Shark Attack in the Mediterranean (2004 TV Movie) User Reviews

Flimsy story that works for teenagers

[GMTMaster · 1/10 · 18 October 2004]

Flimsy story that works for teenagers

Where to begin, where to stop, in this 'Jaws' rip off made for TV?

Rolf Moeller plays a tough former marine diver, living with his daughter all alone on the Spanish island Mallorca. A shark is roaming the waters, but not your ordinary shark. An ancient species supposedly extinct since 100.000 years. A couple of people die, till the secret of the sharks existent is revealed and Rolf could finish his personal vendetta, since this very shark had killed his wife three year back…

Did you notice Rolf never took his shirt of in this flick? Great you hire 6'6' actor Moeller and have him act in a leather jacket on a summer vacation island. I don't expect Rolf to act, but pump it up man… The story is so flimsy its real hard not to laugh all the time through. Best part is Janet Biedermann, (German starlet) who appears out of nowhere so she can plug her singing career. SFX on the shark aren't too bad for TV, while the sharks teeth are simply laughable. RTL produced this mindless story and shoots huge ratings, that's how TV works – unfortunately

What a waste of time watching

[Axel_F · 2/10 · 18 October 2004]

My TV-Guide showed a big question-mark next to the film's title. They weren't able to give a comment on this film because the producing TV-channel didn't show it to journalists before its premier screening on TV. Well, they knew why...

Quite ambitious for a German TV-film with quite a budget and quite a known cast and very large marketing campaign. But the film I had to see - the try of a mixture of "Jaws" and "Jurassic Park" - was very disappointing. And the special effects - not really good - weren't the worst of all things about the film!!!

To me it seemed that the director tried to fulfill every audition's needs and so he delivered a patch work of multiple film elements, that didn't want to fit to each other. While as well "Jaws" and "Jurassic Park" were thrilling movies, in this movie every time there comes at least a small moment that might become thrilling, there is a cut and a change to a different scene, that destroys every thrill.

And in a lot of cases, the following scene is an absolute senseless filler to make the movie longer. For example there is a long dancing scene on a party - maybe to give the 14-25 year old TV-customers some Mallorca-impressions - totally senseless. Or like some kind of "product placement" a full lenght performance of the German starlet Jeanette Biedermann singing her new song on the beach....

I'd say: drop about 30 minutes of the film, take 10 minutes of new material and a very good cutter, maybe you can make at least an average film of it. Like it is by now, it's absolute waste of time watching it!

Shugalum! shugalum!

[Chase_Witherspoon · 2/10 · 30 April 2011]

When a grieving widow (Moeller) discovers that a prehistoric shark – Megalodon – is responsible for the death of a swimmer, he suspects it might also be the same shark that killed his wife and two other divers several years earlier. Convincing newly appointed micro-biologist (Stinshoff) proves relatively easy, but she's oblivious to the grand scheme that has created the giant shark from living DNA recovered from a frozen specimen found in the Antarctic. Of all places to base a cutting edge cancer research facility, no doubt the idyllic Mediterranean tax haven of Mallorca would be the most sensible. At least that's what the makers of this film would have the audience believe.

The over-used CGI shark is typically unrealistic and so out-of-proportion and scale that it scarcely conjures any excitement or thrills. Even the shark swarm in the first scene is disappointing, once again courtesy of the CGI effects that give every attack a video-game quality. This German production's English dubbing is some of the worst (and unintentionally hilarious) you'll come across – the sight of big Ralf running down the beach shouting "Shugalum, shugalum" (that's meant to be "shark alarm, shark alarm" in Bavarian accent) a dozen times will have you in stitches. At least the producers had the foresight to anticipate the drudgery to which this would ultimately amount, and incorporated some quirky humour to lighten up the tone. There's a number of genuine laughs (as opposed to the unintentional ones) throughout, one in particular paying homage to "The Terminator" which works well. The obese BBQ chef and his bevy of scantily clad accoutrements who lends Ralf a luxury car or two is also a comic highlight.

But despite the eclectic editing, sometimes witty dialogue, postcards of Mallorca and stylish stunt-work (some great car maneuvers and helicopter acrobatics), there's little else to recommend this movie, which borrows heavily from several others of the ilk ("Deep Blue Sea" in particular), but achieves much less. Hanselmann's bikini-clad villainy is perhaps the most worthwhile aspect in this whole travesty; that or Ralf's physique, depending on your persuasion. Either way, it's not enough to entertain a second time.

It's really bad, but I liked it.

[IamnotGeorgeKaplan · 5/10 · 21 January 2008]

I watched an English dubbed version of this, and I liked it. It's a bad, bad, bad movie but it's enjoyable for a couple of reasons.

First, its fun to spot the ripoffs. The main plot is a mash of Jaws and Jurassic Park. I guess the makers really like Spielberg, because there's also a sequence that looks just like it was lifted from Duel. It also rips off a scene from the Terminator. I bet there's a bunch more 'borrowed' moments that I missed. Feel free to add more.

Second, there are a couple of 'did that really just happen moments?' in the film. There's a rich playboy that pops up a couple of times that talks about the German Barbecue Association, and a band that plays a song all about 69, just to start. I'd also put the Terminator sequence in this category.

Finally, there's just a bunch of stupid stuff, like helicopter pilots on long trips that don't go more than 100 feet off the ground, poorly composited special effects, and some really bad dubbing, that merit pointing out to friends and making fun of.

To some up: it's a bad movie, but its enjoyable with the right frame of mind. Or maybe my standards are just slipping.

Crappy movie but Ottfried Fischer is the Don.

[BenCock69 · 2/10 · 18 October 2004]

RTL called this the TV Event of the year, nice Joke anyway.

The Story about a mutated shark is boring, the action is silly and unrealistic and most of the actors are really bad. Where else can you see dumba**es like Carsten Sprengeman, Simone Hanselmann, Ralph Möller, Katy Karrenbauer and Jeanette Biedermann in ONE film? They aren't even able to match their one-liners.

But what's really cool about that movie is the appearance by Ottfried Fischer: He's standing at a pool with maybe 20 Models in Bikinis. He grills there and talks about grilling and the GBA - German Barbecue Association. Whoever came up with this scene should get an award for it.

Because of this great scene I rate this movie 2/10.

"Mama, make the pain stop!" "OK, I will switch off the TV" *SPOILERS*

[pierrot-3 · 1/10 · 18 October 2004]

*SPOILERS AHEAD* Well, what could I say about this "movie"... it's one of these movies where you wish you could sue someone to get the time wasted back, and you could also sue for the pain endured while watching it. 3 elements make this movie a pain:

• a "plot" which doesn't deserve this name. A man wants to kill the prehistoric shark (!) that killed his wife. Jurassic Park meets Jaws. Yawn. Besides missing any scientific logic, you will quickly start to realize that most roles in this movie are only clichés being filled: the German hero (ex-navy diver), the lazy Spanish policeman (who always looks stressed), the Spanish crook (played by a German with a whig on...), the good and the bad scientists (the good happening to fly helicopters in her leisure-time), etc...

• Bad acting. There is bad acting due to poor directors and bad acting due to poor actors. Here we have both. Its hard to fill a role which consists of saying highlights like "Sharks eat people", but at least try to look credible when you have to say such a thing.

• Computer effects which make Tron from 1982 look like the latest of special effects. Sharks (the secret heroes of this movie) which look fake. Not just a bit fake, but VERY fake (you can see that already in the beginning of the movie where sharks attack divers in a cage).

In resume, no plot + bad acting + bad computer effects = pain

I' ll give it a 0,5 out of 5 stars for all the kerosene used in the helicopter-scenes.

Just for Laughs

[thesar-2 · 1/10 · 1 December 2012]

(Here's a resurrected review from early October 2008 when I began writing reviews, for the first time on my own – not published in a newspaper. It's extremely raw and I like to think I've improved since. My opinions rarely change and despite the quality below, I think I got most of my thoughts across.) I love it when film students take on huge projects for their final. Some categories to grade on: Originality (Deep Blue Sea, Jaws, Jaws: The Revenge, Piranha and any scene involving sunglasses), Dialogue ("You need to Live!", "This isn't good" and the best: "Shark alert, Shark Alert" (repeat 45x) – it would have had more urgency coming from Woody Allen) and Cinematography (Someone really, really likes rotating objects – there's an abundance of scenes looking up to those wonderful blades and as many angles as possible from someone driving a jeep). I was looking for a little corn, found this gem, and had to watch. I did, however almost give up laughing out loud at some of the 1st half scenes, but what kept me was the BBQ setup scene, and our hero flying out of the back of the jeep. Really nice of this guy to keep giving up his (not one but – ha ha ha ha ha, ah hem) multiple cars. I can see how they were trying to add humor, and they succeeded. Unfortunately, we were laughing at them. All I wonder why the bad Pokemon dubbing vs just subtitles. Perhaps they were afraid that would scare people away. No, not the crappy product they made, it was subtitles they were afraid of. I hope this film student flunks before Lions Gate gets a hold of him, or worse, Project Green Light.

A lot of cringe in here

[Horst_In_Translation · 2/10 · 2 December 2017]

"Hai-Alarm auf Mallorca", also known as "Shark Alarm", "SOS Mallorca", "Blue Savage" and "Megalodon", is a German television movie from 2004, so this one will soon have its 15th anniversary. The director is Greek German filmmaker Jorgo Papavassiliou and if you take a look at the quality of some of his other works, then this is not a good sign. But what is even more shocking is that no less than four writers worked on this mess of a script. And at 110 minutes, i.e. closer to the 2-hour-mark than to the 1.5-hour-mark, this is not a film that flies by at all. This is probably the closest Germany has to the successful Sharknado trash franchise, but it's really not that similar. There is only one shark in here, albeit a very big one, and we almost never see him. The main character is played by the colossal (in terms of muscles) Ralf Moeller and as he really is on par with everybody else from the cast here, that says a lot about the actors' quality or lack thereof. The line delivery is painfully wooden and stale at times. Cameos by Ottfried Fischer and Jeanette Biedermann (the German Britney) were expectedly unfunny and uncreative. And the inclusions of Spengemann, Liebich, maybe Hanselmann and Karrenbauer too make clear that range was not what they were going for here. Admittedly the way the characters were written, not even far more talented actors could have made it work. The attention to detail is really shoddy too. Are we really supposed to believe that Bloéb was physically strong enough to be equal with Moeller for a while during their brawl at the end? Or their relationship was the strangest thing ever anyway. They fight for death and life, one tries to kill the other on the road, but hey who cares they are still close and all and it was just because of the whole situation. No hard feelings etc. Ridiculous stuff. Nothing about this film felt realistic at all and this also includes the rushed-in father-daughter conflict or the blooming love story between the two main characters that admittedly did not suck as much as a lot of other parts here. Yes this film deserves to make it into the IMDb bottom 250 for sure. My suggestion is absolutely to skip it.

Dubbed Shark Attack

[doctorsmoothlove · 2/10 · 5 July 2020]

"Shark Attack in the Mediterranean" harkens back to the glory days of European films being dubbed and edited for North American release. The dub voices don't emanate from the actors in tune with their mouth movement. Different actors pronounce words differently. It's great.

This film would have been awful could you see it in its original language. In dubbed English, it is even worse. All the better I think to enjoy on a Saturday morning during Shark Week.

The setting is the isle of Mallorca. A widowed man and his daughter are planning on moving to Germany. His wife was killed in a freak shark attack in the recent past. The daughter is young and rebellious. She eyes a handsome young man at a bar and proceeds to slowly win him over from his current girlfriend.

There are several plot points which don't make sense and exist for padding. Scientific research is being conducted on sharks in the area to cure cancer (in a ripoff of "Deep Blue Sea"). The research is being covered up because it's really important despite the many deaths. The daughter and another girl are competing in a jetski race. A fat man grills barbecue with a cadre of bikini babes. None of these plots interact in any meaningful way.

Oh, there is a shark attack. It's a megalodon apparently. It ate the main guy's wife in the freak accident. The shark has little screen time but does have a hilarious moment where it drags a bad guy under the water. The music is melodramatic just like in "Shark Attack 3:Megalodon" when the attack happens.

This movie is a real stinker. The dubbing elevates it to the level of passable entertainment to make fun of while drinking with friends. Do not spend more than $20 on the out-of-print DVD like I did to be able to conduct this review!

Creepy, creepy, but not as intended

[bernhardkleinschmidt · 1/10 · 26 April 2006]

The fact that this film presents itself like an amateur production, including an absurd story and terrible acting, would not be so bad if it would by trashy enough to give the viewer some good laughs. Instead, it is only extremely boring. Among other things, we are informed that Ralf Moeller's home cooking is rather poor, which supposedly no one had doubted in the first place. Undoubtedly, many viewers have turned on their TV set only to see Jeanette Biedermann, a German teenie idol, who adds one of her songs to this catastrophe. Others were probably fans of Moeller, but instead of playing at least some sort of hero, he fails in almost every respect, which is not exactly his fault - he simply is not an actor, but a good-looking male model. Overall: Love's lab ours lost ... completely.

A far better killer shark film than expected)

[kannibalcorpsegrinder · 8/10 · 17 July 2021]

Still troubled by the death of his wife, a helicopter pilot feels worried about his daughter being out in the open water after a series of incidents lead him to believe that a massive killer shark is in the area, and teams up with a biologist to track down and kill the beast patrolling the waters.

Overall, this was a pretty enjoyable genre effort. Among the more enjoyable elements present here is the highly enjoyable and quite fun amount of shark action within this one. The fact that it's out rather early and is known to the one guy makes for a lot of rather fun ambush attacks to occur in the beginning as the shark takes out several tourists and other victims which are all written off as freak incidents. The main action scenes here, with the scientists out trying to capture the creature and taking the fight to it on the open water which results in a fun protracted battle with the guns on board as well as the fun race to the beach in order to rescue his daughter in the jet-ski competition, is all sorts of fun. Granted an over-the-top resolution to everything and a decent-looking shark, this works nicely. As well, the rest of the action here isn't too bad and has a lot to like. With the film going for the mixture of shark-based creature feature action and some more traditional Action film elements, there are some impressive scenes here including several rather energetic car-chases that feature some more exaggerated stunt-work than would be expected in a film like this. That carries over into the explosive finale which has some grander stunts than would be expected as well as giving the film a rather touching conclusion that ends everything on a positive note. There isn't a whole lot to dislike here but it does have some issues. One of the biggest problems here is the rather odd and somewhat disjointed pacing that takes place throughout here. Rather than build-up suspense about the series of accidents taking place slowly leading to the idea of the shark being out there, the fact that he knows immediately based on a single accident that admittedly seems out of the ordinary but has very little about it to suggest his theory would automatically be true. Likewise, the action stops in the middle of the film to deal with his romance with the scientist or trying to disprove his wild accusations which bring the focus away from the killer shark who is out and about from the very beginning. The other real issue to be had with the film is the rather obvious and continuous cliches throughout that seemed to be taken from several films and wrapped into one film. The whole concept of the prestigious scientist attempting to experiment with sharks as a means of cancer-cure research is an arc stolen completely from another film entirely, while the exploits of the scientist to rescue her imprisoned friend takes every cue possible from yet another beloved genre film. Riffs from wholesale dialog exchanges and the race to save the beach from the shark and much more are quite obviously lifted and taken from other films, leading to parts where it loses itself in these elements. Otherwise, this one isn't that bad.

Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Violence, Graphic Language and Brief Nudity.

RTL production.... dull , ridiculous and full of flaws as always

[tessnopfer · 2/10 · 23 March 2007]

To be honest, before watching "Haialarm auf Mallorca"- "World Premier on RTL", I really had no expectations whatsoever. Now I have to say: this film is even a disgrace for the cheesiest German channel RTL (apart from RTL 2 and Super RTL). As you may have supposed the film is about a deadly dangerous super killer shark murdering people in Mallorca for no reasons. But there is hope for the terrified people of Mallorca. The great hero Ralf Moeller fights against the injustice, bravely challenging the epic monster, which isn't even identifiable nearly throughout the film. Having experienced a shark attack himself, in fact, years ago when his wife got raped, he has the opportunity to revenge now. However he has to bother with greedy scientists and corrupt police... Will justice win and the people of Mallorca have their own peaceful life back? You are going to have to see if you bother watching this masterpiece. T his horribly animated film would have been a great contender for the worst film of the year if it hadn't been German. The story is obviously rubbish and the acting wooden. Even the shark is not scary.

As a German you have to hope this movie doesn't reach a wider audience than Germany. But I'm sure it wont as there are heaps of real good films, obviously not produced by RTL. To be fair with the entire film crew, you will at least have a funny evening with a sufficient amount of alcohol and a nice company. I'm, hence, going to give this rubbish a 2.

If Jaws was German and of dubious budget...

[paul_haakonsen · 3/10 · 21 November 2023]

Stumbling upon the 2004 German shark-themed movie titled "Hai-Alarm auf Mallorca" (aka "Shark Attack in the Mediterranean"), by random luck here in 2023, of course I opted to sit down and watch it. Sure, I wasn't harboring any expectations to the movie, given it being a German shark movie. But my love of the shark genre made me give the movie a fair chance.

Writers Jörg Alberts, Roland Heep, Frank Koopmann and Don Schubert put together a fair enough script. Sure, it was a very, very generic and predictable shark movie. And the storyline definitely was flawed, no doubt about it. But there are worse shark movies out there, actually.

I wasn't familiar with the cast ensemble in the movie, aside from actor Ralf Moeller. But I will say that the acting performances by the cast ensemble was actually fair enough.

The German language in the movie was not an issue, but why not keep a movie that is supposed to take place in Mallorca in English or Spanish? Would just have been a bit more authentic that way. And a boat with Germans in trouble in the waters at the Santoro Trench having the people do an emergency call in German just makes zero sense. Or a guy running around on a beach in Mallorca and yelling about a shark alert in German just made zero sense either.

My rating of "Hai-Alarm auf Mallorca", from director Jorgo Papavassiliou, lands on a three out of ten stars.