Remember that awesome scene in Zombie where the zombie fought a shark underwater? Well, Sharkula features Dracula fighting a shark underwater. Trust me. It’s not as cool as it sounds. That’s mostly because the effects are terrible. Not only is the shark an awful CGI creation, but the effects team can’t even disguise the fact that Dracula isn’t underwater, as he’s obviously standing in front of a greenscreen.
Yep, if you can’t already tell, we’re knee-deep in another Mark Polonia movie.
But it gets worse. The droning theme song where a guy repetitively moans “Sharkula” over and over again almost put me to sleep. The same goes for the echoey opening narration. Ditto the constant cutaways to a fire dancer twilring her flaming sticks. It all adds up to a one-way ticket to dreamland.
It also has a weird, blurry look and choppy feel. Sometimes, it looks like people are moving at .75x speed as they move and talk slower than they ought. It’s one thing to use slow motion for an important scene. It’s another to randomly slow parts of the film down to (presumably) inflate the running time.
The vampire/shark hybrid is kind of funny, I guess. It looks like a shark bath toy with rubber bat wings glued on it. That’s about the only laugh the flick has to offer though. In some close-ups, I shit you not, it looks like a Carvel ice cream cake. It's also obvious that the fin used for the shots of the shark swimming just below the surface of the water was just a pool toy the filmmakers purchased from 5 Below.
Oh, I forgot to talk about the plot. My bad. Two losers get jobs working in an old inn at a seaside resort town. Their weird employer, Renfield forbids them from going outside at night and mingling with the locals. It’s a good thing too because after sundown, Dracula likes to feed sacrifices to the shark vampire, Sharkula.
Sounds like fun, right? Unfortunately, it’s about as much fun as shoveling chum.
this film isn't that bad.
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