Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus (2009)

The California coast is terrorized by two enormous prehistoric sea creatures as they battle each other for supremacy of the sea.

Director:

Jack Perez (as Ace Hannah)

Writer:

Jack Perez (screenplay) (as Ace Hannah)

Stars:

Lorenzo Lamas, Debbie Gibson, Vic Chao

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Debbie Gibson	...	Emma MacNeil (as Deborah Gibson)
Lorenzo Lamas	...	Allan Baxter
Vic Chao	...	Seiji Shimada
Jonathan Nation	...	Vince
Mark Hengst	...	Dick Ritchie
Michael Teh	...	Takeo (as Michael The)
Chris Haley	...	Kenji
Sean Lawlor	...	Lamar Sanders
Dustin Harnish	...	Helmsman
Dean Kreyling	...	U.S. Sub Captain
Stephen Blackehart	...	U.S. Sub Sonar Chief
Dana DiMatteo	...	Marine Biologist (as Dana Dimatteo)
Myles Cranford	...	Deputy
Dana Healey	...	Naval Officer
John Bolen	...	Weapons Officer

Storyline

A huge iceberg calves that holds a megalodon (mega shark) and a giant octopus frozen inside it. Deployment of a LFAS (low frequency automatic sonar) unit causes it to shatter. The two behemoths thaw and return to life. The shark terrorizes the California coast while the octopus creates havoc things near Japan. A group of three oceanographers put together a plan to draw the beasts into a trap with pheromones.

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Plot Keywords:

shark | octopus | psychotronic film | 1930s to 2020s | underwater scene | 

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Taglines:

Winner... Eats... All!

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Genres:

Action | Adventure | Comedy | Horror | Sci-Fi | Thriller

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Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated R for some language

Did You Know?

Trivia

The first Asylum production to have a theatrical release.

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Goofs

Submarines don't have that much space inside.

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Quotes

US Destroyer Captain: Give the president my personal assurance when we find the beast, we're sending him to hell.

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Crazy Credits

Special Thanks: BETSY AND BENJI

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Connections

Referenced in Die schlechtesten Filme aller Zeiten: Titanic 2 - Die Rückkehr (2014)

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Soundtracks

Be Still
Written by Sanya Mateyas & Chris Ridenhour
Arranged and Produced by Tiho Borosak
Ravenswoodband.com

User Reviews

I had forgotten movies could be this bad

I normally only watch the bigger budget movies with a few art house type sprinkled in, but I had heard about this title somewhere, so when I saw it at the video store I thought, what the heck? how bad could it be? The answer: Amazingly bad. Phenomenally bad. Utterly horrific. Not the worst movie ever, but close. When your movie wishes it was as good as Battlefield Earth, you know you have a problem. It wasn't even the good kind of bad, where you can laugh at the unintentional humor.

The good: Still trying to come up with something The bad: I know this is a low budget D-list movie, but come on - the effects and CGI were stunningly bad. They looked like they were done on my laptop over a weekend. They might have been acceptable in the early 90s.

To make it even worse, many of the CGI scenes were constantly repeated. Whenever the shark or octopus attacked, you usually saw it preparing or approaching for the attack several times using the exact same footage. Sometimes they even bothered to mirror image the scene to make it look different.

So many of the details were amazingly unrealistic. The dialogue was bad, the way people behaved and delivered lines, physics (as in what animals of that size could actually do), torpedoes were like firecrackers, etc.

Quality control was obviously lacking. When the shark approaches a battleship from the side, the ship is shown firing forward. Once, during a video call, for about a second a film crew member wearing a headset pops into existence beside the person on the call, and then disappears. The caller and those working in the background are obviously oblivious to this phantom man.

There was this laughably bad science scene where the main characters keep dumping vials of various colored liquids into test tubes of other colored stuff and then they all looked disappointed. This happened over and over for like 5 minutes. All without any dialogue or any clue as to what they were actually doing. We only knew they were looking for a "solution" to the problem of giant sea monsters. I guess dumping red goo into a vat of blue gunk and having it not turn a different color is not a solution to giant sea monsters. Gosh, I am glad they tried that, it might have worked! There was an embarrassingly bad romance side plot thrown in, and the build up to the final showdown was dull, and then that showdown was short and filled with repeats of the same footage over and over.

I almost never feel strongly enough about a movie to write a review, but for this one I had to. If I prevent even one person from seeing this movie, then I have done my job.

Details

Official Sites:

Official site

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

26 May 2009 (USA)

Also Known As:

Mega Shark Versus Giant Octopus

Filming Locations:

AES Alamitos, 690 North Studebaker Road, Long Beach, California, USA

Box Office

Cumulative Worldwide Gross:

$722

Company Credits

Production Co:

The Asylum, Giant Seafood

Technical Specs

Runtime:

88 min

Sound Mix:

Stereo

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.78 : 1