This Week in Rixflix #13: June 2-8, 2017

Boy, did my movie count dip the week of June 2-8, and if I had not watched a slew of films those first four days (13 of the 18 films overall), it probably would have been even less. The reason? The buildup to the James Comey testimony, then the actual sessions, and the discussion in the aftermath ate up so much of my spare time on the weekdays that it was really hard to think about anything else.

This year has been so dominated by news about He-Who-Must-Be-Orange that it is no wonder that I have smothered my senses so intensely in movie after movie after movie. It's not the real reason that I watch so many films, but an outsider, knowing at the least of my political leanings, could only surmise that the continued presence of President Rage Toddler has me in such a deep depression that I can only find solace by immersing myself in film history. Well, he does not. He annoys the hell out of me every time I even think about his voice or face, but he has no effect on my film viewing habits. Except when there is the possibility of hearings that will hopefully lead to exposing his criminal ways once and for all on legal grounds – not just on social media, though he does a fine job of that himself – that will – hopefully – eventually get him and his graceless family expelled from the White House.

No, I just naturally watch film after film – I have done this for most of my life, and will continue to do so because for me it is simply a part of breathing. I wake up, I put on a movie, I watch a big chunk of it, maybe I will stop it to write for a while, grab some breakfast, watch another 40 minutes of the film, or maybe I finish watching it instead and then write... it really depends on where the day takes me. Not having regular work has made it even easier to immerse myself in these activities, but even when I did have a solid gig, I still managed to average 2-3 films a day. As I said, it's how I breathe...

[Note: the above was written today during the news of the Washington shooting at the baseball field. There is a lot of talk about how deeply divided we are today, and I have always agreed that bipartisanship is the only way to get things done for this country. However, the White House is going to use this opportunity to try to distract us and pave over the investigations going on currently involving Drumpf and his toadies. However much I want peace and harmony in this country and especially the world, I also want the Angry Orange permanently away from any shiny, candy-colored buttons in the War Room. This must be achieved lawfully and correctly, and without any violence, as the use of violence in our democratic process degrades us all.]

The Numbers:

This week's feature-length film count: 18; 12 first-time viewings and 6 repeats.
Highest rated feature-length film: The Bride of Frankenstein (1935) – 9/9
Lowest rated feature film: Shark Babes (2015) – 2/9
Average films per day in June so far: 2.37
Average films per day in 2017 so far: 3.0063
Consecutive days with at least 1 feature-length film seen: 177

The Reviews:

The New Land [aka Nybyggarna] (1972) Dir.: Jan Troell – A couple of years ago, I watched the first of two films by Jan Troell about Swedish immigrants in the United States trying desperately to survive as they traveled through a strange new world in the mid-19th century. That film was called The Emigrants, and it was a remarkably vivid portrayal of people who could lived hardscrabble lives that were likely quite similar to those of my own Swedish ancestors at the same time. That the location of the land where the main characters set up their farm in Minnesota is less than an hour by car today from the county where my father grew up just across the border and north a bit in Wisconsin drives the point home even harder. The follow-up film, The New Land, based like The Emigrants, on the same series of novels by Vilhelm Morberg, is like its predecessor in that it is intricately and lovingly detailed with period touches and also glacially paced. (Both films are well over three hours in running time, so the easily bored should endeavor to avoid this pair.) But slow going does not mean the films weren't completely spellbinding to me, if not a little off-putting at times in how the immigrants react to their new surroundings and its inhabitants. This film in particular has the main characters, played by Bergman regulars Max von Sydow and Liv Ullmann, learning to deal with the native Sioux in the area. The use of indigenous peoples in The New Land is certainly far different than most American portrayals on film, and it will prove most effective when the story contains elements of the Sioux Uprising of 1862, which leads to some of the more jarringly graphic imagery in the film. I am not sure that I would wish to take this journey on film again, though if I did, I would prefer to watch both films back to back. And maybe with some of my older relatives to dig into their memories of our ancestors' corresponding experiences. Fascinating films overall.  – TC4P Rating: 8/9

Yentl (1983) Dir.: Barbara Streisand – There has not been a moment since 1983 where I haven't been prone to suddenly singing in mock fashion the words "Papa can you hear me?" And yet, I have never actually seen Yentl, the film musical directed, produced and starring Barbara Streisand from which the song that carries that line is derived. I had tried to watch it on VHS and cable back in the day but always pulled out of it, and in recent years had recorded it on DVR a handful of times but never quite watched it. Now, I tell you this because your first thought is going to be "Well, yeah, you're a guy (and presumably straight)... why would you want to watch a Barbara Streisand film, especially where she sings?" Well, I grew up with Streisand played in our house, and one memorable evening, I watched a network TV showing of What's Up Doc?, her 1972 Peter Bogdanovich romantic comedy with Ryan O'Neal. The film became a favorite, I came to understand that she was a terrific comedienne and actress, and accepted her from that moment onward. Sure, her music is not my thing normally, but she has that incredible voice, which is featured prominently in Yentl, though I found the music to really be secondary to the story in the film. It's big and brash and lovingly filmed (the heart is quite apparent in the storytelling), but wondered if maybe the musical portion of it wasn't really necessary. Of course, if you take the music out of it, then there is really no reason for a then-40-year-old Streisand to be in the film playing a teenage girl posing as a boy, but if you take her out of it, then the movie doesn't get financed. (The production history is quite convoluted, and really, the more you know about it, the less it looks like a Streisand vanity project in casting herself.) The film is at a tad overlong, and my patience for it actually ran out late in the film, but still I stuck around. It's a pretty film, has some lovely moments, Mandy Patinkin really is a force of nature, and Streisand does just fine despite the whole age thing. And I have checked off another Oscar nominee.  – TC4P Rating: 7/9

Joyride (1977) Dir.: Joseph Ruben – I sometimes wonder if people who actually live in New York and L.A. get upset these days when so many productions are filmed in Vancouver, even when the shows and films sometimes take place in N.Y.C. and L.A. Do they gripe about the minutiae as much as people in other places? Ah, studio filming... Me, I grew up in Alaska, and have had to deal most of my life with things being not quite right in the details when productions filmed elsewhere are supposed to take place in Anchorage, Fairbanks, Nome, Barrow, or some other (often fictional) Alaskan town. While trying to track down a different film from 1977 a couple of weeks back, a search on YouTube gave me a list of other productions from that year, some of which I had never heard before. One of those titles was named Joyride. Seeing that the film had Robert Carradine, Desi Arnaz Jr., and a young Melanie Griffith in it, a quick look at IMDb revealed that the film is supposed to be about three teenagers taking a literal joyride on the lam as they head up to Alaska. Count me in, if only to see if they actually get anywhere near my home state. Nope... I should have just assumed it was so. Joyride was instead shot in Washington, much like Northern Exposure and many other things with supposedly Alaskan locales. I was expecting typical teen prank antics and low grade sleaze, but the film was far grittier than I expected, with some surprisingly dark turns hidden inside. The watch, however, was lessened by the low quality version that I had found. Still, there was enough that I found of interest that I came away knowing I would like to track down a decent copy in the future. So, did anything in the film seem like the actual Alaska at any point? Only fleetingly, but I figured it was probably accidental, though I am not going to hold it against the film. You do what you can with what you've got...  – TC4P Rating: 6/9

The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) Dir.: Lewis Gilbert and For Your Eyes Only (1981) Dir.: John Glen – Roger Moore died recently, and while he has never quite been my favorite Bond (I was too influenced by the Connery films early on), Moore had been a constant presence in my life beyond Bond. I grew up watching Moore on two different series: Maverick, where he filled in for a season as Beau, the smooth English cousin of the Maverick brothers after James Garner left the series in 1960, and as The Saint, Simon Templar, on repeats of his 1962-1969 British series. By the time I was twelve, Moore was already established as the new James Bond, having appeared in Live and Let Die and The Man with the Golden Gun by that point. As I did with the Bond films with Sean Connery, I grew up seeing the films on the occasional Sunday night on ABC, where they were all regularly shown in the '70s. But it wasn't until 1977's The Spy Who Loved Me that I saw a Bond film in the theatre. With my parents' going through their divorce and me at the age where I was incessantly annoying about everything, but going to see movies was becoming most special of all to me (once more, we did not have a movie theatre in our small Alaskan town and had to drive to "big city" Anchorage to see them), my mom left my still too young little brothers with my dad and took me to see Bond on our own. It was showing in a double feature with Won Ton Ton, the Dog Who Saved Hollywood (more on that at another time), and we sat in the front row with a Ziploc bag of popcorn that we popped and buttered at home, Doritos that my mom sneaked inside of her bag, and a can of spray cheese in a can to load up the Doritos. It was magnificent!

Moore's death a few weeks ago coincided with the 40th anniversary celebration of the release of The Spy Who Loved Me, which served as arguably the high water mark for his series of seven Bond films at the time (I prefer Golden Gun overall now). I knew it was the anniversary, but hadn't really considered that I might have the chance to see it again on the big screen. Surprise! While we were at the AMC Dine-In Theatres getting ready to watch Wonder Woman on the day it opened, there was a special event advertisement for a double feature showing of Spy and For Your Eyes Only, but the first date (May 31) had past, but the second was in two days (June 4). I didn't really think about it that moment, but by that evening, I had determined that I was going to get to that double feature rain or shine. It meant going by myself since Jen worked, but nothing would stop me. That Sunday, I found myself in Orange, settling in for an afternoon double at the AMC at the Block, and had a terrific experience with the dozen or so other people in the theatre. 

A big thing for me was that these were two of the five Bond films that feature sharks in them (and Spy also has Richard Kiel as the metal-mouthed assassin "Jaws," who quite literally bites a shark to death in the film), but halfway through Spy, while Moore and the gorgeous Barbara Bach are wandering around the Egyptian pyramids, the projector totally stopped, and my fellow patrons and I found ourselves cloaked in darkness for almost 15 minutes. Part of the time, we discussed the film lightly – everyone was greatly enjoying seeing these films on a big screen again – but of course, a couple of us, myself included, ran out to talk to the management, and finally got someone to check on the problem. After the second film was over, the manager was standing by the side as we were exiting and handed each of us a free entry pass for another film, telling us that they didn't know what happened except that the projection system just completely shut down. I will take a free movie ticket any day, and since we saw the whole of the film regardless, no harm, no foul. I got two Bonds, I got Jaws, and most especially, I got tiger sharks. I also saw Alien: Covenant again right before the Bond flicks. That's a full, grand day at the movies for me. – "Spy" TC4P Rating: 7/9; "Eyes" TC4P Rating: 6/9

The Bride of Frankenstein (1935) Dir.: James Whale – No review here, just some quick editorializing and plugging. My love for the Universal Monsters films goes back ages to my very youth, when I saw most of the original films in my early teen years (with a few exceptions, like the later Mummy films featuring Kharis). I have also owned many of the films on VHS, all of them on DVD, and jumped a good portion of them up to Blu-ray a few years ago. That they are a constant presence in my life is to never be doubted. So, why is it that I still watch them on television every time that they cross my path? I don't mean just on Turner Classic Movies, where a handful of Frankensteins may show up from time to time, and not necessarily just in October when they usually hold special events for horror films. I refer to when something like The Bride of Frankenstein – arguably the most accomplished, giddiest and purest example of the Universal monster film – pops up on MeTV on the Svengoolie show on Saturday nights. 

Well, the answer is that I rarely skip out on watching ol' Sven even if I have seen all of the films he shows dozens of times outside the show. It is no surprise that I have a great fondness for horror host shows (especially if at least mildly professionally executed) and while I did not grow up with Svengoolie as a regular showcase like many others in different parts of the country did, I certainly wish to take advantage of him now, especially since Elvira's latest series only played for a short period and we have to wait a bit for the next MST3K season. (Yes, it has mostly sci-fi trappings, but I still count it in the same vein; they do show a lot of movies with monsters in them.) Me, I don't mind the commercials (if you DVR it, even better, but I like to watch it live) and the 12-yea-old in me still enjoys the intentionally lame jokes and interruptions. I am just happy knowing that someone is still putting Dracula, Godzilla, Frankenstein, and the rest of the gang on TV so that newer generations can discover and enjoy these films for themselves like I did as a kid. And when Rich Koz stops doing the show (he is now 65), hopefully someone else will come along to take up the cause. The monsters must live on!   – TC4P Rating: 9/9

Meanwhile, Other "Countdown to Halloween" Fun in Cinema 4 Land...

Just a couple quick notices to make you aware of posts and articles on my other sites that tie into the launch of Countdown to Halloween this morning:

On CINEMA 4: CEL BLOC:

Spooks (1930)

Oswald the Lucky Rabbit faces off against a parody version of the Phantom of the Opera as he tries to protect his girlfriend Kitty in Walter Lantz's 1930 short, Spooks. There might even be a strange swipe at Walt Disney in the film in the use of a mouse (or a series of mice) that looks exactly like Mickey Mouse, the character that Disney and Ub Iwerks created to replace the stolen Oswald. The first of seven Halloween-oriented cartoons that will be featured throughout the month of October on Cinema 4: Cel Bloc.

On THE SHARK FILM OFFICE:

The Munsters in "Marineland Carnival" Promo (1965)

CBS did some cross-promotion and had the stars of one of their primetime hits take part in an early television special built around Marineland of the Pacific in Palos Verdes, California. Naturally, for me to discuss such a thing on the The Shark Film Office, sharks need to be involved in some small way, yes? Well, sort of almost maybe. Find out how through the link above.

RTJ

The Shark Film Office: Marina Monster (2008)

Marina Monster (2008)
Dir.: Christine Whitlock
Cinema 4 Rating: 1/9

If I ever get the chance to make my own monster, shark, OR monstrous shark movie, I hope it's half as stupid as Marina Monster.

Farting and burping sounds when some characters appear in view of the camera. Clown horns punctuating "jokes" so that we are certain to understand they were meant that way. A foghorn-and-cowbell combination (or sometimes a couple of bass notes) that sounds when certain female breasts arrive onscreen (always covered discreetly). Cliched, noirish saxophone bursts when one character is seduced by another or when one particularly muscled character lifts his shirt. Cash register noises when another character makes drug deals over and over again. A rumbling sound (accompanied by a shaky camera) that occurs every time (and there are many of these moments) that a dock in the harbor is hit by the titular monster. Marina Monster is a cornucopia of ridiculous sound effects that are draped over a film where every other element can be charitably called "amateurish" but more often lends itself to a constant sad shaking of one's head while wondering if carrying on through the remainder of the film is a worthwhile option.

The character names are meant to be silly and parodic, so certainly this film is never meant to be taken seriously for even a second. How could you with names such as Earl Molar, Oceanna Anchor, Commodore Drip Molar, Commodore Skip Anchor, Zena Waters, Skipper Surf Toe, Rusty Winch, Aqua Foam, and Bibby Rigger? It was one of the rare aspects of this film that I found quite pleasant, wondering just how far the filmmaker, Christine Whitlock, would take the gag. Well, it would seem nearly into porn territory with other names like Stiff Mast (the muscle guy) and Limp Eel, but Marina Monster is far too chaste (except for some weird stepmother incest gags) and almost naive to go too far. I somewhat imagine Whitlock as being a cousin to the director of the film being made in 1976's The First Nudie Musical, who is called upon to helm a porn musical (titled Come, Come Again), but keeps giggling and hiding his eyes during the sex scenes.

But that feeling of a porn-level parody is certainly apt here when one considers that most of the cast seems to be filled with anyone who happened to cross Whitlock's path on the day the scenes were filmed. I might actually be more impressed with the outcome were this the case (and it is an interesting concept for an experiment), but it is also clear that there are many people in the cast -- the larger, speaking roles -- who at least have some theatrical experience. I'm not sure this extends to the actor playing the film's narrator, who introduces himself as Professor Squid -- that's right -- from a room with a white curtained backdrop, a whiteboard (and water bottle) on an easel, various shark drawings, and a table with a map of the bay, on which are placed toy boats and a toy shark. Professor Squid opens Marina Monster's story with this anti-shark rant:

"Today, we're here to talk about sharks, evil eating machines that live in the ocean... but not always! They're now in fresh water, eating people wherever they go. Hungry, evil sharks! In the bay, fisherman are noticing less fish. Bull sharks have been seen in the Mississippi River going as far north as Illinois, eating as they go in fresh water."

The location then switches to a harbor that I would guess is in Hamilton, Ontario, where director Whitlock lives and films her micro-budget movies. On a small dock, we are given the basic template for nearly every attack that occurs throughout the picture. An unidentified man sits on the end of the dock, swishing the water with a small net attached to a long pole. A second man in a stupid straw hat and floral print shirt is standing on the dock a few feet away. A girl in a bikini walks down the length of the dock and comes up to the first man and crouches down to ask him how the fishing is going. The girl says that she will see him in Jamaica (totally unexplained) and walks away. The second man, utterly without provocation, strides up to the first man and shoves him hard into the waters of the bay (mind you, the dock is about two feet above the water).

Suddenly, there is a shark seen on the surface of the water. The girl runs back to pull her friend out, but suddenly there is that low rumble and a shaking of the camera. The girl is thrown off balance into the water. The first man is then pulled underneath the water to never be seen again. The second man, still on the dock, is shaken into the drink by another rumble of the dock. Both he and the girl are then pulled under to the depths of the bay. We return to Professor Squid, who quips with a shit-eating grin: "Hungry little thing, isn't it?" The shark, clearly phony, is shown "swimming" on the surface as the film cuts to the interminable opening credits, nearly three minutes of mind-numbing regatta footage set to an exceedingly generic rock beat.

This opening attack sequence, where three or more people fall into the water in succession and get eaten by a largely unseen predator is repeated time and again throughout the film, though always with small variances in the number of people. I'm not quite sure why everyone is fishing with what amounts to a pool skimmer, but they are, and perhaps the various "no fishing" signs we are shown throughout the film might attest to the limits taken during filming. This also points to me that these dock scenes may have been shot on the sly and without permission of the harbor where they occur. Since there are no shots of the shark next to the docks or any gore effects at all, and people just jump or fall in and splash around before going under, I'd say it is likely this was the case. Also, the bumping of the dock by the shark is used pretty inconsistently, and so you get several scenes of people just simply falling or really jumping into the water without real purpose behind it. And most of these scenes are started with people getting into a small squabble over some imagined gripe or grudge, and then someone gets pushed in, leading to a chain reaction of falls and deaths.

In some ways, the repetition of these scenes is quite hypnotic, and instead of needing the story's plot to escape from the poorly filmed attack scenes, these attack scenes actually serve as a refuge from the terrible dramatics and dialogue of the rest of the film. That you will only go about three to four minutes before more people get eaten becomes a blessing. This film has a tremendously high body count for a shark film that isn't Sharknado. There are forty people listed as "victims" in the closing credits, and sure enough, when one counts up all thirteen attacks in the film, the final death toll is a solid forty. And yet, there is nothing in the plot about anyone actually trying to figure why people are disappearing, even after a couple of main characters see five people lose their lives.

• By the 15-minute mark of Marina Monster, ten people have already been eaten, in between brief moments with the film's actual speaking characters setting up the plot of the film.
• By the 30-minute mark, one would think there would be some investigation as to why 23 people have disappeared around the harbor area in a rather short amount of story time. 
• It is 33 minutes into the film when the two lead characters, Earl Molar and his lady love Oceanna Anchor, realize that something horrid is going in the water. But still nothing gets done.
• At the 40-minute mark, the body count is 35, and the film's reporter character, Lola Dent, who is investigating the embezzlement scandal at the core of the plot, finally mentions the "people missing from the piers and marinas in the bay."
• 52 minutes in, we have the full 40 victims.

After most of the attacks, Professor Squid will chime in for a few seconds with a statement, often unrelated to what has just occurred, except that there happens to be a shark and he has eaten a few more people. Sometimes he is holding a toy shark or even a shark pool toy. Amongst Prof. Squid's -- ahem -- witticisms:

• "Bull sharks are eating machines, hungry creatures that love to eat, and eat, and eat."
• "Bull sharks in marinas find things to eat."
• "Oh, my word! That teenage shark has an appetite, doesn't it?"
• "My, what big teeth he has!"
• "He just doesn't get enough to eat, does he?"
• "Male bull sharks eat alone." (This one is odd because it is attached to only scene where the shark devours a single male victim.)
• "Vhat, a little kosher meal?" (Interesting in that none of the victims in this scene seem to be obviously Jewish in any way whatsoever, not that they couldn't possibly have been. And if there were, how offensive would this be?)
• "A bull shark is your worst nightmare."

But enough of the oddly inserted Professor Squid moments. Surprisingly, there is a ridiculously convoluted plot in Marina Monster built around an annual regatta event called the "Around the Bay" race. It's really not worth following through even the first scene, but the director's website insists it is based on Romeo and Juliet. (But sadly, no suicide parts.) Yes, there are a lead couple in the film that are secretly in love at the start of the film, and their respective fathers are each from a different rival yacht club. But for most of Marina Monster, we get no recognizable romantic feeling from these characters until very deep into the story, and really only after the shark is dispatched four/fifths of the way through the running time.

The real plot of the film involves Commodore Drip Molar, head of the regatta committee, who has squandered the yacht club's funds and needs to win the big race to save his ass. His current wife (his third) is fooling around with anybody she can get her hands on, including his son Earl, quite against Earl's wishes. (Her big come-on line is "My name is San-dee, but I'm smooth." It is one of many failed double entendres buried in this movie.)  Also, one of the Commodore's exes wants him back and is willing to blackmail him to get her wish. The Commodore is also deeply involved financially with a drug dealer (who looks like he stepped right out of Miami Vice) named Surf Toe. Part of the reason for the plot getting so confused is that new characters -- not counting the dock victims -- are still being introduced past the halfway point.

Every character seems to either have slept with the other characters, or wants to sleep with the other characters. Everyone flirts endlessly, saying odd pickup lines quite out of sync with the rest of the action going on around them. Most of the characters also think nothing of trying to seduce other characters directly in front of girlfriends, boyfriends, wives, and husbands. The camera, too, gets into the horny act. While women are certainly capable of creating exploitation films of both the softcore and hardcore varieties, it is still rather odd that the camera will almost unconsciously drift down to ogle the bosoms of various women -- whether said bosoms are worthy of ogling or not -- and will do so often when fading out of a scene. Since the film is not sold as a softcore product at all and actually has zero nudity in it, there is a great reliance on breast shots and the aforementioned comic sound effects that go with those shots. 

In one scene featuring otherwise unnamed and heretofore unknown victims, one young woman (definitely one of the fairer ones in the film) is never really given a closeup so that we really know what she looks like. But her breasts sure get a closeup. After her would-be boyfriend falls into the water, she runs along the dock and the camera stays tight on her chest and stomach for the entire run, until she too falls in to be eaten by the shark. It is scenes like this that really make me wonder what the aims of the filmmaker were in creating this film. As I mentioned, through her dialogue and scenario, she seems remarkably naive about sexual affairs. It is entirely possible that her goals were merely a personal "whim" (i.e., Whitlock loves titties), and were that to be revealed to me, I would be just dandy with it. Until then, the true meaning remains a mystery.

Also, my guess about the actors being friends of the director stems mainly from the fact that there seems to have been little thought given to just who should play what role, like she just said, "Hey, do you want a part in my film?" and then choosing a random name in the screenplay and saying, "Here... play this character." Couples seem truly mismatched, most of the cast is physically what many would term "sloppy" (there are four or five traditionally attractive females -- all playing shark victims -- in the usual cinematic sense), and even the lead parts seem to have been given to their actors "just because". That said, I guess that I do have to applaud Whitlock for putting just anybody in this film no matter what body type they possess, and in bikinis no less... and then pushing them off a dock to get eaten by a shark. It's like she is taking a stand against body-shaming, and then suddenly having a change of heart partway through that stand.

With around sixteen minutes to go in this seventy-minute film, we finally get the big "Around the Bay" race. This apparently consists of generic, absolutely non-thrilling sailing footage posing as a regatta race around the bay, all shot from far away from the boats. In fact, except for the bit that I am about mention in a few seconds, there is no attempt at all at showing an actual boat with one of the characters from the film manning it as they sail about on the waters of the bay. The closest we get is a shot of two boats in the distance, with subtitles underneath each boat telling us which one is Skip and which one is Drip.

There is, however, around the fifty-six minute mark of Marina Monster, a five-minute segment of the film where its visual style is completely at odds with the rambling, unintentionally hilarious stillness that precedes it. We get a real, close-up glimpse of the monster shark, a seemingly papier-mâché creation that, quite surprising, not only talks but sings, "Give me yum yums!" in a style that must have been inspired by Little Shop of Horrors. He only sings that line a couple of times before the hero arrives to dispatch him, but the appearance of the shark, as no-frills and handmade as he obviously is, came as a welcome relief to this viewer. So, too, did the use of green screen to film the scene of the hero and heroine both being menaced by and killing the monster shark. It looks amateurish and silly, but when matched against everything else in the film, it looks brilliant. It made me wish more of the film had been done in this quite obviously hammy and self-aware style. Naturally, the film doesn't want to be taken seriously at any point, but I would have ironically taken this film more seriously if they had gone out of their way to be a little more craftsmanlike in their silliness.

After forty murders and the revelation of a singing sea-beast, the shark action ends with over thirteen minutes left in the film. In the last decently filmed shot in the film, the Romeo and Juliet couple finally get their smooch on, in another green-screen shot with a pink background and scores of red heart-shaped balloons falling down all around them. It should be noted that Oceanna takes the initiative and dips Earl, planting the massive kiss on him. But after that, what else could they have to do for thirteen minutes? The film snaps out of its brief green-screen reverie and switches back to its previous dull business.

And this is where I tell you that this film is a sequel to another Christine Whitlock-helmed monster fish movie called Sharp Teeth, filmed in 2006. Some of the characters/actors in this film starred in Sharp Teeth as well, including the lead character, Earl Molar. That film was about a normal carp that was mutated into a monstrous killer by a bag of "Experimental Super Grow Fish Food". How do I know this without having seen Sharp Teeth except for a trailer? Well, in those final thirteen minutes, Marina Monster seems to decide to connect the dots with its predecessor and have a couple of characters from the first film show up at the end. Why? Really not sure at all. We get a couple of flashback scenes involving Earl Molar's buddy who is now a cop, and then another where we see a character who is now in a wheelchair due to what happened with the monster carp from Sharp Teeth. After this, the film switches back to Professor Squid again, who says "There are other terrors lurking in the bay!" with a strange intonation. Again, why? And once more, I am not sure. Was there supposed to be a third film to complete this trilogy of harbor-based marine terror?

Whitlock has only produced one other film since then, a Caribbean set "psychological horror" film released in 2013 called Days of the Iguanas. The movie doesn't even appear on IMDb in her filmography, but it is available on Amazon on DVD. I don't know if it has any connection at all with the first two films, but the line early on when the second shark victim tells the first that she will see him in Jamaica has me wondering.

I mentioned in the first line of this piece that if I made a shark movie of the low-budget and low-aiming style of Marina Monster, that I would be happy indeed if my film came out half as stupid as this one does. To be sure, I am envious of filmmakers like Whitlock and her ilk, who do what they have to do to get their goofy projects made, no matter the outcome. Back in Alaska, I had some friends recently take part in a horror spoof called Moose: The Movie, written and directed by other acquaintances. Against all odds, it not only managed to get a fair amount of press during its making and after it was released, but even garnered a couple of decent reviews. This is not par for the course for such projects, of course, and most low-budget, non-Hollywood-based directors have to settle for putting out a movie where everyone involved will basically just have to be excited that it ever got completed. There will be little in the way of tangible success, if any, and they are bound to take a severe critical ravaging from all sides, including dopey websites like mine.

Yes, Marina Monster is insipid and truly bottom of the barrel in every element of its creation. And even though it gets my lowest rating that I can possibly give such a film, that does not mean that I don't admire it in a small, strange way. That is, I wish that I had gotten the chance to make such a film, and to be laughed at roundly for doing so. It wouldn't matter, because I would have made a silly monster shark movie. There is a pride in just doing such a thing. But for now, I guess that I will just be happy that I survived two viewings -- yes, two -- of Marina Monster and feel none the worse for it.

Except for my eyes, which now just want to casually rest upon whichever poorly cast, sloppy bosoms happen to cross my path... DAMN YOU, CHRISTINE WHITLOCK!!! I've been cursed!

RTJ

The Shark Film Office: Malibu Shark Attack (2009)

Malibu Shark Attack (2009)
Dir.: David Lister
Cinema 4 Rating: 3/9
Shark species: Goblin shark (Mitsukurina owstoni), but a prehistoric version, so it's OK that they do things a goblin shark can't. Right?

The goblin shark has a face that only a mother goblin shark could love. Or an ichthyologist. Or me...

With a long, flattened snout that looks like it was daddied by Jimmy Durante himself, jaws that stretch out forward to an improbable length, and a strange pinkish skin tone, goblin sharks seem like a nightmare scenario when seen in the light of day. But it's our light, not theirs, for the goblin shark goes largely unseen by human eyes. I suppose you could say, technically, such a thing about a great many sharks, since they live in the deep, and we only detect the slightest traces of their oceanic omnipresence from our surface world. But goblin sharks tend to live in the real deep deep, dining on fish and other sea creatures in the relative darkness of deepwater canyons and the seabeds of continental slopes. It's also a rather sluggish swimmer, and maintains its standard diet of fishes and crustaceans by use of ambush techniques. Such techniques are somewhat easier to do when it is fairly dark around you.

What goblin sharks don't do is attack man. Human interaction of even a glancing sort is remarkably rare with goblin sharks, and even in big fishing operations where sharks aren't the main target but still get pulled in certain numbers, goblin sharks are very rarely caught or even seen. Just a few here and there. Likewise, they are even less frequently captured on film, though much of what we know about them, outside of direct scientific expedition, is due to photos or film of specimens that have been accidentally caught (and often released) or from casual observances by divers.

But, because of the goblin shark's nightmare appearance, the impulse was bound to spooge out of sleazy Hollywood producers eventually that these sharks would be perfect for a horror film. Kind of like what they did to the cookiecutter sharks in Shark Night. And so, without the slightest thought given that they might damage the reputation of a mostly reclusive and non-threatening species, they gave us Malibu Shark Attack. In this 2009 direct to video feature, a 5.5. magnitude tremor off the coast of California, thought to have caused no damage initially, opens up -- in a manner that probably replicates the way such visions spring from the minds of low-rent moviemakers -- a deep sea rift. From a crack in this rift, a very convenient squadron of abnormally fast prehistoric goblin sharks were just waiting to make a direct beeline (or is it sharkline?) for the beach at Malibu, to start munching on swimmers in a manner that no goblin shark ever has. It's like they were all hanging out just under the rock, itching to get right into swallowing human beings in what is shown to be a natural instinct for them. While the film barely mentions the detail except briefly, Malibu Shark Attack plays hard off of the "prehistoric" angle, in order to give us goblin sharks that would display such an immediate impulse to destroy and devour non-stop (as opposed to their modern descendants). And, of course, swim in a relentlessly speedy manner ill-fitting to the natural physical limitations of their species.

The squad of sharks finds a diver who has the worst timing in the world, and they make quick bloody work of him. Then they munch some blonde nebbish free swimming off the side of a boat. The attacks are quick, and accompanied by a strange, short roaring noise, for whatever reason. (Sharks cannot roar, so knock it off, Hollywood...) While the violence builds as the sharks speed towards the coast, we are subjected to dull romantic business and infighting amongst the team of lifeguards patrolling the beaches at Malibu, including a post-La Femme Nikita (and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen) Peta Wilson, looking fairly uncomfortable throughout the film. Wilson's character, Heather, has had an affair with the foreman of a nearby construction crew (Jeff Gannon), much to the chagrin of her lifeguard lover, Chavez (Warren Christie). We are supposed to care about this love triangle, but since both guys are assholes, why even start?

All of this filler, however, gets ignored pretty quickly once the sharks reach the beach area, which is about twenty minutes into the film. A pair of parasailing beachgoers are attacked when they dip briefly into the ocean, and when they are pulled back up into the sky, there is a pretty gruesome shot of the torn away flesh of one of the pair. Some of the blood drips down on the boats below, including the rubber lifeguard raft being driven through the surf by Heather. The blood splatters her, and Peta Wilson had to be thinking, "What has come of my career in such a short time?" Her raft is then bumped by one of the goblin sharks, and when she looks up, there are dorsal fins above the water coming from separate directions at her. Heather gets knocked out of the raft by the goblin sharks, but before they can collect their tasty prize, she is pulled from the water by Chavez, who is patrolling around on a jet ski.

At this point early on in the film, as the lifeguards call everyone out of the water, it seems that it would be pretty easy to end the film right here. With nobody in the water, and the sharks kept in it, how can there be a shark attack film? Unless the sharks turn out to be land sharks or something else ridiculous. 

Well, there is that bugger of a tremor I mentioned earlier on, and it turns out the early reports of "no damage" will have to be amended. The tremor has triggered a tsunami, which gets reported by the Coast Guard just as the sharks are starting to zip at ridiculous speeds for goblin sharks towards the beach. We then see some terrible CGI animation of what is described as a "100-foot high" wall of water heading towards the coast. Meanwhile, Heather and Chavez are headed back to the beach, with a particularly nasty goblin shark coming up fast on jet ski. As they reach the shore, one of the other lifeguards fires a rifle into the surf, first clipping a bit off the dorsal fin of the shark, and then sending a second shot straight through its head. The shark glides to a stop in the sand at the feet of the assembled lifeguards, and coughs up blood and some human remains to their great disgust. Barb (Sonya Salomaa), also a marine biologist, recognizes the species as a goblin shark, but says they were thought to be extinct. This means either she is a terrible marine biologist, because goblin sharks have been known to be with us in the modern age for a very long time, or she meant a prehistoric variety. (She never specifies... I am banking on the shitty scientist part...)

While all of the tourists seem to depart in time to escape the monster waves, the lifeguards decide the best course of action is to hole up in their lifeguard shelter in the middle of the beach. The wave hits, Malibu is flooded, and the lifeguard shack sits by its lonesome in the middle of the water, its office floor sticking up barely above the surface of the water. (This itself is annoying, since news reports have the area as being "under 30 feet of water"; the shack, at the edge of the ocean itself, seems to under no more than eight to ten  feet.)

The remainder of the drama will occur in Malibu Shark Attack on two fronts: first in the stranded lifeguard shack, and secondly, at the equally stranded construction area, where Heather's construction foreman lover and his co-workers will try to find a way across the water to safety. We get horribly match CGI where a goblin shark breaches fully out of the water in a manner that is mostly confined to great whites, where it grabs a construction worker bodily and pulls him down into the water depths for lunch. We get scene after scene of a couple of goblin sharks using their huge noses to smash their way through the bottom of the lifeguard house, forcing the lifeguards to climb to the roof. Everyone makes their escape, meets up with the construction guys, and it builds to a climax where much of the main cast both separately and together face off with each remaining goblin shark in a power tool versus serrated teeth battle for the ages. Or at least for 2009.

I guess my chief problem with the sharks in this film is that they seem compelled to just merely kill, not feed. You would think their hunger would have been sated pretty quickly, no matter how long they may have trapped in that underground rift or channel or whatever was opened up the earthquake. But, if they had survived down there since prehistoric times, there must have been a steady food supply to allow this species to propagate and make it to 2009 (the year this film was released). So why are they so goddamned hungry? And if they aren't hungry, were prehistoric shark just more murderous by nature? Maybe the filmmakers are suggesting that these individual goblin shark are millions of years old each and haven't eaten, literally in eons? Then the filmmakers are dumber than the biologist in their own movie.

Look... I get it. I understand the B-movie impulse, perhaps better than most people. Something happens in the news, and you figure out how to exploit to make a quick buck and to give your film an exciting angle at the same time. The goblin shark parallel seems to have been inspired by a 2003 tsunami off of Japan, where scores of goblin sharks allegedly washed up onshore. Not attack people, not eat lifeguards... just washed up onshore. But it seems that when they designed their villains for Malibu Shark Attack, they simply looked at a picture of a goblin shark, and didn't ask any questions related to how a goblin shark might actually behave. And because such filmmakers are only interested in dwelling upon the most notorious aspects of shark behavior -- namely, that a tiny handful of species will occasionally, and mostly by accident or curiosity, taste human flesh -- they tend to ascribe that behavior to all sharks automatically, from great whites down to cookiecutters. In this case, they wanted a scary-looking shark, nothing more, and goblins fit the bill. And so we get films like Malibu Shark Attack, where they try to get novel by giving us a species we never see as a beach villain in other films, but never use logic to figure out there is a reason why we never see this. Because the goblin shark, despite its appearance befitting a Halloween haunted house setting, is simply not that kind of shark.

Frankly, it is amazing that film producers haven't gotten to other more well-known sharks first. They haven't figured out a way crossbred a whale shark (a filter feeder, mind you) with an orca yet. Yet, that is.

Coming to a theatre near you... Killer Whale Shark!! And Sea World thought Blackfish was trouble...

The Shark Film Office: Shark Lake (2015)

Shark Lake (2015)
Dir.: Jerry Dugan
Cinema 4 Rating: 3/9
Shark species: Bull shark (Carcharhinus leucas)
Hero species: Dolph Lundgren (Wearius longindatoothinas)

I suppose that if one were to assign a particular shark species to the actor Dolph Lundgren, a bull shark might be a fairly decent choice. Known for their tenacity and aggressive behavior, the bull shark with its tough guy physique and unstoppable bite force seems to be a perfect parallel to action star Lundgren, now pushing sixty and hanging by his fingertips onto whatever he has left of a Hollywood career. This struggle seems to include appearing in films of the caliber of Shark Lake, where Dolph crosses paths -- in Lake Tahoe, of all places -- with that very same bull shark.

That's right... Lake Tahoe. One might at first do an extremely comedic double-take upon hearing that this alpine-style lake on the California-Nevada border is being mentioned in connection with a film about bull shark attacks. But one has to remember that while shark films are loaded generally with massive leaps in logic, of the relatively few sharks that could, given the proper scenario, conceivably live and thrive in such a lake, the bull shark is the species that would likely pull it off the best. 

Bull sharks are common visitors up freshwater rivers worldwide, including our own Mississippi, and even appear rather frequently in bodies of water such as Lake Nicaragua, Lake Pontchartrain, and Lake Michigan. Whether these bull sharks get into these lakes via tributaries, rivers, or flooding, once there, their ability to handle different water salinities (known as being euryhaline, allowing them access to both fresh and saltwater systems with little effect on their bodies) gives the bull shark the ability to thrive anywhere, one of the very few cartilaginous fishes that can do so.

Sara Malakul Lane with
Lily Brooks O'Briant.

So, the only leap that the filmmakers really have to make in having a bull shark run rampant in a place like Lake Tahoe is actually getting that shark into the lake. While Tahoe has many tributaries connected to it, none of them lead directly to or from the Pacific Ocean. How will Lake Tahoe become Bull Shark Central? This is where Dolph Lundgren comes into the picture. Lundgren gets top billing in Shark Lake as Clint Gray, a troubled man who makes money on the side as a wild animal smuggler. While we won't learn of these details until a little bit further into the film, Clint is planning to deliver a bull shark to a sleazy mobster named Don Barnes, but at the start of the picture, the Lake County Sheriff's office is fast on his trail, including a deputy officer named Meredith Hernandez (played only fleetingly convincingly by former model Sara Malakul Lane). 

The film opens with scenic shots of Lake Tahoe, and you should probably enjoy them while you can, because most of this film was shot in Mississippi. Hernandez and the sheriff (Lance E. Nichols) are creeping through the woods to try to arrest Clint Gray. Seeing his door ajar, they enter and find in the dark a bloody handprint (never explained), a bloody knife on the ground, several animal cages and tanks inside his house, some of them smashed and bent, and living animals such as a constrictor and a large catfish. Suddenly, a white Ford van takes off outside, and the police give chase. We finally see Gray inside the van, and as he drives frantically through the night, he makes a call to arrange a delivery time with someone. But suddenly, he crashes his van through a railing and the vehicle dives deep into the waters of Lake Tahoe.

Our big opening clue as to the villain of the film...
besides the title, that is...

We never see the van enter the water (we just hear a budget-saving splash sound effect) and the next time we see Gray/Dolph, he is swimming at the bottom of the lake, the headlights from his van illuminating the water around him from behind. As he swims to make his getaway, we see the shadowy outline of a fairly good-sized shark swimming behind him. The shark, which later will act completely ravenous, doesn't even make a bite-sized attempt to try to go after Dolph. Dolph swims one way; the shark swims the other.

The film will be built around this moment: when the shark supposedly goes in the water. But the director gives us no help in this matter. While we could ascertain that Gray is an animal smuggler from the evidence of the cages in his home, he could also just be an animal enthusiast with a series of pets beyond the norm. For all we know going into the story, Gray is just a guy on the wrong side of the law, his alleged crimes wholly unmentioned by the police. We don't know anything about the shark, not even a clue. The first time we know there might be a shark in the film is in the title; the second is when we see the shadowed outline of the shark in the water behind Gray.

No joke... his missing arm will turn up on the bottom
of the lake to be discovered by a diver. The shark
doesn't even eat it. Sharks hate old people.

As I said, the film doesn't help at all or even give us decent clues. There is no fleeting shot of a tank in the back of his van as he makes his escape, and since we never see the actual van in the water except for a pair of obvious CGI headlights, we don't get a shot of an open door or busted window to give us the shorthand to tell the story. It's almost like they went back and said, "You know, I'm not sure the audience will understand that a shark has escaped into the lake. Maybe we would should put in a CGI effect of a shark swimming behind Dolph so they will get it." (Or they could have just taken the necessary measures to storyboard an action sequence properly...)

"Here, let me just gum ya for a bit!"

Also, unless I am misinterpreting the effect, the shark seems to be of pretty good size when it hits the lake. I know the main character is played by Dolph Lundgren, so you can make allowances for him pulling some strongman antics when needed, but a tank that can hold a decent-sized bull shark for transport is going to need to be pretty sturdy and with good water capacity. Did Gray just happen to manage to sneakily slide the tank into the van before the police arrived? There was no empty tank shown in the house, so it's unlikely he just grabbed the shark with his hands and threw it into the back of the van without any water. He is, after all, attempting to deliver the shark to a big time mobster, so there is a lot of money involved, and I doubt he would take a chance like that when it is, as he tells the man on the phone, going to get there "in twenty minutes." And if he did just throw the shark into the back of the van, don't you think he would be more than worried that he is sliding all over the road with what is often considered to be one of the most aggressive and dangerous sharks in the world just slipping around in the back of his van? And even if the shark was secured inside a tank in the back of his van, wouldn't there be a lot of complications when he does get into that fast-paced, wildly careening car chase all over the backroads of Lake County in the middle of the night? You see, this is the stuff that drives me crazy...

"This would be even more delicious if I were
actually in the same shot as this guy!"

I focus so much on the beginning of this film because the rest of Shark Lake entirely hinges on us believing that Lundgren's character allowed a bull shark to escape into Lake Tahoe. But there is another major sub-plot of the film that must be mentioned. Following Gray's arrest on the shores of the lake, Officer Hernandez is seen in the sheriff's office bonding with Gray's tiny, tow-headed daughter, Carly, herself already motherless (she is found all alone in Gray's house during the home invasion, I mean, necessary intrusion by the police. Hey, I didn't see a warrant...) The film then cuts to five years later. Hernandez has adopted Carly, and is now nervous about Clint Gray's recent release from prison. Much of the drama of the film, outside of the shark attack action, is built around the deputy's desire to retain custody of Carly while attempting to thwart Gray's reemergence into his daughter's life.

But we do have to deal with that shark attack action, and this is where Shark Lake is not just at its weakest, but actually serves as a fairly poor example of the genre. From this point forward, in the most steadfast of shark (and monster) attack films, Shark Lake will give us a series of scenes involving locals and tourists coming into deadly contact with the shark, with the usual gradual increase in our viewing of the creature as the attacks progress. It's an accepted storytelling cliche, but things are so much better when the shark scenes that follow are not just sloppy at best but knee-slapping ridiculous at their worst.

Say it...

...don't spray it!

The biggest offender occurs during a beach scene where two girls are paragliding just above the surface of the lake, as Hernandez arrives at the beach to yell at everyone to get out of the water (for she has finally put two and two together and come up with "bull shark in Lake Tahoe"). The head of the bull shark -- far too large for its species, I might add, especially given the size we see in later scenes -- shoots above the water to chomp off the too skinny leg of one of the beach babes dangling above. The shark in no way fits into the movement of the water in the rest of the scene, doesn't appear to be in the same plane of reality with the bodies of the girls in midair, nor is the blood spray that emanates from the girl's flailing stump of a leg even a notch above amateurish. And I love some decent arterial spray in a movie when it is done gratuitously enough, but this, in the manner of many modern, non-practical effects where everyone with two weeks of Photoshop experience thinks they are Tom Savini, is below YouTube shenanigans level. It reminds me of the first time I recognized that the show Psych had decided to save money by having a quickie CGI explosion in place of a good old-fashioned, splinter-scattering kaboom, and it just looked so wrong to me, it kind of pissed me off towards the show for a short period. I understand the need to save money, but... standards, people.

The most effective means of fending off a bull
shark is NOT your crotch... unless you have HPV.

First time feature director Jerry Dugan doesn't seem entirely clueless as to how to build suspense in a scene (just to a large degree), but he is clearly hampered by his budget and the talent of his CGI effects team and the editing. The bulk of the shark effects are indeed CGI work, but I will say that after seeing so many Syfy-style shark films over the past decade, that this is of the same low-grade level. No, I am going to place the bulk of the blame for Shark Lake's ineffectiveness on the script by Gabe Burnstein and David Anderson. There is a sense in their storyline that they are trying to not be so apparent with the motivations of their characters, thinking that keeping it a mystery about how exactly the shark got into the lake and why it is around at all is their first big suspenseful reveal. But because the Lundgren character is jammed into the surrounding story so choppily, the details of this reveal just make the film seem confused and annoying by the time we get to it.

"Hey, Ma! Do I have to smile like this
the entire time in the film?"

However, if I can give Shark Lake any credit at all, it's due to the fact that while the film may be absolutely lazy in delivering decent shark thrills, Burnstein and Anderson certainly try to cram in far more plot than a film of this level normally does. They also try to do a bit more with their characters, including the insertion of a young scientist "with a PhD" (played pleasantly enough by Michael Aaron Milligan) and a sleazy British guy who hosts a fishing adventure show that is probably meant to invoke River Monsters (though without Jeremy Wade's dedicated appeal). This doesn't excuse the fact that Lundgren's role remains far too underwritten, not that the film would have been any better with more of him. In fact, it would actually be far more interesting to me to see this film redone where the Lundgren character -- that of the recidivist criminal father of a young girl adopted by a far too possessive police officer -- is a figment of the deputy's mind the entire time, and that all of her actions in the film are driven by her obsession with him returning at some point, when in fact he never does.

The tortilla chip swirled in salsa by Randall in Clerks
was a more believable shark fin than this
magical CGI creation. 

Everyone, however, is simply more prospective fodder for the sharks -- yes, sharks -- because the other big reveal is that the shark that went into the lake at the beginning was a pregnant female. So now the police and the citizenry have to contend with a mother shark and her two monstrous pups at loose in the waters. There will be numerous scenes where CGI bull sharks, with ridiculous mouth movements, will be cut into shots of people flailing their limbs about in the water. We will get absolutely ineffective POV shots of what we presume is a shark swimming between two rocks more than once. If Joe Bob Briggs were still doing these things, he might make mention of the "crotch fu" used in one shark attack scene (see the picture above). Finally, we will get a few abysmal "dorsal fin moving through the water" shots in Shark Lake, but one (in the image to the right) I have to put on the short list of the worst of all time. There might be worse ones out there in the annals of shark film history, but it is the one that is freshest in my mind. It makes me long for the days when the effect was done with a floating dorsal fin being pulled through the water. At least that was honest work...

Sara Malakul Lane in her old day job.

As I mentioned earlier, the comely and freckle-faced, Thai-English actress Lane (also seen by my own set of eyes in Sharktopus, Pernicious [my review here] and Cowboys vs. Dinosaurs) is not entirely effective in her role as Deputy Hernandez, but this is not to say I did not enjoy her presence in the film. If anything good comes out of the schlock in which she acts one film after the other, is that we seem to have a modern scream queen on our hands. (Quality of acting or even talent was never a necessary aspect of scream queens anyway.) And there is a side to her role where, acting-wise, she is most effective; Sara Lane is at her best in her shared scenes with Lily Brooks O'Briant, a young actress who displays some much needed charisma in the midst of all this dullness and cheap effects. As for Dolph, Lundgren looks so tired throughout the film; whether he is just tired in general or from making cheap ass film after cheap ass film to keep current is hard to discern. However, ol' Dolph also has his best moments in Shark Lake when he has O'Briant at his side, so I just guess the little girl must be responsible for the best acting of multiple principals in the film. Can we put her behind the camera as well?

There is a point where Lane's character says, while reflecting on the death of an incidental character, "It's my fault. I shouldn't have let him come out here. We shouldn't be out here." Well, yeah... the single best way to not get attacked by sharks in a particular body of water is to not go in that water in the first place. So, you really only have yourself to blame, sister. On the other hand, you can't have a killer shark movie with someone getting killed by a shark. And unless your film is a total fantasia about sharks skipping about on dry land to munch on the populace, well, someone has to go in the water eventually. Might as well be you.

Just stay out of Lake Tahoe. The place is crawling with bull sharks. And Dolph Lundgrens.