Sharktopus

Beware the impulse buy. Last year, browsing DVDs while we were supposed to be doing a food shop, I was chuckling over the tagline to ‘Burning Bright’ (“true tiger terror”) when Paula found something even more awe-inspiringly awful. It was called ‘Army of the Dead’, the cover image was of skeletal hordes advancing menacingly in Conquistador uniforms but clutching modern day hardware, and the tagline was a masterpiece of stand-up-and-applaud cheesy audacity: “never trust a skeleton with a shotgun”. Needless to say, we bought the motherfucker. Two days later we took the motherfucker back, lied and said it wouldn’t play, and got a refund.

It was bad. Reeeeaaaaal bad. To call it a piece of shit would be an insult to excrement, a slur on the good name of steaming piles of turd.

So we should have known better when, doing a post-payday food shop at our local supermarket on Wednesday evening, we came across a DVD with this cover image:

We hesitated. We looked at each. “It’s going to be crap, isn’t it?” Paula said, a lone voice of reason. “But it’s called ‘Sharktopus’,” I replied, a sure-fire argument-winner if ever there was one. “How can you not want to watch a movie called ‘Sharktopus’?” In the shopping trolley it went. At the check-out, the bored and (I suspect) slightly stoned young man on the till looked at us (both straight from the office in rather formal attire) and looked back at our viewing choice in a slack-jawed double-take I wish I could have captured on my camera phone; on YouTube, it would have gone viral.

Last night, having returned from a book launch at the University of Nottingham’s Archaeology Museum of a title on Roman Nottinghamshire, I sat down to watch ‘Sharktopus’ (a Roger Corman production). It was an evening of contrasts.

To be fair, ‘Sharktopus’ wasn’t as bad as ‘Army of the Dead’ (elements of it even suggest that – a few films down the line and with a better budget – there might be a possibility of director Declan O’Brien achieving basic filmmaking competence). But that’s kind of like saying the smelly old guy playing the spoons in the town square is demonstrating better musicianship than Justin Bieber. It’s an inarguable fact, but … y’know …

‘Sharktopus’ starts with Nathan Sands (Eric Roberts) – the head honcho of a marine-biology outfit called Blue Water – demonstrating for the benefit of hardnosed Navy dude Commander Cox (Calvin Persson) the operational capacity of their new development: the S-11. In other words, our titular and tentacled friend the Sharktopus. Outfitted with a gizmo type thing that controls it means of electrical impulses, with Sands’s brainy and standoffish yet still kinda cute bio-geneticist boffin daughter Nicole (Sara Malakul Lane) at the controls (it functions a bit like a radio-control boat … one bigger … and, uh, with teeth … and, y’know, tentacles), things go tits up when it gets walloped by a passing boat, the electro-pulsar-control device thingy malfunctions and the Sharktopus heads down Mexico way to terrorize, terrify and chow down on anyone and everyone.

For “anyone and everyone” read “nubile girls in bikinis”. For its first half hour ‘Sharktopus’ consists of little more than bits of incoherent exposition being partitioned out amongst endless shots of nubile girls in bikinis. There’s the nubile girl in a bikini who goes running into the ocean for the obligatory ‘Jaws’ homage at the start of the movie …

… the nubile girl in a bikini with a metal detector who would have been better off with a Sharktopus detector …

… the nubile girl in a bikini one-piece with a cleavage-revealing slit down the front who inadvisably does a bungee-jump just as the Sharktopus is looking for a light snack …

… the half-dozen or so nubile girls in bikinis who plunge into the sea for no other reason than to frolic in the surf and bump up the bikini/nubile-girl count that bit further …

… and the nubile girl in a bikini who co-presents a pirate radio show hosted by the boorish Captain Jack (Ralph Garman).

The sudden outburst of hybrid aquamarine attacks on perfectly innocent bikini-clad nubiles comes to the attention of local reporter Stacy Everheart (Liv Boughn). Stacy kind of breaks the mould in not wearing a bikini, but she does model a nice line in midriff-baring tops as well as demonstrating a marked disinclination to fastening the top button of her denim mini-skirt.

While Stacy and her ever-nervous and spectacularly ill-named cameraman Bones (Hector Jiminez) track down Sharktopus-attack witness Pez (Blake Lindsey) – a lecherous, alcoholic fisherman – Sands sets out to bring the Sharktopus back alive (after all, a lot of tax dollars and a potentially lucrative defence contract at stake). To this end, Sands reluctantly enlists the aid of cocksure shark-hunter Andy Flynn (Kerim Bursin). Andy is introduced in a scene where he tries to put the moves on two nubile girls in bikinis.

Andy has previously worked for Blue Water and is at loggerheads with Sands. There also seems to be some unresolved tension between Andy and Nicole. All put their differences aside – intermittently, anyway – to go hunting the snark shark. This is achieved by means of Andy and his best bud Santos (Julian Gonzalez Esparza) zipping around in speed boats looking moody …

… while Nicole and Pops exchange portentous and expository dialogue during split screen cellphone conversations:

Subject of Andy looking moody, the dude’s man-pout is astounding to behold. This guy’s pout puts anyone in ‘Twilight’ to shame.

(Interrupting this Agitation of the Mind review, we go live to WWE for tonight’s Pout Bout. First round, Andy the shark-hunting dude versus sulky emo chick:

Boo-yah! Unsmiling bint goes down!

Round two: Andy the shark-hunting dude versus sulky vampire dude:

Boo-yah! Slaphead neck-biter goes down! We now return you to The Agitation of the Mind.)

Eventually the endless montages of pretty people admiring the local colour at seaside resorts, where every establishing shot features the pert derriere of a nubile girl in a bikini sashaying into the frame, must end. And they end in blood. The Sharktopus, not content to keep it real in da water …

… decides to come ashore and walk around on its tentacles and start some shit with the now gun-toting Andy:

Call me unimaginative, but my suspension of disbelief began to experience serious challenges to its equanimity round about this point (in much the same way that the world count facility on my laptop is frankly aghast that I’ve already expended 1,100 words on this cinematic pile of poo).

In short, it all ends the only way this kind of movie can: man and shark resolve their differences, become friends, and fight for the common goal of world peace and environmental concerns, revealing ‘Sharktopus’ in its closing scenes as a poignant and powerful work of cinema by a soon-to-be major talent.

Nah, only kidding.

Runaway Train

'Runaway Train' has an interesting pedigree. Set in Alaska and detailing an escape from a maximum security prison that takes an unexpected turn when cons on the run Manny (Jon Voight) and Buck (Eric Roberts) board a freight train whose driver keels over from a heart attack, it's directed by a Russian (Andrei Konchalovsky), from an original screenplay by a Japanese film-making legend (Akira Kurosawa) better known for his historical samurai dramas, rewritten by (amongst others) a former convict who later became an icon thanks to his role as Mr Blue in 'Reservoir Dogs' (Edward "Eddie" Bunker).

Acting wise, Voight is manic and unrestrained, Roberts plays the whiny fake tough guy so convincingly that you want to slap him every time he opens his mouth, and somewhere along the line the decision was taken to cast Rebecca de Mornay (who pretty much fits the bill as far as glamorous is concerned) as Sara, the short-haired, grubby-faced railroad worker caught napping on the titular locomotive. (Still, the frankly gorgeous Charlize Theron has played a putty-faced serial killer and a world-weary factory worked, so what do I know?)

Narratively, the film adheres to the classic three-act structure. Act one: prison; in which sadistic Warden Ranken (John P Ryan) is compelled by a court order to release notorious prison-breaker Manny from the cell he's been welded into for three years, Manny's fellow inmates herald him as a one-man fuck-you to authority, a hit on him fails and he breaks out with the help of Buck, who insists on accompanying him. Act two: the train/the railroad offices: in which Manny and Buck stow themselves onboard one of the unmanned locos making up a four-car unit hauling freight, only for said mode of transport to gather speed as it hurtles out of control, their lives in the hands of controller Frank Barstow (Kyle T Heffner) whose immediate reaction is to derail the thing rather than risk further damage and/or loss of life. Act three: the train/the helicopter: in which Ranken, his prison ablaze from rioting, discovers that Manny is on the train and heads off for a mano-a-mano confrontation.

If the above paragraphs make 'Runaway Train' sound (respectively) schizophrenic, tiresome and formulaic, then all I can say is that it should be.

I ought to be able to write it off as an exercise in macho bullshit, replete with endless phallic imagery.

However ...

'Runaway Train' is the kind of film that lives up to the mission statement of this blog: it doesn't lend itself to analysis; and while it might not agitate the mind, it certainly agitates the nerves. 'Runaway Train' is a raw, edgy, unrelenting thriller. The prison scenes are brutal. The Alaskan backdrop is snowy, harsh, desolate. The characters are hard-bitten and their dialogue reflects it (Sara: "You're an animal"; Manny: "No. Worse. Human"). The train itself - particularly after a brilliantly executed set-piece where an oncoming freighter is diverted off the main line into a siding, only for the runaway to pulverise the boxcar as it ploughs ever forward - is a twisted hunk of metal.

The speed of film is keyed into the speed of the train. Most films build to a climax; 'Runaway Train' bears down on it - inevitably, irreversibly. That Manny quotes Nietzsche at one point ("What doesn't kill me makes me stronger") only emphasises the point: without any artsy digressions or intellectualising, 'Runaway Train' is a perfect existential film, cutting across the screen as forcefully as the train cuts a dark line through the wintry landscape.