Shark Attack 3: Megalodon (2002)
Directed by David Worth
Screenplay by Scott Devine & William Hooke
Shark Attack 3: Megalodon may be about a bigger shark than Shark Attack 2, but it just doesn’t have the same charm. I know it’s ridiculous to talk about charm when it comes to comparing Shark Attack 2 and Shark Attack 3, but since the other salient features are roughly the same (same pig-dog sharks growling, same “should we close the beach down?” plot) you really have to find something to distinguish them from each other. You’d think that the giant shark would be enough, but one of the failures of this film is that it doesn’t really establish the gross size of the shark until late in the game and even then it is neither consistent not effective. Any creature 60 feet long is a bit scary. Even a 60 foot beaver would scare the living crap out of people. But somehow we can never get a good sense of scale in this film.
Ben Carpenter, beach security.....John Barrowman (Captain Jack from Doctor Who & Torchwood)
Cataline Stone, a paleontologist.....Jennifer McShane (Shark Attack, U.S. Seals)
Chuck Rampart, an old navy man....Ryan Cutrona (The West Wing, Mad Men, 24)
Luis Ruiz, the man who runs Play del Rey resort.....Bashar Rahal (U.S. Seals, Sharks in Venice, 24, Conan the Barbarian)
Ruiz’s Girlfriend.....Petya Evtimova (2nd AD for this film as well as Raging Sharks, Hammerhead, Alien Hunter and 1st AD for Sharks in Venice, Mansquito and Conan the Barbarian)
Esai, beach security man......George Stanchev (Octopus, Alien Hunter)
Radio Tech.....Plamen Manasiev (U.S. Seals, Alien Apocalypse)
Sonar Chief....Krasimir Simeonov (U.S. Seals, Hammerhead)
Ramirez, a local stud....Ivo Tonchev (Mansquito, Raptor Island)
Sherry, a girl from Frisco....Rosi Chernogorova (Alien Apocalypse)
Hector, a helicopter pilot.....Plamen Zahov (Shark Zone, U.S. Seals II)
Wife, a wife of someone....Anya Pencheva (Anya is apparently a renowned Bulgarian actress, though you wouldn’t know it from this film)
Diver #1.....Dany Boy (The pipes are calling him.)
Security Guard Todd, a security guard....Bocho Vasilev (U.S. Seals)
Mr. Tolley, the man behind Apex Communications....Harry Aneachkin (Cyclops, Night Train, Mega Snake, Mansquito, Boa vs. Python, Alien Hunter, U.S. Seals, Octopus 2: River of Fear, Grendel)
Chimpy....Jordan Karadjov (How miserable is it to play a character named Chimpy? This is what I’d like to know.)
Davis....Nikolay Sotirov (Boogeyman 3, Hammerhead, Puppet Master vs. Demonic Toys, Boa vs. Python, Dracula Rising)
Freidman...Atanas Srebrev (Lake Placid 3, Sharks in Venice, Monster Ark, Copperhead, Grendel, Hammerhead, Mansquito, Raging Sharks, Raptor Island, Boa vs. Python) This guy is like the glue that holds Bulgarian-American filmmaking together.
Paul....Miroslav Marinov
Harry....Velizar Peev (Hammerhead, Mansquito, Cyclops, Ninja) They call him Mister Peev. Scott....Atanas Georgiev (Yet another stuntman.)
Gina....Malina Georgieva (A stuntwoman.)
Shift Supervisor, a supervisor of shifts....Vencislav Kisyov (Soraya, Boris I, and he played Karl Marx in Bulgarian mini series about Karl Marx)
Bartendress.....Niki Nikova
Bartendress...Dessi Morales aka Desislava Nikolova-Morales (Night Train, Boa vs. Python, Puppet Master vs. Demonic Toys, Harpies)
Diver Terrorists......Vladko Stoyanov
George Stoyanov (a sculptor)
Peter Petrov
George Rosen
Cinematography by David Worth
First off, this film shouldn’t be confused with another film that is just called Megalodon. I don’t know why it shouldn’t be confused with that one, but just try to keep them straight. Shark Attack 3: Megalodon is well-known (or at least moderately notorious) in some quarters because of a line that occurs late in the...ahem...film.
Cataline: I’m exhausted.
Ben: Yeah, me too...but...you know, I’m really wired. What do you say I take you home and eat your pussy?
It is worth noting that the line was an ad-lib by John Barrowman intended to make Jennifer McShane laugh. You can see him smirking before he says it and you can see her about to lose it just before we cut away to the obligatory shower sex scene. (Sadly, we never find out if he delivers on his initial offer or not.) It is also worth noting that David Worth and his editor obviously know comic gold when they hear it because they decided to keep this joke and use it in the final cut. (Not only that, but the scene tag for it on the DVD is titled “Cat Lover.” See, it has a triple meaning, because her name is Cat so Ben is a “Cat Lover” in more ways than one. I don’t know whether to laugh or cough up a furball at that.) It says a lot about their respect for the...ahem...script. In fact, if you really want to find yourself in a philosophical conundrum, try to debate which is worse: the writing or the execution. This may be the question for the ages.
While Shark Attack 2 took us to South Africa, this instalment is set on the Pacific Coast of Mexico, a place that is oddly enough inhabited mostly by Bulgarians because it must remind them of Bulgaria. Don’t get me wrong, I make fun of the Bulgarian location but I don’t really mean to denigrate scenic Bulgaria. As I noted in my reviews of the Bruce Campbell Bulgarian films the scenery there is quite striking and beautiful. I just wish Shark Attack 4 would take advantage of the Bulgarian location by acknowledging it in some fashion. (For all of the shark films shot in Bulgaria we really don’t have a Black Sea Shark Attack film out of it.) Then again, it is slightly insane at this point to wish for a Shark Attack 4.
The Terror Has Surfaced
Luckily, that terror is not Casper Van Dien.
As with many such films the cover art for this...ahem...gem of movie making is in many ways more interesting than the actual film. In this case, the cover shows a giant shark about to swallow a small submarine. If only they could actually just deliver on that visual image. The back cover for this film declares that it is “in the tradition of Jaws and Deep Blue Sea.” That’s a little bit like saying that Hotel for Dogs is in the tradition of Cujo and Old Yeller. Okay, that may be going too far. Maybe I just want people to be honest enough to say that Shark Attack 3 is in the “tradition” of Shark Attack and Shark Attack 2. But then, I can understand if you’d want to fire anyone who tried to use that as a sales pitch for your product.
Anyhow, this film is about corporate greed and scheming. It all starts with the laying of a new fiber optic cable. Unfortunately this cable seems to attract giant sharks from their hiding place in the deepest part of the Pacific. The center of evil greed is a corporation named Apex Communication which doesn’t care when its divers are killed while working on their cable. They are, of course, killed by a shark that has been possessed by the devil, which explains why the shark groans like Jabba the Hutt eating a peanut butter sandwich.
Fast forward to six months later and we are at the Playa Del Rey Resort in Colima, Mexico where they have conveniently put up a Mexican flag and a picture of Vicente Fox to let us know that we are definitely not in Bulgaria. This is where we meet Ben of the Playa Del Rey Security Patrol and his lothario buddy Ramirez who is looking to score with a girl from Frisco. (We’ll see much more of them later.) Then we get some topless Bulgarian girls frolicking with a beach ball and otherwise cavorting in the sand. This is to let us know what’s at stake. See, it’s not enough to let us know that a shark is on the loose. You have to let the audience know that this shark is threatening all of the most important accomplishments of Western Civilization, which are quite literally embodied in the form of those nubile women and their handsome man friends relaxing on the beach. Yes, sir. If the apex of humanity can’t take a day off to play tonsil hockey in Mexico without being eaten by sharks then the world will come to a standstill.
Meanwhile our working class proletariat hero Ben is looking to dive for some lobsters while patrolling the beach. This bit of private entrepreneurial activity represents an interesting conundrum of economic philosophy. Does Ben’s desire to use his patrol time to look for lobsters represent bold capitalist initiative, or is he cheating his boss Ruiz of productive activity by taking time from his “patrol” to do this?
Then there’s an old man trying to reel in a marlin while his fishing guide is trying to get some action from a young woman right behind him. This moderately humorous interlude is a set up for our shark to swoop in and eat most of the marlin so that all the old man is left with is the head. This is obviously a parody of The Old Man and the Sea.
So, Ben goes to pick up some lobster for dinner when he finds a shark tooth embedded in the high power cable that is being looked at by two Apex Communications divers. Ben goes home and looks for information about shark teeth on his laptop. When nothing pops up he takes a picture of the tooth with his digital camera. This picture is instantly uploaded (without a wire) and the image is cleaned up so that the tooth appears with a white background. That is some serious magical imagery tech in the hands of our proletarian hero. His image instantly arouses the interest of the paleontologist Cataline at the San Diego Natural History Museum. She has to go to Mexico to see what’s going on.
Ben then finds himself at a table with his boss Ruiz and Mr. Tolley of Apex Communications who is planning a big shindig to celebrate the opening of his Trans-Pacific Cable. Ruiz and Mr. Tolley are in cahoots and they expect Ben to do their bidding.
About now you’re probably feeling a bit anxious to see some serious shark action. That’s where Ben’s buddy Ramirez and his chippy from Frisco, Sherry come in. They’re frolicking on the beach when they decide to go...wait for it...skinny dipping. Well, actually it’s not so much skinny dipping as much as having sex in chest deep water, which I think isn’t really skinny dipping in the strictest sense of the word.
Sherry: Baby, don’t go so far out.
Ramirez: Por que? Sherry: We don’t know what’s out there.
Ramirez: Are you afraid that something is going to swim up and bite your culo?
Yes, that is precisely what she is afraid of, Ramirez. And she should be afraid of that, because that culo represents the apex of Western Civilization, after all.
Luckily for Ramirez, Sherry and the Western World, the shark in the water merely attacks and kills a seal. But then there’s a shot of a shark carcass floating on the surface and the next shot is of Ben looking at half a shark carcass which he identifies as a sand tiger shark. I’m guessing what happened was that this shark was bitten in half by the larger megalodon, but the combination of images is so confusing that they might as well have said that Lee Harvey Oswald shot the smaller shark.
Anyhow, enter the paleontologist dame. Cat and Ben flirt and he donates the tooth to her in the name of science. She graciously accepts the tooth and then secretly calls her people to send a film crew because she is now sure that she’s on the trail of a real live megalodon. Why, it’s more exciting than the discovery of the coelacanth!
Next thing you know we’re watching a scene of drunken nighttime revelry and a horny punk couple breaking into a waterpark so they can make out while going down a waterslide. The slide dumps them in the harbor right into the gaping maw of the grunting shark (if you play the soundtrack backward the shark is saying “Quint is dead.”).
Now, I say “gaping maw” because if this film had spent some money more wisely that would be an awesome shot, instead I should have said gaping heart of darkness since it’s just a bunch of dark water and the occasional sight of shark teeth. Granted, if I was in a dark harbor all it would take to scare the jeebus out of me would be the sight of a row of teeth. The more inexplicably creepy part of this scene is the random shot of a person of ill-defined gender (if it’s a guy, then it’s a guy who looks like Wanda Sykes) taking off a clown mask after obviously witnessing the waterslide couple’s demise. I’m not sure what the heck that was about.
Ben: It’s serious. We found a guy’s leg near a beach where he was playing frisbee with his dog.
Cat: Oh my god.
Threat Level Frisbee! Call out the Federales!
Ben: Cataline Stone, Paleontologist, San Diego Natural History Museum...so I guess this means you’re not a marine biologist after all. You lied to me? Why?
To be quite honest, I’m not sure why I lied to you other than because the screenwriters thought it would up the stakes of the conflict if I was keeping something from you and you had a reason to distrust me, while at the same time not making my secret be so bad as to make my character completely unsympathetic.
Cat: It’s like finding a tyrannosaurus rex in your backyard.
Ben: You know, Cat. I don’t see that as a good thing.
So, the next day Ben and Cat track the large shark and find it heading toward the resort where it eats a drunken boater and then pulls the line of a woman on a parasail, you know for dessert. Cat and Ben’s reaction shots during this sequence are priceless pieces of overreaction. On the bright side, Cat manages to save the parasailer woman’s necklace in the botched rescue moment, so at least there’s some material gain in the midst of tragedy. Now we get to the traditional “closing of the beaches” conflict scene. Ben wants the beach closed so that he can hunt the shark. Ruiz wants the beaches open.
Ruiz: People pay a lot of money to come down here and they expect to use everything including the beaches. Exactly what is entailed by “everything” in this statement? Does it include people?
Ben and Cat now team up with the old navy man Chuck Rampart who suspects something is rotten in Apex Communications.
Chuck: In the 80’s AT&T had problems with sharks biting through their fiber cables. Chuck finds out that there have been a string of deaths related to the Apex cables which are attracting sharks. He goes to confront Apex’s main man, but he is easily contained because of the power of corporate wealth. (And because security shows up to take him out of the building.) Mr. Tolley: My lawyers will have a field day with you. They are the real sharks.
If only this was followed by a scene of his lawyers swimming in an aquarium and tearing apart a seal.
In the water Cat’s cameramen are eaten in one gulp by a digitally enlarged shark and she and Ben are barely rescued from the gaping maw of the megalodon by Hector the helicopter pilot. Now Ben goes back to Ruiz to report that he’s got a 60 foot shark swimming along and consuming everything in sight. They’re going to need a bigger beach.
Ben, Cat and Chuck are now out to kill the shark with or without Ruiz’s blessing and outside assistance. Luckily, not only does Chuck have a small submarine, but he also snagged a Mk 44 torpedo he filched from his decommissioned navy sub. Lucky for us, Chuck Rampart wasn’t holding on to that torpedo for an act of terrorism, he was holding on to it for some patriotic shark killing.
And now we arrive at the moment of infamy. It’s the night before the big battle and Chuck heads off to get a good night of sleep, but Cat and Ben, while exhausted, surely, are also a little wired. So when Ben suggests some cunnilingus to relieve some of their tension Cat agrees and they proceed to go at it in the shower.
And then we’re off to kill the shark. Ben and Chuck head off in the submarine and Cat keeps tabs on them from the helicopter. Meanwhile Ruiz and Tolley get their giant boat under way for the big party. You have to hand it to the evil capitalists, they really do believe things will be okay for them. Ruiz, though, takes the precaution of bringing a bag of grenades with him, just in case they do have to deal with a shark. The self-destructive capacity of greedy capitalism is clearly portrayed by Tolley, whose reaction to Ruiz’s bag of grenades is “Good.” See, any person with an ounce of self-preservation would say, “why don’t we move the party to dry land?” And Ruiz’s girlfriend doesn’t budge an inch from his arm or even change her affected smile a bit while he totes a bag of grenades. Again, this would be the moment when a sane person would say “hey, maybe I shouldn’t be hanging out with a guy who brings a bag full of grenades on a party boat.”
Needless to say, the party boat gets attacked. A whole lifeboat is swallowed by the shark in one of the cheapest effects shots since the 1930s. Tolley tries to escape on a jetski but only ends up shooting himself right into the...well...the gaping maw...of the megalodon. There is some tense business with getting the torpedo to fire and finally Chuck and Ben have to leave the submarine in the clenched maw of the megalodon while the torpedo homes in on the sub and a nearly atomic explosion destroys the sub and the megalodon and causes a tremendous shock wave which luckily doesn’t kill anyone who wasn’t already dead from the shark attack.
But, in typical bad horror fashion we are barely allowed a moment of rest in the lifeboat on the surface before we get some ominious music and the camera submerges and then...credits roll. Really? Did we need the ominous thing? Why not just give us this one moment of victory? Sure, there are more monsters lurking in the deep. Whatever. Just stop with the ominous stuff. Let the movie end.
I guess in a way the ending there is a metaphor for the Shark Attack series itself. It just doesn’t know when to quit. And in another way, this film is a metaphor for shark films in general, which like the megalodon were thought to be extinct back in the days of Jaws the Revenge, but which have come back from the depths in ridiculous forms thanks to the new monster movie renaissance. And so, as bad as this film is...and it is very bad...it is part of a project that I find terribly amusing...the rebirth of monster movies. Shark Attack 3 is not the best of these movies, but there has to be some competition out there to give us things like Sharktopus. Now, if the Shark Attack gang ever gets Thorsten Kaye from Shark Attack 2 back for another film, then we’d have a serious bit of competition going on. Anyhow, I’d love to say more but I’m exhausted, and also really wired...
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