| Hammerhead: Shark Frenzy Released: 2005 MPAA Rating: R Genre: Monster Nuts and Bolts: Dr. King uses stem cells from shark DNA to cure cancer. But who cares about cancer? He also gets to create groovy two-legged man-eating shark monsters! That's a LOT cooler than Cancer. Summary: Jeffrey Combs plays mad scientist Dr. King. Dr. King's son Paul was suffering from terminal pancreatic cancer. King apparently had watched the movie Deep Blue Sea and quickly jotted down some key plot points. He therein decided to use stem cells taken from Hammerhead sharks and merge them with that of his son. As expected, the shark DNA cured his son's cancer, but it also produced a mutation that transformed the kid into a bipedal, hungry-ass shark boy! Quick, call Lava Girl! Now, as King is basically a fruit-cake, he has been ostracized by the scientific community and forced to conduct his research on his own private island. A team of former colleagues, including his son's ex-girlfriend, comes to the island to see what this whackball is up to. They discover that King is not satisfied with merely creating a mutant shark boy. No, he wants his strapping young boy to procreate. He has been trying this on his own, but unsuccessfully. His laboratory is filled with half-nekkid women in bondage and dead shark boy fetuses. Mmmm…yummy. Naturally, King tries to have them all killed. The would-be victims escape from his deadly Dr. Evil-inspired drowning tank and make their way out into the swampy grounds of the laboratory. King has a team of armed soldiers ready to take care of any escapees. Fortunately for our heroes however, these soldiers have the firing precision of Stevie Wonder. But that doesn't matter, because even though these people can dodge bullets, they cannot evade the cavernous maw of SHARK BOY! One by one, the Hammerhead begins chewing his way through a veritable buffet of throwaway characters. He gnaws off one guy's leg, swallows a female German scientist, gorges himself on a porky, sycophantic lab assistant and chews up a half-witted blonde-haired dipshit wearing jelly shoes (The dipshit was the one wearing the jelly shoes, not the Hammerhead). Before long, Dr. King gets Shark Boy back into his holding pen and manages to capture his son's ex-girlfriend. He strips her down, greases her up and straps her to this upended lab table so that Hammerhead will easily be able to copulate with her. Unfortunately, we don't get to see any shark coitus. One of the other "guests" is some militant IT tech guy armed with a rifle of neverending bullets. He bursts into the lab, and shoots Dr. King. Then he grabs some nitrogen container and begins spraying the Hammerhead down until it dies. The villains are dead, the girl is saved and Captain IT is the hero. Acting/Dialogue: Jeffrey Combs is the MAN! His presence can raise the bar on even the shittiest of movies. Whenever a film requires a neurotic, overly ambitious self-absorbed psychopath, you would be hard pressed to find a more accomplished actor than Jeffrey Combs. Combs is right up there with Bruce Campbell and Brad Douriff in the ranks of schlock film horror heroes. Fans will recall his work from such flicks as Re-Animator, Castle Freak and the Frighteners. Truthfully, his name is the only reason I even bothered to watch this nonsense. For fans of Combs' work, this movie is required viewing. The rest of the cast sucks, ignore them. Gore: I was pleasantly surprised by the violence in this flick. The special effects aren't award worthy, but there are plenty of severed limbs, gnashing teeth and blood spraying everywhere. The gore is quite copious but not so much that it overwhelms the film. For the easily distracted, you can count on a nice dismemberment at least once every fifteen minutes. All told, it is used quite nicely. Guilty Pleasures: What a fucking cock-tease! We were promised shark copulation. I want to see some shark copulation! They go through all the trouble of telling us that King wants the Hammerhead to reproduce. Then they even capture the female heroine of the film, tie her up and strip her clothes off. But is it Hammer time? NO! It's just another example of "can't touch this". Bah. What a rip. The Good: What constitutes a "good" movie? That's not always an easy question to answer. It really depends on what kind of expectation you place on the movie in question. I certainly would never attempt to hold Hammerhead: Shark Frenzy to the same standards of merit as I would say, Jaws, the Shining, or even Cum On My Tits Volume XII. So then I have to ask myself, just what exactly did I expect to get out of this film, did I achieve that, and are those effects desirable? Truthfully, I expected to see another seizure-inducing, hair-pulling, turd-chewing den of myopia as I have come to receive from most Sci-Fi channel original pictures. I expected a film that promises a big monster but delivers nothing but two minutes worth of shaky footage ala Sasquatch or Man-Thing. To that end, my expectations, as usual, were pretty low. Thankfully, Hammerhead: Shark Frenzy exceeded my expectations. Not by much mind you, but just enough to not thoroughly trash the shit out of this film. Hammerhead: Shark Frenzy is a movie you can have fun with. Jeffrey Combs maintains a high, energetic pace and the Shark Boy makes enough appearances to keep your attention constantly glued to the screen. The producers were smart enough to not reveal too much of the Hammerhead monster. Hammer receives enough screen time so that you don't feel you are getting ripped off, but they don't reveal so much that they run the risk of exposing their poor special effects. Sometimes this is the smartest way to go. The "less-is-more" philosophy can sometimes save a film. Look what it did for Dog Soldiers. Now I am by no means comparing Hammerhead to Dog Soldiers, but I think the example still holds water. In the end, Hammerhead: Shark Frenzy is a blast to watch. A movie such as this harkens back to the bygone era of Universal horror movies, where all of the characters were over-the-top parodies of themselves and the plots were threadbare. It definitely becomes one of the modern stalwart champions of the So-Bad-Its-Good jet set. The Bad: What do you want me to say? That this movie sucks? Of course it sucks! Every movie dealing with an underwater monster that isn't directed by Stephen Spielberg is destined for the Shitbag Hall Of Fame. I could probably ramble on for pages about the pitiful characters, the farcical dialogue and the amateurish plot development. But why bother? It's a fucking shark boy movie; but in the long, sad history of shark movies gone awry, I think Hammerhead is probably one of the better ones. Great Lines: "Can somebody please tell me, why those people are still alive?" - Dr. King "RARRRRGH!!! Chomp chomp chomp RARRRGHHHH!" - Shark Boy Overall Rating: 4 out of 10 severed heads. |
 |
|
|
|
 |