Jackson Booth-Millard About four years before the Sharknado series graced, or rather disgraced, the screens, this was the first in what would become a series of low-budget movies featuring the titular Mega Shark, you can probably guess the outcome of each one when you watch. Basically off the coast of Alaska, oceanographer Emma MacNeil (singer Debbie Gibson) is aboard an experimental submarine studying the migration patterns of whales. Meanwhile, a military helicopter drops experimental sonar transmitters into the water, causing a pod of whales to go out of control and ram into a nearby glacier, and the chaos causes the helicopter to crash into the glacier. The combined damage breaks the giant glacier open, thawing two hibernating, prehistoric creatures, a giant shark and a giant octopus are freed. The octopus has tentacles large enough to wrap around an entire structure, it brings down a drilling platform off the coast of Japan, while the shark has a bite powerful to destroy structures, it brings down the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. MacNeil investigates the reports of giant creatures causing destruction, she recovers what appears to be a giant shark tooth from the corpse of a beached whale. MacNeil's old professor, former U.S. Navy pilot Lamar Sanders (Sean Lawlor), believes it belongs to a Megalodon, an enormous species of shark thought to be extinct for 1.5 million years, while Japanese scientist Dr. Seiji Shimada (Vic Chao) confirms the existence of the giant octopus. MacNeil reflects on the melting of the polar ice caps, due to man-made global warming, she wonders if the creatures are mankind's "comeuppance". The scientists work in the laboratory to develop a method to lure the creatures, MacNeil and Shimada become attracted in the process, while the naval and military forces plan many strikes to destroy the monsters. MacNeil, Sanders, and Shimada strongly oppose the use of nuclear weapons, as an alternative, MacNeil suggests using a pheromone to attract both prehistoric beasts, the two creatures are believed to have been frozen in ice locked in combat, they must be natural rivals and their aggressiveness towards one another will cause them to fight to the death if they're lured together. The shark and octopus are brought together and begin to fight, they part once or twice to attack the oncoming submarines and attack ships, in engaged in a fierce battle, the octopus strangles the shark to death, while the octopus dies from blood loss, dismembering its tentacles, the two still locked from their battle sink to the bottom of the ocean. Also starring Lorenzo Lamas as Allan Baxter, Mark Hengst as Dick Ritchie, Michael The as Takeo, Jonathan Nation as Vince and Chris Haley as Kenji. There's not really any point mentioning the cast, it is unclear if they are taking things seriously or not, as with many movies like this, the story is absolutely ridiculous, the script and dialogue is nonsense, and the special effects are far away from special, they are atrocious, it is just a complete waste of time, a crap science-fiction horror. Poor!

wes-connors In the Arctic, a giant prehistoric shark and a giant prehistoric octopus thaw out. This means danger for everyone. The "Mega Shark" and the "Giant Octopus" munch on famous bridges and bite airplanes in the nose. To solve the problem, marine enthusiast Deborah "Debbie" Gibson (as Emma MacNeil) wants to provoke a "bloodbath" battle between the shark and octopus – like the "Thrilla in Manila," she explains. This refers to a 1975 boxing match between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier. The best special effect is the "shaky camera" accompanied by actors directed to move like their submarine is shaking – they look like they're playing foosball... Different color lights enhance the photography, with the green lights being most effective. Writer-director Jack Perez (incognito as Ace Hannah) gets good performances from the extras and bit players. Former "Falcon Crest" hunk Lorenzo Lamas (as Allan Baxter) seems angry with his role. Music by Chris Ridenhour and soundtrack effects help, but it's all for naught. The pace is dull and unexciting. The titular monsters are not frightening and their big fight is a dud.** Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus (5/26/09) Jack Perez ~ Debbie Gibson, Vic Chao, Lorenzo Lamas, Sean Lawlor

callanvass Woe is me, was this ever excruciating. I'm probably among the minority of imbeciles that checked this movie out, because of the title. I knew about the bad reviews, I knew it was from Asylum, I knew it was going to be super cheesy, but I love cheesy. It sounded like my kind of movie. I couldn't have been more incorrect if I tried with that assumption. NOTHING happens until around the 75 minute mark. There is endlessly talky dialog that seems to go on forever. I'll give you a small example of how bad it is. "Don't love the Ocean too much. It doesn't love you back" It purposely swindles the viewer with the title, and delivers "F" all for 75 minutes. I expected the creatures to look horrendous, but it has some truly atrocious CGI. It does give us a battle at the end. The shark & octopus do fight one another, but it's so lazy. The fight becomes very redundant, and does virtually the same thing, each time they cut to the creatures battling. The shark rams the Octopus, the Octopus entraps the shark in its tentacles, and refuses to change things or make them remotely interesting. The acting is god awful. Deborah Gibson is ostensibly an 80's pop singer. Shockingly enough, I haven't heard one of her songs. At least I don't think I have. She's gorgeous, and seems to be having fun with the role. I wouldn't call her performance great, but it's tolerable, which is something I can't say for anyone else. Lorenzo Lamas is atrocious. His character is a complete pussy. I grew up with him. I watched Renegade religiously when I was younger, but he is horrible in this film. Everybody in this movie plays it straight faced, I couldn't believe itFinal Thoughts: I should have known better to watch something from Asylum. I'm sure I'll stumble across films from them in the future, but I'm not gonna make a habit of it. The title is nowhere near as fun as it sounds. 1/10

mephotography2001 Okay, understand that my 10-year-old son has been aching to see stupid movies like this whenever he caught a promo surfing the SyFy channel. So when I found a collection of 6 films for $4.99, I got it for him. Turns out I paid too much, by about $4.50 or so. I knew they were dumb, poorly written, poorlier acted and with a special effects budget that rivaled the value of the loose change jar on my dresser. But this was actually worse than the lowest of my low expectations. It probably took you longer to read the title of the "film" (I use that word ever so loosely) than the amount of screen time they devoted to said monsters. It was 88 minutes long, and about 85 and a half of those minutes were spent looking at the "cast" (again) in sparsely decorated small rooms, half of the time looking at you as if they were peering out a window at the creatures you were never going to see. They did show a 300 foot megalodon snaring a 747 in mid-air - like 5,000 feet mid-air, so at least they were trying to stay realistic. There was even a crazy montage of 3 people mixing what looked to be different flavors of Kool-Aid, cuz apparently unfrozen prehistoric sea creatures have rainbow colored pheromones. And they're fluorescent. Musta missed that in science class. Don't ever watch this "film".