Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus is a 2009 American monster film by The Asylum directed by Ace Hannah. The movie stars Debbie Gibson and Lorenzo Lamas.
Off the coast of Alaska, oceanographer Emma MacNeil (Deborah Gibson) is studying the migration patterns of whales aboard an experimental submarine she took without permission from her employer.
Meanwhile, a military helicopter drops experimental sonar transmitters into the water, causing a pod of whales to go out of control and start ramming a nearby glacier. In the chaos, the helicopter crashes into the glacier, and the combined damage breaks the glacier open, thawing two hibernating, prehistoric creatures. MacNeil narrowly avoids destruction as, unknown to her, a giant shark and octopus are freed…
Review:
The DVD cover of Mega Shark Vs. Giant Octopus depicts a giant octopus battling a giant shark while pulling a luxury liner to its new port at the bottom of the ocean. There is no luxury liner in the movie. There’s hardly any mega shark and giant octopus, either. All the cool parts – which add up to barely two minutes of onscreen time—were featured in the trailer.
’80s mall pop star Deborah Gibson, who has more teeth than the mega shark, plays a rule-breaking oceanologist, tracking whales, hammerhead sharks and eels in WTF, Alaska. There, entombed in a glacier, is a Megalodon shark and a giant octopus, frozen in a romantic embrace. Both creatures are the size of Japan, give or take three feet. As soon as the ice breaks (like you didn’t see that coming), both swim away as if momentarily interrupted, even though it’s been thousands of millions of years since catching a cold.
Feeling a bit peckish after his nap, the shark leaps 30,000 feet in the air and chomps on a commercial plane loaded with flavourful passengers. That part I could believe. What I’m having trouble with is the plane was in the clouds; How could the shark see it? Totally unrealistic.
The shark later bites the Golden Gate bridge in half and swallows several Navy warships. Not to be outdone, the giant octopus snacks happily on 35-story deep-sea oil rigs loaded with bite-sized humans (think shrieking chocolate chips).
The plan is to lure each beast into a holding area for study purposes: San Francisco Bay for the shark, Tokyo Bay for the octopus. This ends in mixed results (see “bridge chomped in half”). The military plan –conceived by a trash-talkin’, ponytail-sportin’ Lorenzo Lamas, is to blast ’em to Fish ’n Chips Land. That also ends in mixed results. It’s finally decided to lure the two digital monsters together to finish their “tastes great/less filling” argument started back in that Pleistocene epoch tavern.
With Lorenzo and Deb Deb on board, you know the “acting” and “dialogue” is Z-grade stuff. No one cares, as all we want to see is the shark and octopus biting Texas-sized chunks outta each other. In order to save money, the movie producers use – over and over – two-second footage of the shark zooming in for the mega-munch. Need him to turn left? Flip the film over. The octopus looks like wiggling clay. Megalodon has teeth so white he could be a Crest™ spokeshark.
The death battle results in Giant Octo getting two arms bit off. He must be a magical cephalopod because all eight arms were intact when he and M-Don sank to the bottom of the ocean – and continued to sink as the credits rolled – five minutes after they killed each other…
Jeff Gilbert, MOVIES & MANIA
Other reviews:
Trailer:
Full film free to watch online:
Cast and characters:
- Deborah Gibson as Emma MacNeil
- Lorenzo Lamas as Allan Baxter
- Vic Chao as Doctor Seiji Shimada
- Mark Hengst as Dick Richie
- Sean Lawlor as Lamar Sanders
- Dean Kreyling as U.S. Sub Captain
- Stephen Blackehart as U.S. Sub Sonar Chief
- Larry Wang Parrish as Japanese Typhoon Captain
- Douglas N. Hachiya as Japanese Sonar Tech
- Jay Beyers as Pilot Officer
- Stefanie Gernhauser as Sub Cmdr. Francoise Riley
- Jonathan Nation as Vince
- Russ Kingston as Admiral Scott
- Cooper Harris as U.S. Destroyer Sonar Tech
- Dustin Harnish as U.S. Sub Helmsman
- Colin Broussard as Radioman
