In 1997, Steve Alten, a science-fiction writer, published his first novel Meg: A Novel of Deep Terror and Hollywood came calling. However, the movie almost immediately found itself in another deep terror that of Development Hell. This gave Nu Image Films, a low-budget production company known at the time for making schlocky direct-to-video movies you might find on HBO or Showtime in the middle of the night, the time to quickly put together their own megalodon movie.
The first two Shark Attack movies were filmed in and around Cape Town, South Africa and they relied mostly on stock footage that Edward D. Wood Jr. would be impressed if he was still around to see. So, why mess with the formula if you need to make a third movie. With Shark Week coming to a close, I’m looking at one of the most unintentionally funny and outrageously bad killer shark movies ever made.
Shark Attack 3: Megalodon might have fallen into obscurity in the early 2000s if the Internet didn’t exist and become more popular during this decade. The movie became popular for memes that showcased the poor special effects quality which used images superimposed and Photoshopped on real images of sharks to make regular looking sharks way bigger than what they really are.
Also, it’s leading man John Barrowman would later go on to find better stardom as Captain Jack Harkness on Doctor Who and Torchwood and appearing in movies like Zero Dark Thirty and the 2005 version of The Producers. So working for Mel Brooks and Kathryn Bigelow is definitely a step-up. Barrowman also has what is considered the Worst Pick-up Line in a movie when his character Ben Carpenter says to Cataline Stone (Jenny McShane) “I’m really wired. What do you say I take you home and eat your pussy?” The line was supposed to be a joke to make McShane laugh. It ended up in the final cut. Not only is it on par with the classic line, “Nice shoes! Wanna fuck?” but Barrowman is also gay. The next scene in the movie after this line that wouldn’t even appear in a bizzarro fan fiction of Nicholas Sparks is that of Ben and Cataline or Cat are in the shower.
Hey, whatever works, right?
The movie is set in Mexican resort on the Pacific Ocean where most of the bad white men talk in a weird European accent trying to sound American tone. Ben is a lifeguard and Barrowman plays him like a cross between Tom Cruise and David Hasselhoff. He finds a large shark tooth while fixing an underwater power cable. This discovery leads to Cat, a natural history researcher, finding him and concluding its from a prehistoric megalodon.
Some people get killed by the shark that roars and the resort officials, who are always greedy, don’t want to warn people. It’s basically a rip-off of every Jaws movie cobbled together. The greedy men who don’t want huge man-eating sharks ruining business, the baby shark we think is the bad one, but it’s actually a much bigger shark, and did I mention the sharks roar? Sharks don’t roar.
But who cares? This movie looks so bad, much of the cast looks like people who were vacationing nearby where the movie was being filmed and they were asked if they want to be in it. There’s so many awful special effects with the stock footage that David Worth, who actually worked with Clint Eastwood at one time, thinks if he just slows the footage down, it makes the shark look bigger. Worth has made some really schlocky movies, even though his most famous credit may be as director of Kickboxer starring Jean-Claude Van Damme.
He also directed the second Shark Attack movies which makes me think the producers just gave him the duties to direct this one because they didn’t want to waste time searching for another director. As for McShane, she seems to spend most of the movie not knowing if she should laugh or cringe at how bad it is. Oh, did I forget to mention that she was in the first Shark Attack movie but as a different character? Well, George Miller, Robert Rodriguez and Sergio Leone did the same thing in their movies so why criticize. Thankfully, McShane has found some better work behind the scenes working on the hit TV show Only Murders in the Building.
For the most part, I feel this is one of this initiation movies people in Hollywood have to make before they can go work on better things. Barrowman said he only did this movie for the money and he was able to buy his first house with his salary. For the most part, him, McShane and the rest of the cast are just reacting to nothing off screen. But you can see most of them know they’re in a bad movie. Because everything looks so bad, you can see how the filmmakers at least tried to make it look believable but still failed royally.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 