The Shark Film Office

Shark Lake   (2015) Dir.:  Jerry Dugan Cinema 4 Rating:  3/9 Shark species:  Bull shark ( Carcharhinus leucas) Hero species:  Dolph Lundgren ( Wearius longindatoothinas ) I suppose that if one were to assign a particular shark species to the actor Dolph Lundgren, a bull shark might be a fairly decent choice. Known for their tenacity and aggressive behavior, the bull shark with its tough guy physique and unstoppable bite force seems to be a perfect parallel to action star Lundgren, now pushing sixty and hanging by his fingertips onto whatever he has left of a Hollywood career. This struggle seems to include appearing in films of the caliber of  Shark Lake , where Dolph crosses paths -- in Lake Tahoe, of all places -- with that very same bull shark. That's right... Lake Tahoe. One might at first do an extremely comedic double-take upon hearing that this alpine-style lake on the California-Nevada border is being mentioned in connection with a film about ...

It would be nice if we had a world where people would simply be happy in going to the movies to see beautiful sharks gliding smoothly and expertly through the water, content in seeing these glorious creatures interacting in their natural environment while  spending their lives as a vital cog in the ecological cycle of our planet. It would be nice, but it's not realistic. Sure, you can put out a documentary now and again, such as  Disney's Oceans , and have some marvelous footage of sharks included in the mix, and you will get a certain audience. Or you can put out, on a much more limited level, a doc like  Sharkwater  to bring in more specialized crowds that, like me, believe in saving sharks for the good of the oceans, the world, and mankind in turn. But you will probably get even smaller audience for something like that, or you will have to tour with such a film to build those crowds. Or you can stick to television docs like Sir David Attenborough and give us BB...

Licence to Kill   (1989) Dir.: John Glen TC4P Rating: 6/9 Species: Great white shark (Carcharodon carcharias); blacktip reef shark ( Carcharhinus melanopterus); Sharkey (Frank McRae); manta ray (Timothy Dalton) James Bond specimen: Timothy Dalton Sharks and James Bond. Like chocolate and peanut butter. At least, that's the way it seemed for quite a few years. Thunderball (1965), Live and Let Die (1973), The Spy Who Loved Me (1977), and For Your Eyes Only (1981) all contain scenes where sharks are used as a menacing element, usually (but not always) kept in tanks by Bond's enemies for reasons of torture or dispatching of victims. In my head, I always lump the truly insane, Connery race-changing epic, You Only Live Twice into this bunch, but always have to remind myself that the deadly creatures in Blofeld's lair are piranhas, not sharks. Same concept; entirely different fish. Hell, Bond even has a nemesis (and eventual ally, briefly) named Jaws, a giant of a m...

Monster from the Ocean Floor   (1954) Dir.: Wyott Ordung TC4P Rating: 4/9 Creatures: shark, octopus, and a monstrous octopus-like thing with a glowing eye. Monsters, nuclear waste, girls in trouble, sharks... some of the essential elements of low-budget "B" movie thrills back in the 1950s. It helps even more if the girl is in a swimsuit and is wet half of the film, and if the monster is a giant octopus of some indeterminate species, and if the giant octopus has a single eye the size of a cargo hatch and the creature glows due to possible exposure to nuclear testing. And, oh yeah, sharks... Roger Corman had all of these elements down already in 1954 in his very first full producing credit,  Monster from the Ocean Floor . The film is clearly influenced by the previous year's big monster hit,  The Creature from the Black Lagoon , and Corman and first-time director Wyott Ordung seem to be taking great pains to try and replicate the thrilling underwater sequences that mad...