanding, but nothing to be ashamed of either.

THE EXTRAS -
The only extras included are the trailers for Shark Attack 1, 2 and 3. They look dreadful, but if they're a tenth as good as this one is, I'll have to pick them up someday.

THE BOTTOM LINE -
I'd try and sum up here, kind of tie things up in a nice neat package, but words fail me. This is not quite Plan 9 From Outer Space level of bad, but it's damn, damn close. There are heavy doses of cheese, some really bad effects and all kinds of fun lines delivered from some big hams.

Absolutely essential viewing for any self respecting bad film enthusiast!