Mega Shark Versus Giant Octopus
Encyclopedia
Mega Shark Versus Giant Octopus is a monster
Monster movie
Monster movie is a name commonly given to movies, which centre on the struggle between human beings and one or more monsters...

/disaster film
Disaster film
A disaster film is a film genre that has an impending or ongoing disaster as its subject...

 by The Asylum
The Asylum
The Asylum is an American film studio and distributor which focuses on producing low-budget, usually direct-to-video productions. The studio has produced titles that capitalize on productions by major studios; these titles have been dubbed "mockbusters" by the press.-History:The Asylum was founded...

, released on May 19, 2009, in the United States and on August 7, 2009, in the United Kingdom. It was directed by Ace Hannah and stars singer Debbie Gibson and actor Lorenzo Lamas
Lorenzo Lamas
Lorenzo Lamas y de Santos is an American actor. Lamas is known for playing Lance Cumson on the popular 1980s soap opera Falcon Crest, Reno Raines on the 1990s crime drama Renegade, and Hector Ramirez on the daytime soap opera The Bold and The Beautiful...

. Though it was met with a negative reaction from critics for its outlandish plot, it is arguably the most popular film by The Asylum to date. The film is about the hunt for two prehistoric sea monsters causing mayhem and carnage at sea.

Plot

Off the coast of Alaska
Alaska
Alaska is the largest state in the United States by area. It is situated in the northwest extremity of the North American continent, with Canada to the east, the Arctic Ocean to the north, and the Pacific Ocean to the west and south, with Russia further west across the Bering Strait...

, 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
Sonar
Sonar is a technique that uses sound propagation to navigate, communicate with or detect other vessels...

 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
Shark
Sharks are a type of fish with a full cartilaginous skeleton and a highly streamlined body. The earliest known sharks date from more than 420 million years ago....

 and octopus
Octopus
The octopus is a cephalopod mollusc of the order Octopoda. Octopuses have two eyes and four pairs of arms, and like other cephalopods they are bilaterally symmetric. An octopus has a hard beak, with its mouth at the center point of the arms...

 are freed. Some time later, a drilling platform off the coast of Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

 is attacked by the octopus, which has tentacles large enough to wrap around the entire structure. After returning to Point Dume
Point Dume
Point Dume is a promontory on the coast of Malibu, California that juts out into the Pacific Ocean.Point Dume, a long bluff, forms the northern end of the Santa Monica Bay, and Point Dume Headlands Park affords a vista of the Palos Verdes Peninsula and Santa Catalina Island...

, California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

, MacNeil investigates the corpse of a beached whale covered with bloody wounds. Her employer (Mark Hengst) believes them to be from a tanker propeller, but MacNeil insists they appear to be from a creature. Later, she extracts what appears to be a shark’s tooth from one of the wounds. Elsewhere, the huge shark leaps tens of thousands of feet into the air from the ocean and attacks a commercial aircraft, forcing it to crash into the water.

A review board convenes and fires MacNeil from the oceanographic institute for stealing the submarine. She brings the shark tooth to her old professor, former U.S. Navy pilot Lamar Sanders (Sean Lawlor
Sean Lawlor
Sean Lawlor was an Irish character actor and playwright. He was best known for his portrayal of Malcolm Wallace in Mel Gibson's Oscar-winning epic, Braveheart. In addition, he also appeared in James Cameron's Titanic and Jim Sheridan's In the Name of the Father...

), who believes it belonged to a Megalodon
Megalodon
The megalodon and ὀδούς ) is an extinct species of shark that lived roughly from 28 to 1.5 million years ago, during the Cenozoic Era .The taxonomic assignment of C...

, an enormous species of shark believed to have become extinct 1.5 million years ago. The duo is visited by Dr. Seiji Shimada (Vic Chao
Vic Chao
Vic Chao is an Asian American actor. He is best known for portraying Dr. Seiji Shamada in Mega Shark Versus Giant Octopus, Dr. Shinji Shimada in Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 - Uprising, and CTU Agent McCallan and FBI Agent Mark Dornan in two seasons of 24. He is also a former engineer and Chicago...

), a Japanese scientist trying to determine what attacked the drilling platform. The four review a videotape recorded during MacNeil’s submarine voyage, finding images of both the megalodon and a gigantic octopus
Gigantic octopus
An unknown species of gigantic octopus has been hypothesised as a source of reports of sea monsters such as the lusca and the kraken as well as the source of some of the carcasses of unidentified origin known as globsters like the St. Augustine Monster. The species that the St...

. MacNeil reflects on the polar ice cap
Polar ice cap
A polar ice cap is a high latitude region of a planet or natural satellite that is covered in ice. There are no requirements with respect to size or composition for a body of ice to be termed a polar ice cap, nor any geological requirement for it to be over land; only that it must be a body of...

s melting due to man-made global warming
Global warming
Global warming refers to the rising average temperature of Earth's atmosphere and oceans and its projected continuation. In the last 100 years, Earth's average surface temperature increased by about with about two thirds of the increase occurring over just the last three decades...

, and wonders if the creatures are mankind’s “comeuppance”. Meanwhile, a U.S. "naval destroyer
Destroyer
In naval terminology, a destroyer is a fast and maneuverable yet long-endurance warship intended to escort larger vessels in a fleet, convoy or battle group and defend them against smaller, powerful, short-range attackers. Destroyers, originally called torpedo-boat destroyers in 1892, evolved from...

" engages the megalodon, but is destroyed after its guns fail to destroy the shark. MacNeil, Sanders, Benez and Shimada are arrested by a team of soldiers and taken to government official Allan Baxter (Lorenzo Lamas
Lorenzo Lamas
Lorenzo Lamas y de Santos is an American actor. Lamas is known for playing Lance Cumson on the popular 1980s soap opera Falcon Crest, Reno Raines on the 1990s crime drama Renegade, and Hector Ramirez on the daytime soap opera The Bold and The Beautiful...

), a rude and racist man who demands their help in destroying the creatures. The four agree to help, in exchange for the government trying to capture the creatures for study rather than destroy them.

While working at a naval laboratory to develop a method for luring the creatures, MacNeil and Shimada become attracted to each other and have sex in a utility closet. The incident makes them realize they can attract the creatures using chemicals. MacNeil, Benez and Sanders agree to place a trap for the shark in San Francisco Bay
San Francisco Bay
San Francisco Bay is a shallow, productive estuary through which water draining from approximately forty percent of California, flowing in the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers from the Sierra Nevada mountains, enters the Pacific Ocean...

, while Shimada returns to Tokyo
Tokyo
, ; officially , is one of the 47 prefectures of Japan. Tokyo is the capital of Japan, the center of the Greater Tokyo Area, and the largest metropolitan area of Japan. It is the seat of the Japanese government and the Imperial Palace, and the home of the Japanese Imperial Family...

 to attract the octopus. MacNeil, Benez and Sanders barely escape the shark after placing the trap with a mini-submarine. The plan fails, however, when the shark destroys another destroyer sent by Baxter. The shark then resurfaces and bites off a large portion of the Golden Gate Bridge
Golden Gate Bridge
The Golden Gate Bridge is a suspension bridge spanning the Golden Gate, the opening of the San Francisco Bay into the Pacific Ocean. As part of both U.S. Route 101 and California State Route 1, the structure links the city of San Francisco, on the northern tip of the San Francisco Peninsula, to...

, killing thousands of civilians. Later, Shimada contacts the Americans and says the Japanese trap only succeeded in angering the octopus, which has escaped despite multiple artillery and missile hits. Baxter suggests using nuclear weapon
Nuclear weapon
A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission or a combination of fission and fusion. Both reactions release vast quantities of energy from relatively small amounts of matter. The first fission bomb test released the same amount...

s against the creatures, which MacNeil, Sanders, Benez and Shimada strongly oppose due to the risk of marine devastation, coastal damage and human casualties. As an alternative, MacNeil suggests using the same pheromone traps to create a “Thrilla in Manila
Thrilla in Manila
The Thrilla in Manila was the third and final famous boxing match between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier for the Heavyweight Boxing Championship of the World, fought at the Araneta Coliseum in Quezon City, Metro Manila, Philippines on October 1, 1975....

” by drawing the two creatures together. She believes that because the two creatures were frozen in ice locked in combat, they must be natural rivals and their aggressiveness towards one another will cause them to fight to the death if they're lured together. MacNeil, Sanders, Benez and Baxter are assigned to a submarine to find the shark and lure it to the North Pacific Ocean.

After a short search, the submarine brings both the shark and the octopus to an ice trench off the Alaskan coast, where MacNeil first encountered the creatures. Sanders himself ends up piloting the sub after the original pilot loses his nerve and pulls a gun on the captain (Dean Kreyling) before he is overtaken. The octopus and shark begin to fight, but they separate and the shark attacks the submarine, dragging it in its mouth. MacNeil, Sanders, Benez and Baxter man a rowing boat and detach just as the shark bites the larger submarine in half, killing the rest of the crew. The shark nearly destroys the rowing boat, but they are saved when a Japanese sub manned by Shimada fires torpedoes at it. The octopus entangles the Japanese submarine and nearly destroys it, but the sub is released after the octopus is attacked by the shark. The two creatures engage in a fierce battle, at the end of which, the octopus strangles the shark after the shark dismembers some of its tentacles, causing it to bleed to death. The two sink, dead, still locked from their battle. McNeil and the others, after watching the showdown between the two monsters, discover Shimada and his sub survived the octopus attack. The film ends with MacNeil, Sanders, Benez and Shimada deciding to visit the North Sea
North Sea
In the southwest, beyond the Straits of Dover, the North Sea becomes the English Channel connecting to the Atlantic Ocean. In the east, it connects to the Baltic Sea via the Skagerrak and Kattegat, narrow straits that separate Denmark from Norway and Sweden respectively...

 after receiving infrared images of mysterious organic life there.

Cast

  • Deborah Gibson - Emma MacNeil
  • Lorenzo Lamas
    Lorenzo Lamas
    Lorenzo Lamas y de Santos is an American actor. Lamas is known for playing Lance Cumson on the popular 1980s soap opera Falcon Crest, Reno Raines on the 1990s crime drama Renegade, and Hector Ramirez on the daytime soap opera The Bold and The Beautiful...

     - Allan Baxter
  • Vic Chao
    Vic Chao
    Vic Chao is an Asian American actor. He is best known for portraying Dr. Seiji Shamada in Mega Shark Versus Giant Octopus, Dr. Shinji Shimada in Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 - Uprising, and CTU Agent McCallan and FBI Agent Mark Dornan in two seasons of 24. He is also a former engineer and Chicago...

     - Dr. Seiji Shimada
  • Sean Lawlor
    Sean Lawlor
    Sean Lawlor was an Irish character actor and playwright. He was best known for his portrayal of Malcolm Wallace in Mel Gibson's Oscar-winning epic, Braveheart. In addition, he also appeared in James Cameron's Titanic and Jim Sheridan's In the Name of the Father...

     - Lamar Sanders
  • Dean Kreyling - US Sub Captain
  • Stephen Blackehart
    Stephen Blackehart
    Stephen Blackehart is an American actor and producer from Hell's Kitchen, New York. It has been reported that Blackehart was born Stefano Brando and is the son of actor Marlon Brando...

     - US Sub Sonar Chief
  • Douglas N. Hachiya - Japanese Sonar Tech
  • Mark Hengst - Dick Ritchie
  • Jay Beyers
    Jay Beyers
    -Early life:Jay Beyers was raised in the rural community of North Liberty, Indiana by his mother Mary Ellen Smith until he moved with his father Jeff Beyers when he became a teenager.-Acting career:...

     - Pilot Officer
  • Stefanie Gernhauser - Sub Cmdr. Francoise Riley
  • Jonathan Nation - Vince
  • Russ Kingston
    Russ Kingston
    Russ Kingston is an American film and television actor, editor and filmmaker.Kingston is best known as an actor for such films as I Come with the Rain starring Josh Hartnett, Transmorphers: Fall of Man, Mega Shark Versus Giant Octopus, Day of the Dead 2: Contagium and Guyver: Dark Hero.Kingston is...

     - Admiral Scott
  • Cooper Harris - U.S. Destoyer Sonar Tech
  • Dustin Harnish - U.S. Sub Helmsman
  • David Sohn - Korean Sub Captain
  • Colin Broussard - Radioman

Production

The film features veteran actor Lorenzo Lamas
Lorenzo Lamas
Lorenzo Lamas y de Santos is an American actor. Lamas is known for playing Lance Cumson on the popular 1980s soap opera Falcon Crest, Reno Raines on the 1990s crime drama Renegade, and Hector Ramirez on the daytime soap opera The Bold and The Beautiful...

 and singer/songwriter Deborah Gibson as part of its cast, and was originally titled Mega Shark Versus Giant Octopus 3D, but "3D" was stricken from the title when the studio failed to acquire adequate funding for 3-D film
3-D film
A 3-D film or S3D film is a motion picture that enhances the illusion of depth perception...

.

Principal photography took place over the course of twelve days in January 2009. Much of the film was shot at the AES Alamitos power station near Long Beach, CA
Long Beach, California
Long Beach is a city situated in Los Angeles County in Southern California, on the Pacific coast of the United States. The city is the 36th-largest city in the nation and the seventh-largest in California. As of 2010, its population was 462,257...

, and at Laurel Canyon Stages in Arleta, CA
Arleta, Los Angeles, California
Arleta is a district in the San Fernando Valley region of the City of Los Angeles, California. It was considered part of Pacoima until the late 1960s, when the areas of Pacoima west of the Golden State Freeway "seceded" and formed a new community area....

. Other locations included the Long Beach pier and Leo Carillo State Beach in Malibu, CA.

Release and reception

The theatrical trailer released in mid-May 2009 became a viral hit, scoring over a million hits on MTV
MTV
MTV, formerly an initialism of Music Television, is an American network based in New York City that launched on August 1, 1981. The original purpose of the channel was to play music videos guided by on-air hosts known as VJs....

.com and another million more on YouTube
YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....

 upon launch, prompting brisk pre-orders of the DVD.

The film was met with mostly negative reviews, with a 16 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...

. Peter Whittle of The Sunday Times
The Sunday Times
The Sunday Times is a British Sunday newspaper.The Sunday Times may also refer to:*The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times...

gave the film one out of five stars and considered it "Unwatchable, almost unreviewable, this stupid monster movie makes the Béla Lugosi
Béla Lugosi
Béla Ferenc Dezső Blaskó , commonly known as Bela Lugosi, was a Hungarian actor of stage and screen. He was best known for having played Count Dracula in the Broadway play and subsequent film version, as well as having starred in several of Ed Wood's low budget films in the last years of his...

 swan song Plan 9 from Outer Space
Plan 9 from Outer Space
Plan 9 from Outer Space is a 1959 science fiction film written and directed by Edward D. Wood, Jr. The film features Gregory Walcott, Mona McKinnon, Tor Johnson and Maila "Vampira" Nurmi...

look like a masterpiece." Philip French of The Observer
The Observer
The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...

said in his review that "The risible special effects and the clumsy acting recall not Roger Corman
Roger Corman
Roger William Corman is an American film producer, director and actor. He has mostly worked on low-budget B movies. Some of Corman's work has an established critical reputation, such as his cycle of films adapted from the tales of Edgar Allan Poe, and in 2009 he won an Honorary Academy Award for...

 productions but the ineptitude of Ed Wood, though the result is far less endearing." Kim Newman of Empire
Empire (magazine)
Empire is a British film magazine published monthly by Bauer Consumer Media. From the first issue in July 1989, the magazine was edited by Barry McIlheney and published by Emap. Bauer purchased Emap Consumer Media in early 2008...

magazine gave it two out of five stars, calling it "Daft, plain daft. With a few daft but spectacular stunts." Scott Mendelson of The Huffington Post
The Huffington Post
The Huffington Post is an American news website and content-aggregating blog founded by Arianna Huffington, Kenneth Lerer, and Jonah Peretti, featuring liberal minded columnists and various news sources. The site offers coverage of politics, theology, media, business, entertainment, living, style,...

also gave the film two out of five stars, saying that "the actors are all appropriately terrible and the story is completely absurd."

On the other hand, Bill Gibron of PopMatters gave the film an 8 out of 10, saying that "schlock may be an acquired taste, like caviar
Caviar
Caviar, sometimes called black caviar, is a luxury delicacy, consisting of processed, salted, non-fertilized sturgeon roe. The roe can be "fresh" or pasteurized, the latter having much less culinary and economic value....

, foie gras
Foie gras
Foie gras ; French for "fat liver") is a food product made of the liver of a duck or goose that has been specially fattened. This fattening is typically achieved through gavage corn, according to French law, though outside of France it is occasionally produced using natural feeding...

, and Arby's
Arby's
Arby's is a fast food restaurant chain in the United States and Canada. Roark Capital Group owns 81.5% of the company, with Wendy's Company owning the other 18.5%. It is primarily known for selling roast beef sandwiches and curly fries. The Arby's menu also includes chicken sandwiches, appetizers,...

, but it's hard to see how anyone wouldn't enjoy this extremely tacky dish." He also praised Gibson's performance in the film. Despite criticizing the overall film quality, Stephen of The Three Rs gave the film a 7 out of 10, calling the plane attack scene "the epitome of monster awesome."

Sequel

Following the buzz generated by the release of the film's trailer, Gibson hinted on an interview that a sequel may be in the works. "Because God knows what else is in the ocean", she said. "I thought maybe a Seahorse? Maybe a 500-foot (150 m) Lobster would be good. But yes, there is the potential for a sequel, and I would absolutely love it."

In mid-2010, The Asylum updated their catalog with Mega Shark Versus Crocosaurus, which was released on December 21, 2010. The cast and director of Mega Shark Versus Giant Octopus did not return in the sequel; instead, the film was directed by Christopher Douglas-Olen Ray and featured a new cast led by Jaleel White
Jaleel White
Jaleel Ahmad White is an American actor and screenwriter. He is best known for his role as Steve Urkel from Family Matters and voicing the character of Sonic the Hedgehog and other characters for Sonic the Hedgehog media....

, Gary Stretch
Gary Stretch
Gary Stretch is a British boxer, male model, and an actor.-Early life:Gary Stretch was brought up in the Haresfinch area of St. Helens, the son of a plumber...

 and Robert Picardo
Robert Picardo
Robert Picardo is an American actor. He is best known for his portrayals of Dr. Dick Richards on ABC's China Beach, the Emergency Medical Hologram , also known as The Doctor, on UPN's Star Trek: Voyager, The Cowboy in Innerspace, Coach Cutlip on The Wonder Years , Ben Wheeler in Wagons East, and as...

.

External links

  • Mega Shark Vs. Giant Octopus at The Asylum
    The Asylum
    The Asylum is an American film studio and distributor which focuses on producing low-budget, usually direct-to-video productions. The studio has produced titles that capitalize on productions by major studios; these titles have been dubbed "mockbusters" by the press.-History:The Asylum was founded...

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