Sunday 20 May 2012

Dinoshark (2010)


Following a recent, amazing birthday present, I'm taking a break from the usual critically-acclaimed and traditionally "good" films that I usually write about to watch DinoShark. A hopefully low budget production made especially for the Syfy channel, it's pretty much (i.e. exactly) Jaws but with scales, bad acting and terrible Mexican accents.

Let's get this straight at the outset: DinoShark is, technically, an awful, awful film. But there's something I can't help but love about terrible monster-based B-movies, and DS ticks pretty much all the boxes for that list. You have the really badly created monster; the process of listing the first scary things that come to mind and combining them cannot fail here. The fact that all you end up with is biological mess of a shark with horns and a head transplanted directly from a T-Rex is irrelevant. You've got the so-bad-it-had-to-be-done-ironically script, highlights of which include "The Los Muertos Reef" (i.e. Reef of the Dead) and, a line that I'm sure will go down in history, "Dinosaur season is officially open!". Finally you've got the traditional monster-movie bodycount. Characters are introduced, numerous times throughout the film, less than a minute before they die. After the opening twenty minutes or so, if someone new gets a speaking part you might as well start making arrangements because they aren't going to make it to the credits*.

It's not even in spite of all that that I enjoy Dinoshark, it's because of it. It's awful. But it's awfully fun and hilarious in all the ways proper movies just aren't. I'd be satisfied to look up "So bad it's good" in the dictionary and find a picture of a sharkosaur.


*Something that my DVD copy didn't have. Not that I blame anyone for not wanting to attach their name to this.

Also from this collection are: Sharktopus, Mega Pyhton vs Gatoroid and Dinocroc vs Supergator. There is definitely a theme there. Although I might actually check out a proper film in the way of Remember the Titans before I get to more monster movies.

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