Shark Attack

Scientist Cordell McQueen is killed in South Africa in an attack by a shark, the very thing he's gone there to investigate. A cryptic message left on his colleague Casper Van Dien's answering machine sends Van Dien and McQueen's sister Jenny McShane are off to South Africa to investigate.

What they find when they reach the coastal village where the attack occurred is a town ready to die. The resort that Ernie Hudson operates has no tourists and the fisherman don't go out at all because they're afraid of the water. Over the past few years there's been an unaccounted for spike in the number of shark attacks. The only thing operating is a scientific research institute where another colleague Bentley C. Mitchum is conducting research into a cancer cure.

Of course all this ties together with Mitchum conducting some really ghoulish experiments and Hudson playing everyone for suckers. Mitchum maybe thinking of a Nobel Prize for Medicine, but Hudson's got a far more practical motive for his actions.

Shark Attack is your average action adventure film with the cast all fitting nicely into their roles. One thing I would have done was cut Mitchum's death scene, just have him die with no last words. That particular piece of dialog was truly atrocious. Someone should have sicced one of those spiked up sharks on the writers.

Casper Van Dien breaks a new record in looking shabby in this movie, although he is supposed to be a marine biologist. If you can buy that, you will probably be able to handle the rest of the movie as well. "Shark Attack" tells the story of Van Dien going to South Africa (where just about everyone seem to be a hustler), to look for his missing friend. He finds out that his friend became shark food, and tries to find out why the sharks have started to behave so aggressively in this particular area. He gets help by another expert, Corinne, who loves to run around in her bikini while trying to solve the case.

If you are looking for really bad acting, check out "Shark Attack". You won´t believe your eyes. The effects are awfully lousy, unless you find rubber sharks convincing. The script contained so many old cliches that I lost count of them, and that is not too good. Right from the start it is quite obvious who is good and who is evil.

These kind of films can be so bad that they become entertaining, but "Shark Attack" is not fun at all. Man, I´d rather watch an episode of "Baywatch" than this kind of crap. Why somebody felt it was necessary to make a sequel to "Shark Attack" I have no idea.

* out of * * * * *

One of the most underrated creature features ever made, 'Shark Attack' is an action packed monster fest that actually does a good job at entertaining.Sure, it's not as good as 'Jaws' or 'deep Blue Sea' , but at least it got the job right.So why is this movie getting so many negative reviews? I liked it.I didn't love it,but I found it to be enjoyable.The real stars of the movie are Casper Van Dien from 'Python' and Jenny McShane from 'Shark Attack 3: Megalodon'.They both did a really good job in the movie and should do another creature feature together.Although not excellent, this movie does deliver plenty of action and entertainment.

Shark Attack (1999)

** (out of 4)

A marine biologist played by Casper Van Dien (yeah, I know) goes to Port Amanzi Africa after his best friend is mysteriously eaten by a shark. It turns out that shark attacks are up all over the region so Mr. Van Dien must find out the cause and it turns out that a greedy real estate owner (Ernie Hudson) is having sharks eat people so that he can buy up all their land. Sounds plausible, right? If you walk into this movie and are willing to turn your brain off then you might get some mild entertainment out of it but if you're one who needs to take everything serious then it's best to stay away from this thing. This is certainly a bad movie and it's the cheese factor that gives it some unintentional laughs and a lot of them come from Van Dien's performance. He's certainly not very believable in the role. You know how in a great performance the actor can make you believe everything they're saying? Well, in this film it was very hard to believe that Van Dien knew anything that was coming out of his mouth and the viewer can tell this. That's part of the reason for the laughs but another is because his character comes off like some sort of ancient gladiator. There are a couple scenes in the film where people are getting attacked by sharks and the brave Van Dien just jumps into the water, swims over to the shark and takes care of the situation. I'm no shark expert but I've seen Shark Week on Discovery enough to know that you don't go messing with a shark during a feeding frenzy. The majority of the shark scenes are obviously just stock footage taken from real sharks. It's obvious because each time we see the "main" shark it's different in size than the previous time we saw it. The attack scenes are also rather cheap.

Ok I have seen alot of bad rip offs about the great movie jaws but this is just stupid!!!!!!!!half the time it is not even about sharks. Most of the time it is about this guy and his brother(SPOIL)who gets killed at the end(END SPOIL)and how he hates him and he works for this evil fat guy (SPOIL) who gets killed by his own creations(END SPOIL)so to put it in plain turms THIS MOVIE REALLY REALLY SUCKED so do yourself a favor AND DO NOT WATCH IT.