SHITTY FLICKS: SHARK ZONE

Shitty Flicks is an ongoing column that celebrates the most hilariously incompetent, amusingly pedestrian, and mind-bogglingly stupid movies ever made by people with a bit of money, some prior porn-directing experience, and no clue whatsoever. It is here you will find unrestrained joy in movies meant to terrify and thrill, but instead poke at your funny bone with their weird, mutant camp-girl penis.

WARNING: I tend to give away major plot points and twist endings in my reviews because, whatever. Shut up.

Shark Zone (originally given the much better title of Jurassic Shark), is a smörgåsbord of what we love about shark movies: attractive and untalented lead actors/actresses, recycled footage that looks a little narrow because the logo for the Discovery Channel had to be cropped out, and of course, little-to-no realistic violence.

Oh, and roaring sharks. Yes, the sharks here roar and roar aplenty. As I write this, I can picture the sound designer on this film staring at dailies of swimming sharks and asking himself, "After I'm finished this bag of candy worms, what can I do to make this shark scarier than the one from Jaws?"

But, I digress.

Let's get on with Shark Zone: A Return to Form for Dean Cochran (Motorcycle Villain from Batman & Robin).

"Jimbo, watch this! Grab that little doll. I'll put that
 in my mouth."

Our movie begins in the past with a pirate ship and men wearing Halloween costumes (of pirates). In a sequence that left even The Goonies laughing hysterically, badly created lightning strikes and the waves force the ship down into Davy Jones' locker. All the swashbucklers drown and their precious precious chest of diamonds sinks to the bottom of the sea.

God rest ye, merry gentleman.

CUT TO closer to the present, but still in the past, where our handsome hero, Dean Cochran, is introduced. I forget his name. Maybe it was Jimbo. Anyway, we find Jimbo to be charter-boating on the ocean with two couples and his father, Jimbo Sr.

What a party.

They're all there to search for the lost diamonds lost by pirates in the movie’s prologue.

This is funny, because the only ones who knew the diamonds were on that ship were the pirates. (The ones that died.)

But no matter. Delightful banter ensues between our divers, and boobs are flaunted. When it's time for Head Boat Guy to explain the dos and don'ts of scuba-diving, he tells one of the members that his shiny chain will attract sharks.

Shiny Necklace Guy almost makes the choice to live, but then gives a Curly wave and does not remove his necklace.

"I'd remove that necklace if I were you. If you don't, sharks might rip your fucking arms off."

"I'm good."

Up next, a completely unexpected and crazy-ass thing happens.

They all dive and they're all killed. Even Jimbo's father, whose last words were "Swim, Jimbo! Swim!"

Finally, we cut to the present: 10 years after this attack. Our hero hasn't aged whatsoever, but now he's married to a hot girl and has a disgusting kid.

Jimbo's loss of father and attack of sharks has left him permanently embittered by the water, and his bitterness has begun to rub off on his ugly son, who doesn't eat fish because he's terrified of the ocean.

Despite Jimbo's hate/fear of the ocean, he is apparently a lifeguard or coastguard or color guard or something having to do directly with the water. Sometimes, people are attacked by sharks. And when they are, the mayor (for some reason, the same actor who plays the father) refuses to close the beaches.

That subplot never gets old.

Jimbo attempts to kill the sharks. How? Not sure, since you never actually see how.

Come to think of it, he really never verbally discusses his plan, nor does the movie ever show you how he would plan to carry out the sharks' demise.

All you see is what you'd expect: a boat and some shark cages. But oh man, when his friends are sitting in the cages under water, and the sharks start bumping the cages a little bit, but in no way endangering their lives, Jimbo yells for them to "Swim to the boat!" They do, and of course, since they are idiotically vulnerable in the open ocean, they're all eaten. And when they are, Jimbo literally gives one disappointed pound on the rail of his boat, as if to say, "You've won this round, Zone of Sharks!"

Fact: Vending machines kill more people per year
than sharks kill Captain America.

Somehow, the Russian mob shows up and demands that Jimbo dive and help them find the missing diamonds lost in the beginning of the movie. Lead Villain Guy, Mr. Bulkhead, makes him dive by taking his ugly son hostage, threatening the "sleep with the fishes" routine.

Jimbo takes control of the situation by punching and kicking men and throwing them overboard, where, of course, the sharks eat them.

So how does this glorious movie end?

The sharks eat everyone, are not defeated, and nary a clue ever reveals any kind of hint as to why they are huge and all of a sudden attacking everything in sight.

Jimbo and his ugly son get away, because they're virgins, and virgins always live.

HEY, KNOW WHAT'S A REAL MOVIE?

RUGRASCALS

Remember "Rugrats," that show on Nickelodeon? What you probably don't know is that the creator of the show, Gabor Csupo, originally planned a late night version of "Rugrats" called "Rugrascals," to be played at night, with more adult humor.

Because every major channel thought the pilot was too disturbing, they refused to air the show, and as a result no-one has really heard about it. However, one station in Wellington, New Zealand mistakenly played it in the morning, thinking it was a regular "Rugrats" episode.

The pilot and only episode of the show that was seen was called "Chuckie's Mom." The intro played like normal, but at the end when Tommy shoots the milk at the screen, the sound effect is much louder, and the milk simply stays there for about 10 seconds, then the name of the episode appears. The episode played out like normal, with the babies playing in the playpen. They are all talking about their moms when Chuckie has a flashback.

It had Chuckie in hospital standing next to his mother in bed, who was dying from an unknown illness. She was singing "You are my sunshine, my only sunshine" to Chuckie in a very weak voice, as if she were about to die, but when she sang the second verse the song started playing in reverse. A shot of Chuckie appeared in front of a live action footage of a toad being dissected, said to represent death by fans. Chuckie turns around and screams, and when he looks back at his mother, her face has a live action man's mouth pasted on it saying, "Don't worry, Chuckie, it's time for me to move on," in a man's voice. A flurry of random live action clips were shown, said to represent death, like a cow walking into a box with "slaughterhouse" crudely drawn on the side, and actual footage of a man suffering AIDS being killed. You can hear Chuckie screaming the entire time. A shot of Chuckie's mom appears again, this time with a chickens beak crudely pasted onto her face, saying, "Don't you remember where it all started?"

The episode then cuts to live-action footage of childbirth mammograms. After about one minute of these mammograms, you hear Chuckie's mom say, "Arent you a lucky ducky, Chuckie?" A harlequin fetus appear. At this time, you see Chuckie come out of the flashback, having a seizure. Tommy, Phil, and Lil are crying, and an ambulance worker calms him down, saying, "Chuckie? Chuckie? Can you hear me?" in a stern voice. Eventually after coughing up blood and vomiting, Chuckie comes to his senses. We then see a point of view shot of Chuckie, seeing Tommy, Phil, Lil, and the ambulance worker as having live-action chicken beaks on their faces, clucking away. A photo of a kid that looks just like Chuckie screaming appears, and the camera zooms into it.

After this, the regular credits played, followed by 15 minutes of static as the station had nothing else to play. Surprisingly, although the episode was watched by many children, only one adult who was watching (me) has spoken about it until now. I was confused to find out that children suicide rates went through the roof in New Zealand that year.

 

Story source.

DANCING PLAGUE OF 1518

In July of 1518, Frau Troffea of Strasbourg, France (then part of the Holy Roman Empire), began to dance frantically in the streets.  Within a month, 400 people began to do the same, eventually collapsing and dying of heart attack, exhaustion, and stroke. 

Doctors at the time were at a loss. Notes from the city council revealed that the cause of the dancing was unknown, only that the victims were not dancing willingly. 

Then, as suddenly as it began, in August, the Dancing Plague of 1518 was over, leaving almost 400 dead, a population baffled, and a mystery that has lasted half of a millennium. 

Some have blamed the dancing plague on mass hysteria, the result of eating contaminated bread, or even religious ecstasy. 

Although the plague never reappeared in France, a similar case of the frantic dancing cropped up in Madagascar in the 1840s.  In both cases, the cause was never found.

REVIEW: K-11

You know how everyone has that one friend who, no matter what kind of story you're telling, somehow has a story even more amusing or ironic? Well, god forbid you ever begin a story with "I had the WORST day recently...!" around K-11's Raymond Saxx, because he would respond, "Well, one morning I woke up from a really fucked-up drug and booze binge, found myself accused of murder, and discovered I was locked up in a special transgender wing of a prison ruled by a deviant security guard and a tranny named The Queen."

Yeah, he'll always win with that one.

Goran Visnjic ("E.R.") is the unfortunate and aforementioned Raymond Saxx being dragged through the dingy halls of an ominous looking prison. He has no idea what he's done to find himself in such a place, but there he is all the same. After being held in isolation along with a fellow inmate named Butterfly (Portia Doubleday, the upcoming Carrie remake), he is eventually added to the gay and transgender wing. You see, the malicious and perverted Sgt. Johnson (D.B. Sweeney, Fire in the Sky) finds Raymond rather attractive, and with him locked up in his domain, he can wait until just the right time to...you know...strike.

While locked up in K-11, we meet its inhabitants: Mousey aka The Queen (Kate del Castilo), the head honcho who makes the rules; her bitch Ben (Jason Mewes, Clerks), who runs a mini drug operation; and Detroit (Tommy 'Tiny' Lister, The Dark Knight), an irreformable child molester, among many many other flamboyant characters. The prisoners of K-11 are colorful, to say the least, and though there is some drama from time to time, mostly these cellmates seem to get a long. But the arrival of Raymond has shaken the wing's establishment, both in front of and behind the locked cell doors.

K-11's own marketing describes it as The Shawshank Redemption meets John Waters. That's a fairly accurate representation, especially when taking the former into consideration, as we have seen this kind of story before: Before Shawshank there was One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and before that, Cool Hand Luke. A new inmate shows up, unites other inmates thanks to his intelligence, non-conformity, and human spirit, and leaves everyone changed just from his existence. K-11 attempts the same thing; the problem is it's nowhere near the magnitude of those other films.

K-11 is, except for Visnjic's Raymond, extraordinarily well-acted. del Castillo as Mousey is scarily good. Apparently quite the heralded actress in her native Mexico, a quick glance at her filmography confirms I am not familiar with any of her past work. Because of this, having nothing previous to go on, I found her especially convincing. She seemed dangerous and intimidating, but also conflictingly beautiful. All except for the bulge beneath her tiny underwear. Alternately, Portia Doubleday's Butterfly seems simple-minded but good-hearted. Her and Raymond become fast friends, and he soon develops a paternal protection of her. But, like previously mentioned, Visnjic seems rather flat and unconvincing. When he's playing a muddled mess he does just fine, but otherwise it feels like anyone could have played the role. His character is also maddeningly inconsistent. He seems to alternate between being a drug-added sweating mess, desperate to get out of K-11 by any means necessary, to a smiling, just-fine inhabitant, taking delight in Butterfly's bubbly personality, or the prisoners' ...er...fashion show.

The most frustrating aspect to K-11 is that it's impulsively watchable. The interactions between all the characters are very good, and D.B. Sweeney is especially effective as the very slimy Sgt. Johnson. The interplay works; the everyday-life of such a place seems genuine and realistic, though at the same time surreal and foreign. The things that occur are oftentimes so crazy you almost want to believe they are real, because in all honesty, what the fuck do you or I know about the transgender prison populace? But the reason I chose the word "frustrating" is because when the movie's conclusion happens, and the film ends, your immediate question will be "so what?" If co-writer/director Jules Stewart wanted nothing more than to shed some light on such places in a docudrama fashion, then mission accomplished. But if there was supposed to be more to it - if Raymond Saxx was supposed to learn where his life went astray and become a better person for it - if his character was supposed to "grow" - it certainly wasn't earned. There was no epiphany. Whole scenes of inmate camaraderie or catharsis seem to be missing. And the film doesn't end so much as it stops happening, and it sadly makes the journey up to it a little irrelevant. 

The DVD comes with commentary by director Stewart and producer Tom Wright. It's an okay listen, but I'm surprised that Stewart didn't have more to say about her odd choice for a directorial debut. She points out a little trivia from time to time, like explaining that the color of jumpsuit K-11 inhabitants wear are purposely different from those of the general population, but we never get anything meaty or useful. The track starts off with energy, but soon devolves into "and this is what's happening now"-type observation which is audio commentary suicide.

K-11 was an interesting watch, and one I don't regret. I feel as if a curtain has been lifted on a world on which I never gave much thought - whether it exists or not - but it's a shame that this world wasn't utilized to its maximum potential. At the end of the day, K-11 feels like nothing more than a really compelling missed opportunity.

K-11 streets on DVD and Bluray on April 23. Pre-order the DVD here.

SS OURANG MEDAN

In February, 1948, distress calls were picked up by numerous ships near Indonesia, from the Dutch freighter SS Ourang Medan. The chilling message was, “All officers including captain are dead lying in chartroom and bridge. Possibly whole crew dead.” This message was followed by indecipherable Morse code then one final grisly message… “I die.” When the first rescue vessel arrived on the scene a few hours later, they tried to hail the Ourang Medan but there was no response. A boarding party was sent to the ship and what they found was a frightening sight that has made the Ourang Medan one of the strangest and scariest ghost ship stories of all time.

All the crew and officers of the Ourang Medan were dead, their eyes open, faces looking towards the sun, arms outstretched and a look of terror on their faces. Even the ship’s dog was dead, found snarling at some unseen enemy. When nearing the bodies in the boiler room, the rescue crew felt a chill, though the temperature was near 110°F. The decision was made to tow the ship back to port, but before they could get underway, smoke began rolling up from the hull. The rescue crew left the ship and barely had time to cut the tow lines before the Ourang Medan exploded and sank.

To this day, the exact fate of the Ourang Medan and her crew remains a mystery.

Image source.

SHADOW PEOPLE

Emerson County has had reports of strange shadowy creatures/people since 1957. In August of 1997, roughly 2 miles from where the first reports originated, a video camera was found and turned into local authorities. What they saw on the old tape was scary, mysterious, and remains unexplained to this day. Some people refer to this "shadowy creature" as a "Shadow Person."