Friends,
Every once in awhile, a movie comes along that inspires you. You find yourself lost in the world of these incredible characters, brought together onscreen in a flawless performance designed to make you push the limits of what you thought was scientifically possible, and move into a new reality; a world without death and disease, where man and beast unite in a peaceful Utopia, and all worries and cares are left behind.
That world, my friend, belongs to Dr. Preston King (Jeffery Combs), mad scientist extraordinare who has been exiled from the scientific community, and has spent his free-time building a scientific lab on a secluded island with one noble purpose: to fuse shark and human DNA in order to fight cancer.
How? Well… Dr. King doesn’t exactly say. Or maybe he does, but we’re too lost in the beauty of the island, the lush foliage in his experimental greenhouse, or the… wait a second… are those pregnant women locked in giant test-tubes of water? That can’t be right. Oh, but no worries. After all, he’s wearing a lab coat and glasses, so he must know what he’s doing. Anyway, over the course of some hastily-written dialogue, we learn that Dr. King has set up a series of human experiments resulting in the ultimate fusion freakazoid: the SharkMan.
SharkMan is the current state of being for Dr. King’s son Paul, who spent the end of his homosapien days fighting a losing battle with cancer. Unwilling to stand idly by as his son passed away, Dr. King did what any normal father would do: he fused his DNA with that of a shark, leaving his only child a half-man, half-shark monster who seems a tad disgruntled about his current state of being. Or at least, that’s what we assume, based on the fact that Paul the SharkMan seems to spend every waking moment of his day trying to eat the people around him.
Enter Amelia Lockhart (Hunter Tylo) and Tom Reed (William Forsythe), two scientists who are about to travel to this deserted island, because they have clearly never seen a sci-fi disaster movie, and thus do not understand the dangers involved with banishing a mad scientist to a remote location. Amelia, Tom, and their team of nameless coworkers arrive at the island, and are almost immediately attacked by SharkMan. I’ll spare you the details, as these scenes are much better seen than read about, but let me assure you—terror ensues.
Or, at least, terror would ensue, if the movie ever actually SHOWED SharkMan. It seems that the production budget was too small to allow for the creation of a SharkMan costume, so we never see him in his entirety—instead, we get a blurred creature running through the woods in one scene, a fin coming out of the water in the next, rows of teeth biting through human flesh moments later… but hey, you get the idea. He’s a shark that can walk on land. And he’s coming for YOU.
Over the next 90 minutes, we enjoy some overly dramatic acting, a lot of corn-syrupy blood, and a fantastic plot twist (spoiler alert): apparently Dr. King is working on the newest phase of his experiment—attempting to get Paul the SharkMan to MATE WITH HUMAN WOMEN. Unfortunately, Paul the SharkMan seems a little hazy on the details of procreation, and spends most of his time eating the pretty girls that dad has brought home for him to date. Silly Paul. You can’t have your women and eat them too.
Anyway. You get the gist. It’s a damn shame this movie never hit theaters, but luckily, it’s out there on DVD, permanently gracing the Blockbuster shelves and Netflix queues for your viewing pleasure. Get a group of friends together for bad movie night and check it out. You won’t be sorry.
IMDB Information, in case you're interested: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0459392/
