Eric Smith Annoyingly dreadful horror film and another relentless "Jaws" rip-off that is arguably the worst one yet. In fact, they seem to borrow characterizations off each "Jaws" film made at that point! Set in Miami, a marine biologist, a dolphin trainer, a research scientist and a local sheriff who attempt to hunt down a giant sea monster that is described as a hybrid of a shark and octopus, which makes me wonder if "Sharktapous" is a remake of this turd. We never actually see the giant fish, just a lot of awful close-ups of an open mouth that growls a lot. The cast is largely made up of Italians and Latin Americans so watching them attempt to play Floridians is equal parts hilarious and excruciating. The dialogue is groan inducing and the direction and cinematography is done as though no one knew what they were doing. This isn't even so bad it's worth watching. It's just plain awful.

Nick Drew This cheapo exploitation flick is some genuinely insipid stuff, courtesy of spaghetti land director Lamberto Bava, who wisely left his name off this junk.The basic crux of this outing concerns the discovery of some brutally mutilated individuals being washed-up on shore in the Caribbean. Authorities initially believe them to be victims of shark attacks, but as the investigation unravels, turns out to be something much more sinister.All of this ultimately amounts to very little however, we have here - poor dubbing complimented by similarly weak script, which often consists of nonsensical jabbering, and is really of little consequence for the most part. Acting can only be described as sub-par, which is par for the course in this instance. Truly lax direction doesn't help things either.Special effect mainly is for numerous close-ups of various gory bodies missing limbs, and so forth. Of course, there is the obligatory creature which periodically emerges at feeding time, which looks something like a big monster octopus thing, where its animation only consists of its pointed teeth ascending and descending in rhythmic articulation. Overall, the end result is none too convincing, sure, but admittedly is almost entertaining in a cheesy kind of fashion.It seems what the film makers were going for was a sort of low-rent hybrid of Jaws and Piranha, but the final product is just a bloody shambles, much like the corpses incessantly shown throughout this picture. I find it difficult to think of any redeeming attributes to warrant viewing this, so moreover, strictly for incurable monster movie addicts.

Coventry The lousiest of all lousy Jaws rip-offs was regretfully made by one of my all-time favorite directors; Lamberto Bava (here under his John Old Jr. pseudonym). You know how it goes in these cheap European imitations, right? They only want their monstrous animal to be be bigger, sicker and more threatening, but this more than often results in the opposite effect. Bava's creature is a humongous sea-devil and it's more than just a shark! We're seemingly dealing with a prehistoric monster here, with the jaws and appetite of a Great White, but it also has tentacles like an octopus! It's up to a couple of dolphin-loving oceanologists to discover how this monster was able to survive all these thousands of years and why exactly he only started his killing spree now. The script of "Monster Shark" makes few to no sense and most of the action takes place on the mainland. The shark itself is an unintentionally laughable creation and it was a wise decision of Lamberto Bava to only show it vaguely and in quick flashes. The acting performances are above average and the underwater photography is surprisingly clear and well-handled. The twists in the plot are predictable and you'll probably have the most fun spotting detailed facts about the characters. For example: count all the cans of beer Dr. Hogan drinks throughout the whole movie!

Martin Edelius Yikes.I've seen quite a few bad movies in my days, a lot of them in the company of Mike, Tom, Crow and the others from MST3k. So was the case with this one as well and even though I found the movie in itself quite funny, it wouldn't have been nearly as fun without the MST3k commentary.The movie is a prime example of really bad movies coming out of Europe during the eighties. Horrible music, horrible acting, horrible plot (what little there is), horrible dialogue and really, really, REALLY, horrible editing. Cripes.This might be called a turkey if it weren't for the fact that it's not unique in any way whatsoever. It's pretty much the same kind of film that almost every italian hack of a director cranked out.So, try and get the MST3k version. It's a pretty fun episode with Mike and gang in quite good form.