Room At The Asylum For Monster Brawl

Mega Shark Vs Giant Octopus
(2009/USA)

''He's an equal opportunities eating machine''

From the deepest depths comes the greatest threat as two of the oceans prehistoric titans are unwittingly released from their frozen incarceration. Free to wreak havoc on the modern world where fish are now just an entrée to man made morsels. It’s deep see monster mayhem as only the low budget production house The Asylum can muster as their catch of the day.

When a secret government operative illegally deposit’s a low frequency active sonar (LFAS) device , from his helicopter into the ocean off the Alaskan coast, the result sets in action a very disruptive chain of events. Directly below the surface of the water marine oceanographer Emma MacNeil (Deborah Gibson) is studying the migration pattern of a number of whales. When the LFAS is operative it triggers a highly disruptive vibratory sound wave that unsettles the sea mammals. MacNeil and her mini sub co-pilot have to skilfully navigate a path to safety through the panicked whales. During the scramble she half glimpses something that she dismisses as unfathomable in the adrenalin pumping moment. What she later comes to realise is that what she caught site of in the murky depths is the re-emergence of creatures from millions of years past, seen only in the pages of today’s historical text books.

The sonic boom from the LFAS creates a fissure within the solid ice, causing a chain reaction of splintering. Within the structure of the cacophonous casing lay two perfectly preserved examples of prehistoric deep sea behemoths. Suspended in frozen animation, now set free and reawakened by the life giving natural ocean. Behold Mega Shark and Giant Octopus !.

Emancipated from their icy tomb the naturally warring creatures, programmed by nature to feast on whatever is placed before them, find their way to two of Sci Fi cinema’s most recognised battle grounds for gigantic beasts. Giant Octopus’ favoured stomping ground is of course Japan, and soon Tokyo bay is terrorised by eight grappling tentacles, enough to keep the sushi bars in business for the foreseeable future. Mega Shark hit’s the shipping lanes on route to America, choosing San Francisco bay as his tourist attraction, and somewhere to stop over for a bite to eat. First on the menu for this mighty shark, with more teeth than the Bee Gees combined and a razor blade smirk that observers don’t stop to admire, nor hang around long enough to become tooth picks !.

Silly highlights of this dumb, but highly entertaining giant monster movie, include the juggernaut like massive shark torpedoing itself out of the ocean upwards to take down a passenger plane !. Not to be outdone Giant Octopus embroils itself around an offshore Japanese drilling station, having no taste for the black gold but picking off enough human nuggets, well worth a few ‘squid’ !.
It’s down to one time teen pop singing starlet Deborah Gibson to team up with an old university professor, and a Japanese oceanographer expert, to piece together what is terrorising the oceans. When they uncover the insidious government experiment, and receive video confirmation of the gigantic prehistoric creatures being freed, due to the intervention of the LFAS device, they set about planning a way to stop the carnage and the giant threat to mankind.
Lorenzo Lamas enters the fray as government agent Allan Baxter, initially to detain the trio, but soon realises that without their combined expertise the planet is in severe threat of enormous magnitude. Agent Baxter is a bit of a Lorenzo ‘lame ass’ but Deborah Gibson turns in a pretty good performance for her movie debut. It’s refreshing to see that as a pretty new actress Deborah Gibson doesn’t have to get her ‘hits’ out to make the transition from pop star to film star !.
Emma MacNeil and her three cohorts get their heads together to come up with the plan to bring to a halt the tumultuous tirade of the two sea titans. The marine experts come upon the idea of primordial pheromone attraction. All creatures use them to seek out and sense each other. The idea behind this particular attraction is hoped to be of the fatal kind, as both of these prehistoric deep sea dwellers are attuned to killing one another. Bringing them together to do battle is what the movies titular headline grabber is after all what this is all about. It’s the fight of the century, Mega Shark Vs Giant Octopus, in The Rumble In The Ocean !. Mega George Foreman XXXXXL grill free with each family ticket purchase.
The silliness goes overboard pretty much from the off, but what else can you expect from such an outlandishly titled movie !?. For an Asylum flick this is a more neutered affair in so far as the usual outlandish gore and more adult themes are toned down to deliver essentially a PG13 rated matinee monster movie. Doubtlessly aiming for a more broader audience, and a greater revenue return targeting the family patronage. The film is still Fun though and worthy of at least a rental before resigning to the bottom of the video ocean.

Any movie that shows a Megalodon leaping out of San Francisco bay to sink its mighty jaws into the Golden Gate Bridge, like its snacking down on a McDonald’s swim through restaurant, has to have you ‘lovin’ it’.
Review Paul Cooke / Source PAL Region 2 UK DVD

Mega Shark Versus Giant Octopus (2009)
Director Jack Perez
With Lorenzo Lams, Deborah Gibson,
Vic Chao & Sean Lawlor