TUBI CONTINUED… SHARK BAIT (2022) **

If you loved The Shallows and enjoyed Open Water, then you might almost be able to barely tolerate this Tubi Original.  A group of some of the most annoying characters I’ve encountered in some time are partying it up on Spring Break in Mexico.  One morning, the still-drunk delinquents decide to steal a couple of jetskis and speed around in the middle of nowhere.  They get the dumb idea to play chicken and stupidly crash into one another at high speed.  Naturally, this totals both vehicles and seriously injures one idiot.  Before long, his gaping wound attracts a bloodthirsty shark who is all too eager to put some Spring Breakers on the menu.

Shark Bait is appropriately named since the characters solely exist to be eaten by the shark.  In a way, it sort of helps that they are all raging morons because then it’s at least a little satisfying once they are finally chomped on.  However, the long scenes of them horsing around grate on the nerves something fierce.  The love triangle shit between the Final Girl (Holly Earl), her cheating boyfriend (Jack Trueman), and her promiscuous best friend (Catherine Hannay) is weak as shit too.

Since the cast is smallish and the action is contained, that means the body count is low and we don’t see much of the shark.  I know… I know… we didn’t see much of it in Jaws either, but director James (The Marine 5:  Battleground) Nunn is clearly no Spielberg.  Aside from one decent scene where the shark scoops up a guy in its maw and his watch gets caught in a chick’s hair and drags her down too, there’s nothing really memorable here.  

At least Hannay is easy on the eyes.  It also doesn’t hurt that she spends most of her screen time in a bikini.  So, there are certainly worse ways to spend your time on Tubi.  

Bottom Line:  Despite a decent hook, Shark Bait mostly bites.

AKA:  Shark Bay.  AKA:  Jetski.  

TUBI CONTINUED… SHARKS OF THE CORN (2021) **

Remember when everyone was making movies based on the novels of master of horror Steven Kang?  This is a flick based on one of Kang’s early short stories.  It harkens… or should I say… “sharkens” back to the days when he wasn’t so overly commercialized.

It starts with off great with a T & A update of the opening scene in Jaws… except… you know… in a cornfield instead of a beach.  A guy passes out drunk while his naked girlfriend (Rebecca Rhinehart from CarousHELL 2) flaunts around the corn rows until she’s eaten by a shark.  There are also amusing shots of fin buzzing above the corn stalks and the shark’s face as it runs through the corn maze.  Or the maize maze, as it were.  Right then and there, I thought we had a classic on our hands.  Or at the very least, another Shark Side of the Moon.

That was until the B plot about a serial killer who thinks he’s a shark took over.  This guy wears a shark face mask and lures prostitutes to his room where he cuts them up with a set of shark jaws.  This stuff isn’t necessarily bad per se, but it’s nowhere near as fun as the cornfield-set scenes.  Incidentally, this plotline is not found in Kang’s original short story.  Nor is the subplot involving a juice head trying to sell off a Stonehenge-related relic to some gangsters.  I guess the filmmakers had to pad it out a little, but there was no reason this thing had to be one-hundred-and-five minutes long.

See, when the movie is nothing but morons stumbling into the cornfield and being mauled by sharks, it works.  All the extraneous shit just bogs everything down.  There’s also a plot twist that makes absolutely no sense.  Then again, just when I was about to completely write it off, something amazing cheesy or… corny… if you will… would happen (like a shark jumping out of the cornfield and into the air, causing a helicopter to explode) to kind of keep things in check.

That said, it’s maybe a little too overstuffed for its own good.  I admire the kitchen sink approach (Bigfoot even shows up at one point), but the unwieldy running time eventually does it in.  Still, there’s plenty of Jaws references and in-joke character names to keep you amused.  That, and the occasional intentionally funny line like, “What in the name of Randy Travis is going on here?”

AKA:  Steven Kang’s Sharks of the Corn.

ONLY THE GOOD PARTS (2020) *** ½

It’s been a while since I watched a good trailer compilation.  This one really lives up to its title as it is chockfull of T & A and blood and guts.  It also showcases some of the best trailers from not only the horror genre, but also drive-in, grindhouse, exploitation, and sleaze cinema.

Some of the trailers you’ve seen in countless other collections like I Spit on Your Grave, It’s Alive, and Raw Meat.  That’s okay though because there are still plenty of unique, odd, or just plain awesome trailers here.  I mean how many trailer compilations out there feature coming attractions for At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul, The Johnsons, or the nude beauty pageant movie She Did It His Way?

I also liked that they were mostly grouped by subgenre, which helped things flow nicely from trailer to trailer.  We have action (Call Him Mr. Shatter, Angel of HEAT, Alley Cat), Women in Prison (Barbed Wire Dolls, Love Camp, 10 Violent Women), horror (Nurse Sherri, J.D.’s Revenge, The Man Who Haunted Himself), cannibal movies (Zombie Holocaust, Eaten Alive, Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals), sexploitation (She Did It His Way, Rolls Royce Baby, Evil Come Evil Go), and religious horror flicks (Beware My Brethren, The Devils, Mark of the Devil 2), just to name a few.

Also, at a relatively scant 79 minutes, it moves at a brisk enough pace to prevent you from getting overstimulated, as can happen with even the best of these collections.  Even though it threatens to peter out by the end, Only the Good Parts finishes off with the iconic trailer for Torso, which ends things on a high note.  Besides, there’s a strong concentration of trailers featuring Lina Romay in the buff (and in exemplary gynecological detail, I might add).  I mean, if your compilation is called Only the Good Parts, that’s about the best part you could hope for.

A sequel followed.

The complete list of trailers include:  A spookshow ad, Call Him Mr. Shatter, Angel of HEAT, Alley Cat, Barbed Wire Dolls, Love Camp, 10 Violent Women, I Spit on Your Grave, Nurse Sherri, J.D.’s Revenge, The Man Who Haunted Himself, Spasmo, At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul, The Johnsons, The Brood, It’s Alive, It Lives Again, The Child, The Nights of Terror (AKA:  Burial Ground), Hell of the Living Dead, Zombie Holocaust (AKA:  Dr. Butcher, M.D.), Eaten Alive, Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals, She Did It His Way, Rolls Royce Baby, Evil Come Evil Go, Beware My Brethren, The Devils, Mark of the Devil 2, Demoniac, Virgin Witch, The Naked Witch, The Crypt of Dark Secrets, The Legend of the Wolf Woman, The Grim Reaper, Raw Meat, Tower of Evil, and Torso.

TUBI CONTINUED… SHARK SIDE OF THE MOON (2022) ***

Shark Side of the Moon is a Tubi Original made in conjunction with The Asylum, the folks that gave us the Sharknado series.  If this is an example of the quality entertainment that we can expect from the teaming of two titans, then I say, sign me up for more!

Russian scientists develop killer hammerhead shark men to breed as soldiers.  When they get loose, the scientists lead them into a space shuttle and blast the shark men off to the moon.  Decades later, an American team of astronauts in charge of setting up a colony on the moon, crash lands and are attacked by shark men.  But not just shark men.  There are also shark women.  Which can only mean one thing:  Sharks with boobs.  That alone is worth Three Stars in my book.

I love it when a movie shows me something I’ve never seen before.  Whenever the pacing started to drag or the dialogue scenes threatened to go on too long, I’d see a pair of shark boobs, and all was right with the world.  Not since the duck boobs scene in Howard the Duck have we seen something like this.  Now I don’t want to oversell it or anything as we don’t see any full-on shark boobs exactly, but the shark women DO wear crop tops and skimpy halter tops, so there is no shortage of shark babe cleavage throughout the picture.

Oh, and did I mention the Russian scientist had a half-shark daughter who knows Kung Fu and does moon bounces over shark men while engaging in battle?  Or when they stumble upon a hive of shark babies and decide to destroy them, the movie stops briefly for a sensitive pro-life discussion?  Or the Jaws homage that made me straight-up LOL?

Folks, when you watch Shark Side of the Moon, you will believe a shark man can drive a car.  Or at least the very least, a moon buggy.

Now, I haven’t watched an Asylum flick in a while, so I was somewhat surprised to see that the CGI shark men weren’t too shabby looking.  I also liked the way the shark fins cut through the surface of the moon as they chased the astronauts around.  The spaceship special effects and moon base models are all fairly solid too.

The premise is silly, but kind of fun.  However, Shark Side of the Moon stops short of being a classic, thanks to the overly jokey (and unfunny) crew members, who are pretty annoying.  The editing gets a little whiplash-inducing at the end too, but since it all ends with a woman giving birth to a baby shark (doo, doo, doo, doo) I can’t be too hard on it. 

Bottom Line:  This is the best shark man movie since Hammerhead:  Shark Frenzy, and that’s high praise indeed.

TUBI CONTINUED… SHARKENSTEIN (2016) ** ½

During WWII, a mad scientist following in the footsteps of Frankenstein tries to create his own creature.  The Nazis interfere with his experiment, kill him, and steal the monster’s heart and brain.  Flash forward to the present day where a giant shark under the control of a mad scientist is eating swimmers and fishermen in a small resort town.  Three friends wind up being pawns in his elaborate scheme and have to band together to stop the evil Sharkenstein.

Ah yes, it’s Mark Polonia once again at the helm of another crappy CGI shark movie.  This time though, the shark is kind of amusing and not without charm.  It has a bunch of surgical scars and stitching, looks fake as hell, and has a fin laced with oversized staples.  Whenever it rises out of the water in pursuit of dinner, it definitely cuts a memorable image.  The shark is also good for a laugh any time it leaps out of the ocean to eat someone.

Sure, Sharkenstein is not great, but there was a minute-long stretch there where the shark jumped out of the water, got struck by lightning, and turned into what looked like a dime store version of a King Shark action figure from Suicide Squad that had me howling with laughter.  Folks, these are the kind of moments I live for.

The acting has never been a strong suit in a Polonia movie, but I found Greta Volkova to be pretty good as the sexy nerdy leading lady.  I haven’t seen her in anything else but since she’s apparently in a lot of Polonia flicks, I’m sure I’ll see her again soon.  Polonia, naturally, gave himself a small role as a mute boat captain.

Also, since I watched this back-to-back with Shark Encounters of the Third Kind, I got a kick out of seeing how the ever-thrifty Polonia stole lots of the beach, boating, and swimming footage from this film.

TUBI CONTINUED… SHARK ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND (2020) **

Shark Encounters of the Third Kind kicks off with a pretty funny pre-credits scene where a diver and a sexy gal in a bikini become victims of a shitty-looking CGI shark.  Then, the plot begins.  An alien spacecraft lands on the bottom of the ocean near a seaside community almost exclusively inhabited by people who claim to have been abducted by UFOs.  The aliens have returned to Earth for some unfinished business and use sharks to protect their ship from detection.  

Or something like that.  None of this makes much sense, to be honest.  It’s almost as if the filmmakers started making an alien movie and got halfway through and decided, “What the hell?  Let’s toss some sharks in there!”  

If you can’t already tell, this is another Polonia Brothers jam.  It’s an odd mix of nutty premise and inconsistent execution.  Some of the green-screened effects are laughable, while others aren’t too shabby.  The alien masks are pretty good, but the CGI UFO ship is cheesy, and not exactly in a good way.  The shark effects are likewise all over the map.  Some of the shots are passable and others are incompetent.  The rubber shark used for the inserts and close-ups isn’t very convincing either.  I will admit the effects in the scene where our hero dispatches a shark with a flare gun are pretty damned funny though.

When the action switches to dry land, things are just as inconsistent, if not more. Much of the human interaction feels forced and phony, but some of the random ass shit, like the crazy cat lady who… uh… marks her territory every time she buries a dead cat is somewhat amusing.  Heck, some parts even manage to be moderately effective, like when a swimmer narrowly escapes the jaws of a shark and makes her way to shore… only to be confronted by aliens and driven back into the shark-infested sea.  I also sort of dug the Fire in the Sky-inspired flashbacks/nightmares. 

As far as Mark Polonia movies go, Shark Encounters of the Third Kind is far from his worst, but there are plenty of other fish in the sea.

TUBI CONTINUED… SUBSPECIES 5: BLOODRISE (2023) * ½

Subspecies 5:  Bloodrise is a belated and unnecessary prequel that explains how the villainous Radu (Anders Hove) became a vampire.  Like most Subspecies movies, the opening is the best part.  This scene features a nasty old vampire giving birth to a deformed baby who looks like a close cousin to the Freddy baby from A Nightmare on Elm Street 5.  The half-vampire infant is then whisked away by the church and given medieval plastic surgery so it will pass for human and when it gets older, they train him to become a vampire slayer.

While hunting vampires in a decrepit castle, the now-grown Radu liberates a sexy woman (Denice Duff) and her son against the urging of his sidekick, Marius (Petar Arsic).  Naturally, she repays his kind act by biting him and turning him into a vampire.  Radu then trains himself in the dark arts to get revenge.

From there, the already-thin story becomes more episodic and uneven as it wears on.  The subplot about Radu turning two musicians into his vampire servants feels like it came from an entirely different movie.  Either that, or a couple of episodes of a re-edited and repackaged TV show.  The wrap-up is really convenient too.

Denice Duff, who might be part vampire as she looks the same as she did in the last Subspecies twenty years ago, gives a better performance than the movie deserves.  It’s obvious she’s the best thing about it as the Duff-less passages are easily the weakest part.  Hove is ho-hum as Radu.  I never really liked him as the villain and he’s not much better when he’s playing hero in the early scenes.  To make matters worse, he’s not very engaging once he becomes full-fledged vampire.

If I’m being perfectly honest, I’ve never been a real Subspecies fan in general.  Part 2 was OK, I guess, but the rest were interchangeable and forgettable.  While this one is at the very least watchable, I can’t say for sure how much of it I will remember about it a month from now.  Or, heck, even a week from now.

At least some of the cheesy dialogue (such as “Get your vile hands off my flute!”) are good for a sporadic laugh or two.

AKA:  Subspecies 5:  Blood Rise.