Shark Attack (1999)

Thanks for the memories!

Load of rubbish!!

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

1. Not watching Shark Attack 2. Looking through a book of carpet samples. 3. Finding your first grey pubic hair. 4. Toilet training a two year old, and finding a brown present in their room. 5. Talking to someone about how they like their eggs. 6. Wondering whether or not to buy a melon, then deciding against it. 7. Waiting in a post office queue, then being informed by the pensioner in front of you that there is nothing worse than waiting in a post office queue. 8. Being beaten around the head by an angry mob in a market in Sarayevo 9. Using the IMDb message board to waffle on about some subject no one cares about. 10. Being sent into battle during the Somme.

With this being a "B" movie, and having a title like SHARK ATTACK, you are probably thinking this will be some kind of JAWS rip-off, with plenty of exploitation material. Think again. The sharks are at times almost an afterthought. In fact, in the last half hour of the movie, there are almost no shark sightings! Obviously, the production didn't have the money to make fake sharks, or that much blood or gore, so don't think you're going to see anything like that. As for the rest of the movie, there's not much fun to be seen there as well. Van Dien gives a bland performance, possibly due to the fact the movie moves at a sluggish pace and is downright dull at times, even during the action sequences. The low budget also results in an incredible number of close-ups by the camera and few "wide" shots, cheap sets, and signs (always using the same kind of font) that seem written by people whose command of English is not their first language. As for why this movie was (apparently) popular enough to spawn two sequels, I confess I haven't a clue, unless it is cheap to film in South Africa as I've heard.

Scientist Cordell McQueen is killed in South Africa in an attack by a shark, the very thing he's gone there to investigate. A cryptic message left on his colleague Casper Van Dien's answering machine sends Van Dien and McQueen's sister Jenny McShane are off to South Africa to investigate.What they find when they reach the coastal village where the attack occurred is a town ready to die. The resort that Ernie Hudson operates has no tourists and the fisherman don't go out at all because they're afraid of the water. Over the past few years there's been an unaccounted for spike in the number of shark attacks. The only thing operating is a scientific research institute where another colleague Bentley C. Mitchum is conducting research into a cancer cure.Of course all this ties together with Mitchum conducting some really ghoulish experiments and Hudson playing everyone for suckers. Mitchum maybe thinking of a Nobel Prize for Medicine, but Hudson's got a far more practical motive for his actions. Shark Attack is your average action adventure film with the cast all fitting nicely into their roles. One thing I would have done was cut Mitchum's death scene, just have him die with no last words. That particular piece of dialog was truly atrocious. Someone should have sicced one of those spiked up sharks on the writers.

....as my DVD player stopped playing it after about an hour. I am in no doubt however it was doing me a favour, saving me before my brain had totally rotted. Luckily I did get to see the car chase, which contains quite possibly the worst editing I have ever seen in my life (the police are driving and old Alfa Romeo 33, which suddenly changes to a mark 1 Ford Sierra, then back to an Alfa, then crashes as a Sierra! Do these people even watch the film when they've finished making it? The cars don't even look remotely similar!) But I digress. As you've probably worked out by now I hate this film. Even if it has got Ernie Hudson in it (who will always be a God in my eyes for appearing in Ghostbusters.) Most of the movie has nothing to do with sharks, just corrupt cops. I guess they'd run out of money by this point so you get the good old 'z-list actor throwing themselves around in the water whilst someone lets off red food dye' trick. Unless your life depends on it, do not watch this film. And even then only do if you've got a lot to live for.....