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Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus

  • Video
  • 2009
  • R
  • 1h 28m
IMDb RATING
2.5/10
12K
YOUR RATING
Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus (2009)
The California coast is terrorized by two enormous prehistoric sea creatures as they battle each other for supremacy of the sea.
Play trailer1:07
1 Video
39 Photos
KaijuMonster HorrorSea AdventureActionAdventureComedyHorrorSci-FiThriller

The California coast is terrorized by two enormous prehistoric sea creatures as they battle each other for supremacy of the sea.The California coast is terrorized by two enormous prehistoric sea creatures as they battle each other for supremacy of the sea.The California coast is terrorized by two enormous prehistoric sea creatures as they battle each other for supremacy of the sea.

  • Director
    • Jack Perez
  • Writer
    • Jack Perez
  • Stars
    • Lorenzo Lamas
    • Debbie Gibson
    • Vic Chao
  • See production info at IMDbPro
  • IMDb RATING
    2.5/10
    12K
    YOUR RATING
    • Director
      • Jack Perez
    • Writer
      • Jack Perez
    • Stars
      • Lorenzo Lamas
      • Debbie Gibson
      • Vic Chao
    • 160User reviews
    • 71Critic reviews
  • See production info at IMDbPro
  • Videos1

    Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus
    Trailer 1:07
    Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus

    Photos39

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    Top cast60

    Edit
    Lorenzo Lamas
    Lorenzo Lamas
    • Allan Baxter
    Debbie Gibson
    Debbie Gibson
    • Emma MacNeil
    • (as Deborah Gibson)
    Vic Chao
    Vic Chao
    • Seiji Shimada
    Jonathan Nation
    Jonathan Nation
    • Vince
    Mark Hengst
    Mark Hengst
    • Dick Ritchie
    Michael Teh
    Michael Teh
    • Takeo
    • (as Michael The)
    Chris Haley
    • Kenji
    Sean Lawlor
    Sean Lawlor
    • Lamar Sanders
    Dustin Harnish
    Dustin Harnish
    • Helmsman
    Dean Kreyling
    Dean Kreyling
    • U.S. Sub Captain
    Stephen Blackehart
    Stephen Blackehart
    • U.S. Sub Sonar Chief
    Dana DiMatteo
    • Marine Biologist
    • (as Dana Dimatteo)
    Myles Cranford
    Myles Cranford
    • Deputy
    Dana Healey
    • Naval Officer
    John Bolen
    • Weapons Officer
    Larry Wang Parrish
    • Japanese Typhoon Captain
    • (as Larry Parrish)
    Aki Hiro
    • Typhoon Navigator
    Russ Kingston
    • Admiral Scott
    • Director
      • Jack Perez
    • Writer
      • Jack Perez
    • All cast & crew
    • Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

    User reviews160

    2.511.5K
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    Featured reviews

    1moviesleuth2

    Agonizing

    Watching a movie for camp value is a risky thing. To be sure, there are many movies that embrace their silliness and play up their camp value, but sometimes the best campy movies are the ones that take themselves too seriously without realizing that they're completely absurd to begin with. After viewing "Tale of the Mummy," and finally recognizing the virtues of an "unintentionally funny" movie, my friend and I decided to try again, this time with a movie whose title, "Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus" is so lame that the movie could only be campy fun...or so we thought.

    Putting it bluntly, this is the worst movie I have ever seen. No amount of alcohol or other substance can bring out any entertainment value from this piece of crap. The acting is awful, the dialogue is a waste of printer paper, the special effects are an embarrassment, and worst of all, the movie doesn't make any sense. We hardly ever get to see the headlining stars, and when we do, they're just crude CGI effects that are repeated over and over again.

    I'd describe the plot, but there it isn't coherent enough to begin with. All that I can tell you is that an ancient species of shark, the Megalodon (an actual species of shark, and that's the only thing that this movie gets right) and a king-sized octopus (that looks more like a squid) were found locked in battle in a giant ice cube. Somehow, they escape, and start terrorizing Japan and San Francisco. Now, it's up to three scientists to stop them.

    The acting is awful. 80's pop star Deborah Gibson fares the best, although that's hardly praise. Vic Chao is horrible as her newfound love interest. Surprisingly, this is the only plot line that is coherent, and judging by how much we hate these two characters, that's not a good thing. Lorenzo Lamas is the worst of the lot as the idiot military guy, who wants to blow everything away instead of listening to the scientists (which, judging by their plan, is probably the smarter thing to do, except the movie expects us to sympathize with the moronic scientists...I guess gung-ho military types aren't all that bad).

    This is what happens when you make a 200 million dollar epic for less than a dime. Camera shots are obviously repeated (sometimes the monsters are left out of a shot when they're supposed to be destroying something), the acting is grating, and the dialogue is cringe inducing. Even the extras look embarrassed, and they don't say anything. One could argue that this film might have worked with a bigger budget. The truth of the matter is, however creatively bankrupt Hollywood is, no one in the right mind would read this script without first running it through the paper shredder and burning all remnants of its existence.

    Words cannot adequately describe how awful this movie is. Physical pain is almost pleasurable compared to the agony that this movie causes. This movie is hard to find, but it should be impossible. This movie should have never been made.
    1curtis-8

    Only More Monster Footage Could Save a "Movie" This Horrible

    This is one incredibly bad direct to video monster flick (though "bad direct to video monster flick" is probably a redundant term). It has all the classic earmark of the worst DTV has to offer--horrible screenplay, idiotic dialog, lots of talking in lieu of action, that incredibly annoying "avid fart" digital editing, bad grade z cast, Ed Wood level acting and directing, and GC effects that any grade schooler would almost be proud of. Now, this piece of S could have been entertaining despite the abundance of retarded MST3K-worthy acting, writing and direction if ONLY they had sprung for more than five minutes of footage featuring the title monsters. Imagine if King Kong V Godzilla had only featured the title monsters in short three to five second blips and the all out battle between them takes all of eleven seconds from start to finish. Now double how much that would suck and that would be the equivalent of this "film."

    To sum up--and incredibly bad, incredibly amateur hunk of junk that would be moronically entertaining if it just weren't so damned boring.
    2buckramega

    I had forgotten movies could be this bad

    I normally only watch the bigger budget movies with a few art house type sprinkled in, but I had heard about this title somewhere, so when I saw it at the video store I thought, what the heck? how bad could it be? The answer: Amazingly bad. Phenomenally bad. Utterly horrific. Not the worst movie ever, but close. When your movie wishes it was as good as Battlefield Earth, you know you have a problem. It wasn't even the good kind of bad, where you can laugh at the unintentional humor.

    The good: Still trying to come up with something The bad: I know this is a low budget D-list movie, but come on - the effects and CGI were stunningly bad. They looked like they were done on my laptop over a weekend. They might have been acceptable in the early 90s.

    To make it even worse, many of the CGI scenes were constantly repeated. Whenever the shark or octopus attacked, you usually saw it preparing or approaching for the attack several times using the exact same footage. Sometimes they even bothered to mirror image the scene to make it look different.

    So many of the details were amazingly unrealistic. The dialogue was bad, the way people behaved and delivered lines, physics (as in what animals of that size could actually do), torpedoes were like firecrackers, etc.

    Quality control was obviously lacking. When the shark approaches a battleship from the side, the ship is shown firing forward. Once, during a video call, for about a second a film crew member wearing a headset pops into existence beside the person on the call, and then disappears. The caller and those working in the background are obviously oblivious to this phantom man.

    There was this laughably bad science scene where the main characters keep dumping vials of various colored liquids into test tubes of other colored stuff and then they all looked disappointed. This happened over and over for like 5 minutes. All without any dialogue or any clue as to what they were actually doing. We only knew they were looking for a "solution" to the problem of giant sea monsters. I guess dumping red goo into a vat of blue gunk and having it not turn a different color is not a solution to giant sea monsters. Gosh, I am glad they tried that, it might have worked! There was an embarrassingly bad romance side plot thrown in, and the build up to the final showdown was dull, and then that showdown was short and filled with repeats of the same footage over and over.

    I almost never feel strongly enough about a movie to write a review, but for this one I had to. If I prevent even one person from seeing this movie, then I have done my job.
    5MetalGeek

    "It Rises!"

    I'm sure that most of the people who have seen this film were suckered in by the trailer, which became an Internet viral-video smash earlier this year. How could you not want to see it after watching the clip of a gargantuan shark jumping out of the ocean and attacking an airliner? Giant Monster Movies have always brought out my inner 8 year old, and "Mega Shark Vs. Giant Octopus" was no exception. Is it a good movie? Of course not. But is it a fun movie? Oh, hell yes. For Z-grade direct to video aficionados like myself, this flick is manna from Heaven. I've read much about the notorious production house "The Asylum" (and its celebrated "mockbuster" ripoffs of more famous movies) over the past few months but this is the first film of theirs I've seen. I hate to admit it, but after seeing "Mega Shark" I am now curious enough to investigate some of their other works like "Transmorphers" or "The Terminators". (I must be in dire need of medication.) As you'd expect from a movie made on a six-pack budget, "Mega Shark" is not exactly a feast for the eyes. The special effects are minimal (done mostly in cheap C.G.I.), and the title monsters tend to look like bathtub toys swimming around in dirty dishwater. The human cast isn't much more interesting, although former '80s teen queen Deborah (a.k.a. Debbie) Gibson seems to be having fun with her role as a crusading oceanographer who is pressed into government service (by perennial Direct To Video mainstay Lorenzo Lamas) to help rid the oceans of the two monstrous creatures. Teamed up with her former professor (played by an Irishman doing what appears to be a low-rent Sean Connery imitation) and a Japanese colleague (played by an Asian guy doing an equally low rent George Takei imitation), the three spout a near endless stream of unintentionally hilarious dialog (at least I hope it's unintentional) to pad out run time between the too-short scenes of monstrous mayhem. Mega Shark devours a hunk of the Golden Gate Bridge in addition to his airliner snack, whilst Giant Octopus destroys an offshore oil rig, then the pair team up to destroy a few battleships and submarines full of overacting extras before they turn on each other in what is supposed to be a Battle Royale but in reality takes up approximately two minutes of film. A romantic sub-plot between Debbie and Japanese Scientist Guy is jammed in out of nowhere, apparently so that Debbie has someone to snuggle up with on the beach at the end of the film. Needless to say, I laughed my way through the entire movie. Now that I think about it, The Asylum probably should've teamed with Toho Productions to make this film -- I can only imagine what the "Godzilla" special effects team could've done with this concept. Basically, if you're a lover of bad monster cinema, you need to see "Mega Shark Vs. Giant Octopus" at least once. Otherwise, you're better off sticking with watching the trailer over and over on YouTube. All the best parts of the movie are in it anyway.
    2atinder

    I Give it 2 stars just for the title of the movie

    As I am huge fan of Killer Animals movies, Spiders, Crocdie , Octopus, Ant, Birds, Dogs, Slugs/Worms, Frogs, you name it, I would like it

    I was so looking forward to this movie since i saw trailer but this movie was HUGE let down for me

    You will have to seat thought 75 minutes of really BAD acting, (The acting is so bad that it make want to turn the movie off ) for the first Fight scene and I am sure they use the same scenes over and over and over again in the Fight it self was unbeliever RUBBISH and even bigger let down the whole movie

    However You do get to see the Octupus and Shark before the Fight scene at different times out of the water!

    I would rather watch Octupus 2 (2000) again instead of this!

    2/10

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    Related interests

    Haruo Nakajima in Godzilla (1954)
    Kaiju
    Bill Skarsgård in It (2017)
    Monster Horror
    Suraj Sharma in Life of Pi (2012)
    Sea Adventure
    Bruce Willis in Die Hard (1988)
    Action
    Still frame
    Adventure
    Will Ferrell in Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004)
    Comedy
    Mia Farrow in Rosemary's Baby (1968)
    Horror
    James Earl Jones and David Prowse in Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
    Sci-Fi
    Cho Yeo-jeong in Parasite (2019)
    Thriller

    Storyline

    Edit

    Did you know

    Edit
    • Trivia
      The first Asylum production to have a theatrical release.
    • Goofs
      A group of hammerhead sharks swim near the Arctic. Hammerheads only swim in warm waters.
    • Quotes

      [Condor Airlines 747 experiences some turbulence while at 30,000 feet in the air. As a female passenger is advised by a flight attendant to put her seatback up, her fiancé is jolted by the sudden change in turbulence and he gets up]

      Nervous Air Passenger: Whoa!

      Flight Attendent: Please sit down, sir. It's just an air pocket. Thank you.

      Nervous Air Passenger: We're getting married in two days.

      Flight Attendent: You'll be fine.

      Airline Captain: [On the intercom] All right, folks, please fasten your seat belts.

      [as the 747 flies through the clouds, the male passenger suddenly looks out the window]

      Nervous Air Passenger: Holy shit!

      [the Megalodon jumps up from the sea to catch the 747]

    • Crazy credits
      Special Thanks: BETSY AND BENJI
    • Connections
      Featured in Bad Movie Beatdown: Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus (2010)
    • Soundtracks
      Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major, BWV 107
      Composed by Johann Sebastian Bach

      Performed by Tina Guo

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    Details

    Edit
    • Release date
      • November 11, 2009 (Japan)
    • Country of origin
      • United States
    • Official site
      • Official site
    • Language
      • English
    • Also known as
      • Mega Shark Versus Giant Octopus
    • Filming locations
      • AES Alamitos, 690 North Studebaker Road, Long Beach, California, USA
    • Production companies
      • The Asylum
      • Giant Seafood
    • See more company credits at IMDbPro

    Box office

    Edit
    • Gross worldwide
      • $722
    See detailed box office info on IMDbPro

    Tech specs

    Edit
    • Runtime
      • 1h 28m(88 min)
    • Color
      • Color
    • Aspect ratio
      • 1.78 : 1

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