SHARKTOPUS!

 

RELEASE THE...WHAAAA?

YES LADIES, the review you've been waiting for is here at last.  SHARKTOPUS, the 2010 made-for-TV brainchild of STRICTLY HUMAN FILMMAKERS, who have come up with the finest horror chimera since DINOCROC, PIRANHACONDA and those ill-tempered MUTANT SEA BASS WITH THE FRIKKIN' LASERS ON THEIR HEADS.  I give you...SHARKTOPUS!

PLOT SUMMARY:  A hideous military experiment called S-11 unsnaps its MIND CONTROL HARNESS and goes on the rampage, focusing its loathing on the coastline of Puerta Vallarta, Mexico.  Why there?  Because the only man who can defeat the menace happens to be playing "tequila pong" there with the local bathing beauties.  BATTLE IS JOINED as the musclebound hero, flirting relentlessly with the pretty daughter of the mad scientist who created S-11, tries to get close enough to aim his grenade launcher at the monster -- not to kill it, but because (we are informed by the Mad Scientist) only a grenade launcher is accurate enough to allow the team to hit the SHARKTOPUS with the last of their precious mind control darts.  This will allow them to round up their military secret without losing all the money they've invested.  WILL ANYONE SURVIVE?

SOUND GOOD?  Yeah, that's what I said, too.

CLIFFIE'S NOTES:

>> Dude, if you thought Paul the Shark Guy in Hammerhead Shark Frenzy  was unseaworthy, wait'll you get a load of this.  They somehow sewed the head of a Great White onto the tentacles of a really, really big Octopus and then got the gill slits to sprout...javelins?  What are those spikes for, anyway?

>> I have absolutely no idea how this animal locomotes.  There is no Octopodal water siphon to jet the creature along, as far as I can see; there is no tailfin to provide the usual form of Shark propulsion. The arm fins are not modified to push water; they just steer the thing, the way the same fins would on a regular Shark.  It somehow just...moves forward.  I HARDLY NEED TO REMIND MY READERS that Sharks are ram ventilators.  How does it swim?  How in the everloving, blue-eyed world does it breathe?

>> How, for that matter, does it EAT?  Here we have the mouth end of a Shark sewn onto the mouth end of an Octopus.  Where does the food go?  Where is the GI tract?  I can't even FIND a poop chute.

>>  It gets crazier.  This animal, with no workable method of swimming, also climbs up on the beach, spidering along the sand on the tips of its tentacles.  It is mobile enough to spend quite long periods of time breathing air.  It's also limber enough to spear bathing beauties with the blades on the tips of its tentacles (!?!?!?).  It's strong enough to drag cars off cliffs into the water. 

>> But wait -- there's more!  This is the ONLY aquatic life form I've EVER seen that can walk on the surface of the water with its tentacles, somehow keeping a strong enough grip on the water's surface to lift heavy objects into the air without sinking -- like regular Great White Sharks and sizable motorboats.

>> I HARDLY NEED TO TELL YOU that the Sharktopus roars like a lion.  It roars underwater.  It roars on land.  I have no idea what the poor creature is trying to tell us. 

>> Maybe it is trying to alert us to the fact that in this movie, THE LAWS OF PHYSICS HAVE BEEN SUSPENDED.  Not only is the monster tiptoeing along the sand on its blade-tipped tentacles, but at one point you see a little boy running panic-stricken along the surface of the water like a Jesus lizard.  Or maybe like plain old Jesus.

>> The Sharktopus has been modified, we are told, to be more aggressive than normal -- although I admit the normal level of aggression in an Octoshark is unknown to me.  It wants one thing:  REVENGE.  I would, too.

This movie would make an excellent double bill with, say, The Magnificent Ambersons.