Sharks: Sharktopus (2010)

Gathered together from the cosmic reaches of the universe, here in this great screening room with comfortable recliners, are the most powerful forces of good ever assembled. Keith!

It just stuck out because it referenced Noah, and I know that's a special movie for us too.

Terry!

That's interesting. Now that's interesting. That's interesting. A man becoming a whale wolf.

Derek! Well, that's a spoiler for Sharktopus vs. Terracuda! And the power twins, Zap and Jordan, with their magical lemur snort, dedicated Welcome back to Fumbling Their Way Through Movies, one forgotten gem at a time. This week we watch a government experiment gone wrong in 2010's Sharktopus. This is Fumbling Through Film.

Damn you, Sharktopus!

Hello and welcome to another one-of-a-kind, genre-defining, brand new episode of Fumbling Through Film, the only show that dares to bring together 3 dudes to talk about movies. These, however, aren't just any movies.

Not just any movie. That is correct. And that's enough said on the subject.

Well, to expound upon that statement, these are the ones we've either missed, overlooked, or feel are simply worth revisiting. I feel like—

Or I think we may have found a new category this week.

No, it fits. I missed— well, I didn't miss it. I knew it existed.

You overlooked it for sure.

I overlooked it. Anyway, let's see.

No, no, no, no, no.

Didn't overlook. I was not looking for.

No, I— well, did you know it existed?

Yes.

So you overlooked it. You said, I'm not watching that. Anyway, my name is Derek and I'm a fumbler. Joining me here in the Fumble Dome, who's overlooking all sorts of stuff, is the Prime Minister of Fumbling and Film, Keith.

Hey, hey, what's up everybody? It's KG, fumbler extraordinaire. Um, to our dear listeners, I'm putting disclaimer out here. up front, um, I apologize. Especially for those of you who choose to watch the movie.

Don't spoil the episode for these poor people.

What, what if you really liked it?

What if there's a—

that's the tension of the show.

Yeah. Again, dear listener, I apologize. But this should make for— actually, you know what, this should make for a fun episode though.

Oh boy, see, now you're putting pressure on us.

Oh, why do we always bring the fun?

You shouldn't be promising fun.

Yeah, and yeah, and I gotta correct myself. I did not say, well, that's just about any movie. The other person that agrees with me is Dr. Ray of Kansas, Terry.

I clearly heard him. I clearly heard you agree with him.

No, I, I didn't agree with anything. Um, I never do. I'm the most contrarian member of the podcast, and, uh, it's gonna be my most serious episode to date, probably.

Terry's, uh, Sitting there, hands crossed in front of him. They're like fingers peeked, like right under his nose, in front of his mouth. He's thinking very deeply about what we're going to do here.

Sometimes they call me the contrarian.

Yes, we do do that sometimes.

Oh, I—

he said they. I thought he meant somebody outside of you and me, Derek.

Many people do, but especially you two. Anyways.

Yeah, you know what else is anyways?

Oh, this podcast.

That's for sure.

This podcast. Oh, so we should let people know what it is we do here. After Keith's already apologized for the episode, it hasn't even happened yet.

To be fair, he does that every week.

Terry's Terry's called himself the Contarian.

You you any statement? You any declarations this week, Derek?

We just every week we watch movies, but not just any movie. Nom nom nom. Uh, every month one of us chooses a theme, a genre, a guiding light, some sort of— I don't know, it doesn't even matter.

And then we— Some sort of genetic military experiment?

It's some sort of genetic military experiment, uh, labeled the X and then a number. It was X11, right? Wasn't it? Or no?

S11. S11.

X11.

S stands for Sharktopus, I think.

I think the S did stand for Sharktopus. You're right. And then we pick movies that adhere to the theme genre or genetic experiment. And then we watch those. And on the 4th week, we truly fumble. But we're not there yet because this month is DTF, Down to Fumble. Y2M9. The M stands for month.

Thanks. I almost forgot.

Terry, that's a Terry month. So Terry, let us know what we're doing this month.

Well, I decided to, uh, pick a very special category involving very precious animals of the ocean. The shark.

The shark. Shark movies.

And you led us off with Dangerous Animals from 2025. Yeah.

And then I followed it up with Sharkwater, the documentary from 2000-something, '07, '05, something like that. And that means this is dub three. It's a Keith week. So Keith, what are you apologetically giving us?

Oh boy, oh boy! Look, we all have. We all have one of these out there. This just happens to be my month. We're gonna watch Sharktopus.

Sharktopus from 2017?

2010. 2010. It's such a 2010 film.

Yeah.

It is. It reeks of 2010.

I'll be honest, September 25th, uh, 2010. Um, so we are coming up on the 16-year anniversary of it very shortly here.

Oh my gosh, we should send it a plaque for its most powerful 16 years.

We probably should. It's definitely not going to get more powerful.

No.

And before we do that though, before we send it a plaque, before we talk about our Viewing before we deep dive Sharktopus. Did any of us have any previous knowledge, history, and/or experience with Sharktopus?

So experience, no. Knowledge of it existing, yes. The guy who does the clip that we opened with, uh, his name's Ralph Garman. He's, uh, he does a podcast with, um, Kevin Smith, and like the damn you Sharktopus line has come up a handful of times. Uh, over the years of that podcast, uh, and that's the main reason I, I knew that line offhand. But other than that, I, I didn't know enough about this and I wish I had.

Yeah, I definitely heard of this. Um, but I, you know, it was one of those films I was like, well, I'll never need to watch this. Why would I? If sure, it's not worth it at all, but maybe I've changed my tune. Who knows?

Maybe. I know I had heard of it. I had never seen it. And when my wife asked me today, what movie you watching this week? I said Sharktopus. She looked at me and I said, it's one of those old sci-fi movies. She's like, how do you know all these old movies? I'm like, I said old as in like 2005.

Yeah, this isn't like a 1950s.

This is not black and white.

This is not the 1950s Sharktopus.

When I say sci-fi, I mean S-Y-F-Y, right? Yes. It's not the correct Spelling of sci-fi. It's siffy.

Siffy. Yeah, it's like the cool way to spell it.

Yeah, with an X in there.

Yeah, that's way better. I like that.

Z-Y-F-Y.

Sci-fi. Or even more scientifically fictional.

Yes, scientifically fictional. That's our tagline, I think.

We have a number of these now, but I do like that one.

Scientifically fictional. What are our other ones, Keith? Do you know them off the top of your head?

Well, I mean, the other one was, it's not something we've said on the, uh, on the show before, but, but I think I created this week is, uh, so go the fumbler, so go the world.

Oh yeah.

Yeah. Oh, I like that.

And, um, uh, oh, see, God, why do you do this? All right. Well, speaking of curses, Terry, we gotta, we gotta relax.

Oh, I'm so relaxed.

Because Keith is going to take us closer than we could have ever dared imagine to Sharktopus with another patent-pending Fumbler's Deep Dive.

All right, so, uh, last, uh, last week, Derek, I think you brought us our first documentary.

Yes.

That we've done, and I do believe this is the first TV movie. that we, that we have now covered, uh, on here.

Was that Dreamscape thing a TV movie?

No, those were theaters.

Okay, just wondering.

And I was thinking that while I was watching this, but then I was trying to determine if Tubi Originals fell under that, but they had profanity and stuff in them. But like modern TV movies have profanity in them as well. And Titanic 666 had like weird boobs in it for like half a second. I think so did the Terror Train.

What? No, Terror Train was a class act.

Well, I mean, that's also like, that's the direct-to-streaming stuff, I guess. So it's not— which is, I guess, the new advancement of like a TV movie.

Yeah, this is— but this predates—

yeah, this is a never, never seen any— no, I think it was part of Shark Week, uh, potentially, or right around there. It, it's—

it wasn't on Discovery Channel, it was on—

no, no, it was, um, Syfy did it, but it was like their response, like a Shark Week thing. And after they did, I think, like, what, Sharknado 6 or whatever, they got around to this one.

Oh, okay.

Sharknado probably ruined it for everything.

More than likely.

Yeah.

Yeah. But anyway, uh, this is an hour and 29 minutes long. Um, as I said, September 25th, 2010, so it's almost 16 years ago. A half shark and half octopus creature created for the military creates a whole lot of terror Mexico while the scientist who helped create it tries to either capture it or kill it, or like sits on a boat and tells other people to do it.

Yeah, he definitely doesn't want to kill it, that's for sure.

No, not until the very end.

Spoilers. Here's, uh, one— maybe one of the ways I could have done a little more research in this is that Sharktopus gets a 60% on Rotten Tomatoes, which led me to believe that maybe it's not that bad, but it's really only based on 6 reviews.

Yeah, it seems weird that there's only 6 reviews and they're all— yeah, they have it out to 60%. That still seems high to me. But who knows, it's got its fan base.

And if I would have done a little more research, I could have maybe seen some of those reviews, such as, um, review site, uh, Bloody Good Horror said Sharktopus is absolutely not a good film. The acting is slightly above amateur level, the plot is pretty formulaic and predictable, and the CG is the absolute worst I've ever seen. But you know what? It all works. Despite its flaws, or perhaps because of them, Sharktopus is an insanely entertaining film and easily the best thing that I've watched for bloody good horror so far in 2011.

Really? The best thing?

Was it like January 1st?

Yeah, maybe the 2nd at worst.

It's the only way it could easily be the best.

Now, uh, this one says a handful of taglines for it. There's underwater terror of tentacles and teeth.

Okay.

I like the, I like the wordplay there.

What's the wordplay?

Well, the alliteration. Alliteration. Yeah. The terror of tentacles and teeth.

Sure.

This one you really can kind of just decide what's your favorite, but there's half shark, half octopus, all terror.

Mm-hmm.

Half shark, half octopus, all killer.

Mm-hmm.

Okay.

Or 50% shark, 50% octopus, 100% deadly.

That's— they're all bad.

Yeah, that's my favorite one though. It's got actual numbers in it.

Yeah, I hope— yeah, I like the, the exactness of that. I wish it was like a little less like exact, like it was like about 45% shark, about 48% shark, 52%, uh, octopus.

I couldn't think of what the other part was of this shark.

It's hard to add. Yeah, it's hard to add.

Yeah, so, uh, I feel like there's extra parts besides that too, just saying. In Caribbean legend, there is actually a half shark, half octopus monster known as the Lusca. L-U-S-C-A.

Really? So this is based off true things.

That's a bit hard to believe. You know what else you could find hard to believe? In 2023, there was a Chinese remake made.

They've remade this?

They probably wanted to make it better.

Yeah.

You know what?

I will get into a little bit better, but I could very much understand a remake being made of this. Uh, this movie was directed by Declan O'Brien. You may know him from Wrong Turn 3: Left 4 Dead.

Okay.

You may know him from Wrong Turn 4: Bloody Beginnings.

Uh-oh.

You may know him from Wrong Turn 5: Bloodlines.

Oh, Bloodlines.

Yeah. Now you're probably saying to yourself, Keith, I actually don't even know what Wrong Turn is. And that's the, uh, that's the 2003 Eliza Dushku vehicle. Uh, Chris and a group of 5 friends are left stranded deep in the middle of the woods after their cars collide. As they venture deeper into the woods, they face an uncertain and blood-curdling fate.

Is this in relation to the movie Into the— or the musical Into the Woods?

No, but I wish it was. That would be great.

Yeah, this is a really prosperous spinoff they have here. Wrong Turn 1 through 5, 6.

Well, well, we have in 2003 was the original one. 2007 was Wrong Turn 2: Dead End that actually had Henry Rollins in it.

Oh wow, cool.

Yeah.

Did they all have Eliza Dushku in them?

No, just the one.

Oh, okay.

And and our boy here Declan, he directed three, four, and five, but he did not come back for Wrong Turn Six: Last Resort in 2014. An inheritance leads a young man and his friends to an abandoned resort inhabited by 2 sketchy caretakers and a clan of mutant cannibals.

Whoa.

Oh, mutant cannibals.

Yeah.

So I think this, uh, is supposed to have like maybe a little bit of the Hills Have Eyes type vibe to it.

Sounds like it. Yeah.

Is that anything like the Hills Are Alive with the Sound of Music?

Very close. Very close.

Okay.

Sound of the music. If music is the screaming of the innocent getting devoured, then yeah.

Or they, they stumble across that family from that one X-Files episode.

Oh God, yeah. Yeah, I love them. Love those guys.

I have Thanksgiving with those guys every year.

And, uh, I, I picked one other, uh, movie here by Declan, um, and that was in 2008. He did a movie called Monster Ark.

A-R-K.

Yep.

Archaeologist, uh, Nicholas Zavatero and his student find a vase with an antique inscription on where Noah's Ark is hidden in the under—

oh.

In the underlying monster called Tama, and they decide to go looking for it, but things get out of control.

I was hoping, like Noah, they were building an ark and getting 2 of every monster on it.

That's what I thought at first, but apparently they find out where the ark is at and there's a monster involved.

There's only one monster on there.

Not, not there. The ark is hidden in the underlying monster called Tama.

What?

I don't know what it got eaten.

That's the.

Did it get shrunk and eaten? How's it in there?

Maybe Tammo's a giant monster.

The ark's gotta be pretty big.

I don't know. It, it just stuff.

I need answers.

It referenced Noah, and I know that's a special movie for us here.

It is a special. It is.

You're right.

Yeah. The writer, Mike McLean. We can see how he got this job. This is kind of his deal. He also did, in 2010, he did Dinocroc versus Supergator. In 2012, now see, we may have to reach out to Mike.

Why?

Well, because we're going to need, we, well, we might need some help writing a script. And he might be the man to do it. Because in 2012, he did Piranhaconda.

Oh, he stole our idea.

Piranhaconda.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Um, a piranha anaconda hybrid creature hunts down the scientists who stole their egg, as well as a film crew making a slasher film in the jungle. Uh, this has Michael Madsen in it and a bunch of people I don't know, but, um, he sounds like the type of guy who could do Batsikonda pretty good.

I don't want him to write Batsikonda. No, I'll be honest, I don't want him to do it. No offense to this Mr. McLean, but I feel like You know, I know BasketCon is kind of over-the-top concept, but I think we could do better.

I mean, yeah, even if, even if in 2012 he also did Attack of the 50-Foot Cheerleader, uh-huh, where aspiring college cheerleader Cassie Stratford consumes an experimental drug that grants her beauty and enough athletic ability to make the cheer squad. Also has unforeseen side effect: she starts to grow and grow and grow. That last movie there was directed by Kevin O'Neill, and I'm gonna mention him real quick because Kevin O'Neill, he was also the director on 2014's Sharktopus versus Terracuda.

Terracuda?

What?

So what's that a combo of? A barracuda and terror?

Pterodactyl.

Yep.

Oh!

Sometime after the events of the first film, marine biologist Lorena Christmas discovers an egg sac containing a baby Sharktopus in the ocean left behind by the destruction of the original Sharktopus.

A baby egg sac?

And I do believe we see it float away at the end of this movie when, if, if you were paying that close attention. The Royals.

I missed that.

Yeah.

I don't know if I saw that. Yeah.

Sometime later, Dr. Rico Sims, who's played by Robert Carradine, he's the CEO of Simodyne, which it says is the company that originally created Sharktopus, but I thought that was like Blue Ocean or something like that.

Yeah.

But here he uses a barracuda pterodactyl hybrid creature. Known as Terracuda, intended for military use.

What?

And Shark's Puss has to go and fight it.

What?

Who's—

who in the military's funding all these animals?

Maybe Conan O'Brien, 'cause he has a cameo in this movie in a scene described as truly violent, patently disgusting, and darkly humorous.

All right.

Wow. Not, not to be outdone. Uh, uh, our boy, uh, Kevin O'Neill also directed the 2015 movie Sharktopus vs. Whalewolf.

Whalewolf?

Yep. Since its fight with the Terracuda, the Sharktopus is still at large.

Uh-oh.

An alcoholic boat captain—

Well, that's a spoiler for Sharktopus vs. Terracuda.

I'm guessing Terracuda lost.

Yeah, sounds like it.

Uh, An alcoholic boat captain named Ray, who's played by Casper Van Dien, is enlisted by a voodoo priest named Tiny, uh, to obtain the heart of the Sharktopus. Meanwhile, Dr. Reinhardt, who's played by Catherine Oxenberg, uh, is a mad scientist who studied with the late Nathan Sands— that's Eric Roberts's character in this movie— and the late Rico Sims from the previous 2 Sharktopus movies, mixes the genes of the killer whale and a wolf. It resembles something of the extinct Pakicetus, uh, an ancestor of the modern whale. The resulting treatment transforms Felix Rosa into the whale wolf, which causes havoc and results in fighting with the shark pup before it dies.

A human becomes a whale wolf?

That's what it says. But, and I really, I had to re— I reread that line multiple times. Or I have no idea.

Is it Hulk? Like, he gets mad and turns into whale wolf?

No clue.

That's interesting. Now that's interesting.

Incredibly interesting.

A man becoming a whale wolf.

Yeah, I thought it was just gonna be another giant creature, and then when I read that, I literally read that like half a dozen times to make sure that I was understanding that correctly.

What's the term? Like hat on a hat, where it's like we have this crazy idea of a whale, half whale, half wolf, and then it's like, but what if a man turned into a Yeah. So it's actually like 1/3 man, 1/3 whale, 1/3 wolf.

I got this idea for a whale wolf. Well, how do— like, so how did we get this creature?

I, I don't know.

I don't— somebody else is pitching, why don't we inject a human and it can turn into it?

I bet you it started off as a werewhale as an idea, and then somebody's like, okay. And so they drew up The, uh, concept art, and it was a big hairy whale. They're like, no, not a, not a whale wolf. That's it.

Everybody's like, ew, that looks weird. Yeah, he's just completely covered, huge long hair.

Oh God, do you know how bad a whale wolf would smell?

Oh, it's all wet.

Yeah, yeah.

And you know, like, when it gets out of the water, it shakes itself, water's gonna go flying everywhere.

Plus, I'm just picturing like the, uh, American Werewolf in London, uh, transformation scene, but it's like a giant whale-sized creature.

Could you imagine? I'm just sitting here in my little apartment and then I start to slowly transform and I just destroy the entire building becoming a whale.

What if you're the man and you only turn into a whale at will, but— and you like, you do that for fun or to solve crimes, but—

Oh sure, yeah.

When there's a full moon, Oh no, that's when the whale who was bitten by a werewolf turns into the werewolf. The man.

Oh yeah, so the experiment thing was only to turn the guy into a whale.

Yes.

Yeah, okay.

Like, so like the whale—

yeah, go ahead.

By a werewolf.

I think that's like a great idea because like what, you know, maybe they have like, uh, the whale and the, the man have like a power ring they put on and they both combined. And then it's like the whale's like, hold on, I have something to tell you before we, uh, we combine. He's like, no, who cares? Let's do it. When they combine, and the twist is he was gonna warn him that he has a, a disease that turns him into a whale wolf. But now—

So I think we just put a hat on top of a hat on top of a hat on top of a hat.

Oh, and his arch nemesis is probably like an evil version of Whale Wolf.

He has the same powers.

Yeah, that's what I'm thinking.

The weirdest concoction of powers. There happens to be an evil version of it.

Now the synopsis of this again says the resulting treatment transforms Felix Rosa into the Whalewolf, which causes having results in it fighting with the whale, fighting with the Sharktopus. Then he dies. I'm assuming that means Felix.

That seems like a spoiler.

I'm assuming that means Felix Rosa and not the Sharktopus itself, which means that apparently Sharktopus is still out there.

Or maybe like the human side died, but the Whalewolf lives on.

Yes.

Whalewolf lost all, all tenuous connection to humanity.

The only thing holding them back from becoming a murderous psycho was that man side.

Yep.

Yep.

Mm-hmm.

Because killer whales and wolves are both bloodthirsty.

Yes.

Another little trivia fact that I found on IMDb.

Uh-huh.

Uh, this was under, um, like flaws.

Oh, really?

The sharktopus has an octopus's tentacles in place of the shark's tail fin. An octopus swims using a siphon under its head, not moving with its tentacles, which are used for crawling on the ocean floor. Therefore, the sharktopus lacks the means of propulsion through the water.

I was thinking that in my head, like, why not have the back half be shark and the front half be octopus?

I'm like, somebody like had way too much free time and opened up IMDb one day.

I think it's a good point.

I, I think a better design is a shark that has like a skirt of tentacles around it, right? Like, so it's a full shark, but It looks like a tutu where there's 8, like, around the circumference of its body.

Yes. And then like 4 on each side can like whip together and become 2 legs and they'll just start walking around.

God, yeah.

That'd make more sense than what happens in this movie.

Or just as much sense.

Maybe an equal amount.

So I, you know, I mentioned earlier I recognized the, the guy Ralph Garman. I don't think anybody else is really going to recognize him very much.

Nope.

Nope.

He was a former K-Rock radio personality. I've been in a handful of movies here and there, but the other people in this, in this really— there's one guy I recognized who's in Nacho Libre. It was the cameraman.

You didn't recognize like the main scientist dad guy?

I'm getting to it.

Oh, well, you just said you didn't recognize him.

No, the rest of the people I didn't recognize, but I did recognize one person's particular.

And you said it was from Nacho Libre.

No, I did not.

Yes, you—

No, I didn't.

I said I didn't recognize—

but the other people in this, in this really— there's one guy I recognized who's in Nacho Libre, who's the cameraman. I— okay, all right, so this movie, uh, I recognize one actor very specifically, the main character, or the main doctor of this. Not even really the main character, he's The, the other people that played main character, I had no clue about them. I looked at them, uh, I will get into that. Don't spoil things.

No. Um, okay.

Sorry.

And, uh, but I did recognize that one. No, I, I, I did, uh, recognize that one guy, the cameraman Bones. He looked familiar to me. I looked up, he was actually in Nacho Libre. That's where I recognized him from. Oh yeah, I heard that before. Um, but, uh, uh, the main person here is, uh, Eric Roberts.

Uh-huh.

Eric Roberts has 943 acting credits.

Holy cow.

92 are listed as, uh, upcoming.

Oh boy, he's getting— he's got a lot coming up.

92 projects in the barrel. They're like locked and loaded. They're ready to come out.

They are in some form of either post-production, final editing, whatever. There's a couple that are in pre-production, but yeah, he has 90 Tell you right now, I logged on this morning and was writing down all my notes for this and it said there was 942 acting credits and 91 of them were listed as up and coming. And then when I logged back on to do some final little, uh, looking up some stuff, uh, there was another one added.

Yes.

Yes, there was. Yes.

No way.

Come on.

How much stuff has he got going on?

A lot apparently, cuz I also saw someplace, I saw an article that said he's the highest paid actor for 2025. But yeah, when you make like 80 movies in a year, yes, you— yeah, you're gonna make some— you're gonna have to make some money. Yeah, good for him. So, uh, for those of you not familiar with Eric Roberts, uh, he played Eric Roberts in 1996's The Cable Guy.

He played himself.

Uh, version of himself, I believe. He also played Eric Roberts in one episode of Entourage, um, which he says very much not like himself. You guys recognize him, uh, easily, uh, where he played Maroni in The Dark Knight. Yes.

Yes.

He said he interviewed, you know, he auditioned for it and everything, assumed he didn't get it because, uh, 2 months had gone by before Christopher Nolan finally called up and was like, hey, I, you want this role? Come on down to the studio. We'll film it real quick.

Hmm.

'Cause he's in it just for a real short amount of time.

Mm-hmm.

He played an FBI agent in the music video Down Ass Chick by Ja Rule featuring Charlie Baltimore.

Awesome.

Yep. Uh, he returns to a character he knows a lot, uh, very well. He plays Eric Roberts in the music video Down for You by Ja Rule featuring Ashanti, Vita, and Charlie Baltimore.

Is that the sequel for Down Ass Chick?

I have no idea. Down Ass Chick might be the sequel to the other one.

And is this before Fyre Fest or after Fyre Fest? I don't know what—

Before.

Before.

This is that— this is definitely before. He didn't have the strength to pull an Eric Roberts now. Okay. Um, he plays Lover in the music video for Mr. Brightside by The Killers.

Wow.

And he also plays Jack Gates in the music video for Smack That by Akon featuring Eminem.

Okay.

Really prolific.

I, yeah, it's, I mean, like, this is more than a decade of, of, of power, more than a powerful decade. Uh, and that's, and, and most of that is like stuff in like, you know, the, like the late '90s and 2000s there. But back in 1986, he got an Oscar nom and a Golden Globe nomination.

Oh, really?

Uh, for Best Supporting Actor in the movie Runaway Train. 2 escaped convicts, a female railway worker find themselves trapped on a speeding train with no brakes and nobody driving. Stars Jon Voight and Rebecca De Mornay. Written by Akira Kurosawa.

Huh, it was?

Yeah.

Is it a remake of something? I have no idea. Interesting.

Seven Samurai.

That's really cool. I'd never even heard of this.

Seven Samurai on a Train. Uh, in 1984, he got a Golden Globe nomination for Star 80. And in 1979, uh, he got an acting debut. He got— I guess they used to give him an award for like the best debut acting thing.

So it was like an actor and actress, like Rookie of the Year for acting.

Yeah, pretty much.

Yeah.

Um, and he was nominated in 1979 for the movie, uh, King of the Gypsies. Now, uh, a quote from him: I had a perfect track record up until Rude Awakening in 1989. Then the track record goes bumpy, then it goes bad, and I'm ruining myself with B-movies. I've done a lot of shit, but I've reinstated myself. You're asking what was Rude Awakening? Uh, it was a rated R movie, co-stars Cheech Marin. In the '60s, 2 hippies go off into the jungle to evade the FBI. When they come back to New York in the 1980s, their fellow hippies have become rich yuppies.

Oh no! It's every hippie's worst nightmare.

Yeah.

Couple of quick notes here. He is the brother of Julia Roberts.

Uh huh.

He is the father of Emma Roberts.

Uh huh.

He's good friends with Stone Cold Steve Austin.

Uh huh.

He's a black belt in taekwondo and is a practitioner of Shotokan karate. Another kind of karate I can't mention.

You can't mention it?

Can't mention it.

No, I can't form. Uh, Kyokushin. K-Y-O-K-U-S-H-I-N. Kyokushin karate, Hapkido, and Shaolin kung fu.

Ooh.

Yeah. All of which helped him in 1989 when he starred in Best of the Best with James Earl Jones. A team from the United States is going to compete against a team from Korea in a taekwondo tournament. Team consists of fighters from all over the country. Can they overcome their rivalry and work together to win? Um, it also has Chris Penn in it.

Mm-hmm.

Quote from, uh, Mr. Roberts on this: That was maybe the most fun physically I have ever had making movies. It was like boys camp. I got to go to work out, um, the body at the gym every morning. Then you go to the dojo and get ready for the moves of the day, and then you go to the set. You shoot a karate movie, it ended up being a wonderful movie about triumph. Very proud of that first film, Best of the Best. It's a really good movie. Uh, the only thing I was really sad about was Best of the Best 3 and 4, and they're like home movies. They're really bad. We had really good franchise going. I, I would've loved to have stayed with the kind of quality we had for the first film, a little bit of the second film. I, I wish we could have stayed up there.

Huh.

Uh, I watched the first half of Best of the Best today.

Oh, really? Wow.

Uh, yeah, 'cause I, I actually, uh, I really like that movie.

I This guy sounds like he'd be perfect in a Lone Wolf McQuade remake.

Well, you know what, he's busy doing other things. Oh, uh, he will be in 2026's Attack of the Killer Tomatoes: Organic Intelligence. Oh, they listed 92 movies as listed as up and coming, but that doesn't include, uh, one that was then listed with all the rest of them, uh, movies, the other— I can't do math, uh, 800 and 50-some-odd movies. Um, but in 2027, he's going to be in Dick Reno Monster Slayer.

Sounds okay.

Yeah, join Monster Slayer Dick Reno as he joins the team with sexy agent Michelle Pfeiffer. She's not actually in the movie. I don't know why they call it that, but, um, somebody I guess who looks like her.

I don't know, it's just her character name. Maybe character.

Yeah, it's Michelle Pfeiffer.

Yeah.

Uh, teams up with sexy agent Michelle Pfeiffer and vampiress Savannah. Can Dick Reno stop merciless king of the vampires Count Moldark? Stay tuned. I don't know. It seemed like something that piqued our interest.

Yeah, I'm intrigued.

And this is where we'll close it out as we pull everything back together here and tying Eric Roberts back to Sharktopus. Quote from him: "I was offered that script, and from the title alone, I said, 'I'm not even gonna read it.' Are you kidding?" And they said, but you said you always wanted to work for this man, that being Roger Corman. And I said, yes, but I'm not going to make something quite this bad. And then he called me and he made me an offer I couldn't refuse. And believe me, it was not money. He does not give money.

What?

Corman said to me, how many friends do you have? I said, I don't know, half a dozen. How many family members you got? I don't know, about 10. Okay. They can all bring a friend and they can all stay in the Puerto Vallarta, uh, while you make this movie for an entire month. Everybody's free while you're down here working. So I brought everybody I ever met, everybody I've ever been related to, and we all had a great time in Puerto Vallarta while I made a bad movie. That's the long and short of it.

I see. Free vacation for the whole family and friends.

Yeah.

That's not bad.

That's not— I would do that. That was close. I didn't know this guy was so prolific.

It was goddamn close. I heard more from Eric Roberts today than I do, like, my family members.

I wish I was considered an Eric Roberts friend or family.

Oh, I know.

Makes me believe, like, once he got that going, you just see, like, he has this, like, spike in, like, movies. Like, how many vacations does he get people on? Like, is that his going thing now?

He realized it was, like, an option. He's like, well, I'll do the movie if I get Free vacation for everybody I know.

Instead of paying me for this thing, let me go ahead and, you know, for Dick Reno, maybe they're going out to Reno, Nevada and everyone's staying out there for free.

So you think Dick Reno is named Dick Reno because he does all this activity in Reno?

No, but I just, I was grasping at straws there.

Okay. It's possible.

I mean, those straws are out there.

'Cause I'm Dick Reno and I'm a monster hunter. I'm gonna monster hunt in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, I think.

I mean, that seems like a good idea. That's where the most monsters hang out.

I don't know if that's necessarily true, but that's where I would do my monster hunting at. Chupacabra.

I mean, yeah, he's famous down there. Might as well take him down.

All right, man. Keith, that was crazy close to Sharktopus and Eric Roberts. Yeah, I might actually be the same.

Might actually be more entertaining than Sharktopus itself.

No, don't, don't go ruining, don't spoil the end of the episode, Keith, where we talk about what we thought about Sharktopus, because we still got to talk about our viewing of Sharktopus.

Yes, there's a lot.

Well, boys, did we do it? Did we get through Sharktopus?

Oh yeah.

No, we should talk about our viewing of Sharktopus.

Yeah, I think we should probably talk about a little bit at least.

I mean, look, everyone's got one of these. Jujitsu, Cat in the Hat.

No, that don't count.

See, I was, I was thinking the same thing.

The entire, the entire Tubi Originals month.

All 4 members of this podcast this month, including the wheel, have provided for me a half-star movie on Letterboxd.

And you know what shocks me though, is because Keith has famously said he hates watching movies he knows are gonna be bad. And yet he picked this and I was shocked.

Like literally, literally looking it up and I was trying to figure out, I was like, oh man, let's watch Sharktopus. I'm like, no, that's gonna be absolutely terrible. And I literally just typed it in, saw the thing pop up on Google. It said it was 60% on Rotten Tomatoes. I was like, huh, that's not gonna be too bad. Then did not look to see that there's only based on like 5 or 6 reviews.

Yeah. It's 5 reviews.

Otherwise, otherwise we would've been, we would've been watching Jaws 2 this week.

Which is probably even worse on Rotten Tomatoes.

No, I think that one's still semi-good. It's 3 is where it falls apart. I don't know, because 2 is the, 2 is the like actual like sequel sequel. Like Chief Brody's back. Uh, the guy who wrote the original book also wrote Jaws 2 as well.

You said the book's bad though.

The book just does a bunch of stupid stuff that makes no sense. I mean, it's like a mob tie-in and there's A weird affair.

Jaws 2 has a 56%.

I was just gonna say it has 56%.

Oh, well, Jesus, this one had 60, man. I would have, uh, if I would have just actually clicked on Rotten Tomatoes for a little bit more information, uh, we would have been in a different direction.

Yeah, Jaws 2 must be at least tangentially worse than this if it's got that low of a score.

But I, yeah, I don't, I don't really have any other excuse other than that.

3 out of 5 reviewers agree that Sharktopus was better than bad.

Really? 3 out of 5?

Bad meaning bad, but bad meaning good.

Um, I don't think Run-DMC signed off on this thing at all. No, there's, there's some concepts here that are cool that I like. And I could see why somebody's trying to make a remake of this.

For the concept.

I mean, it— look, it's, it's like a— it's just a crazy shark. Like, the shark and half octopus thing, like, the idea of it is, is cool.

Yes.

And, and it's the rest of the movie that lets it down. They came up with an idea and then the cocaine ran out. And they had to actually put together an actual shark.

You think this is cocaine fueled?

I don't think it's fueled by, uh, I don't know what, but not money or cocaine.

No, because cocaine requires money. The shark— and I was really hoping they would explain why it has tusks coming out of its gills, but it doesn't.

They don't ever explain things.

Yeah, yeah. Why?

I thought maybe it had something just like a weird thing where like Unless I'm thinking of a squid, but don't they have like, like a weird like pincer thing for like where their, where their mouth is supposed to be? And it, and it's just some kind of weird like thing that happens with that, but they don't even really do anything.

Not really. Didn't he shoot somebody with one?

Oh no, he's got lit— the end of his tentacles are like spears.

They have knives at the end. Yeah, he's like Wolverine too. Yeah.

And so, and then, and on top of it, then you got Eric Roberts's character, Dr. Sands, then messing around with the the mental part of it, of like what it's supposed to do.

I know they said what they did, like taunted it or something like that, but I made fun of it as a child. Really tuned out after a while for a lot of this stuff.

Yeah, it's kind of shocking that the military would fund a giant shark octopus for military operations. Mm hmm. I mean, there's probably worse ideas, like maybe a terracotta, but— Sharktopus. You had to have cost a lot of money to make this thing.

Clearly costs a ton to create the Sharktopus because like the home base office of Sharktopus was like, whatever this company was called, was a green screen. But behind— in front of the green screen, the green screen was visible. In the movie, right? There's like a green background. There was like plastic shelving that you see in a garage, right? So they ran out of cash. They put all the money they had into developing Sharktopus.

Yeah, they really put all their money into putting all of Eric Roberts's family up at a resort. Didn't have any money for the rest of this.

No, I'm talking, I'm talking about the in, in the movie world. Oh, oh, the movie world.

My bad.

Yeah, all of their money on Sharktopus.

Sharktopus and like the, the home offices of Sharktopus Inc. was literally just, you know, Walmart shelving.

They, they clearly didn't spend enough money on, um, control panel thing that goes around it to like not have it knock off at the easiest, like first time anybody jostles with it.

Yeah. Uh, uh, outboard, uh, boat propeller.

You know, they're going just, they, they wanna just scare the guys a little bit and see exactly like what this can do against the real ship.

Why would they— yeah, why would they test it on a civilian?

I don't know.

I don't know. But so the first time that it's going out there, they really, really play up the, like, like a Jaws, definitely a spoofy type thing, because it looks exactly like actual Jaws, where the girl is out there swimming along and, yeah, you know, it's about to get attacked. And we then see that the Sharktopus, it's not the Sharktopus attacking, it's a regular great white, and it comes up there to I guess kills it, but it's also there to like deter it. So this is gonna keep threats away from— another potential thing it can do is keep other threats away from the coast, you know, the coastline.

Fight off other evil sharks.

Yeah.

Things like that. And then he's like, nah, I gotta actually see it do something more than just, you know, save, you know, some half-naked girl that, by the way, it bumped into it and then that boat flies, like curves in and just explodes. Yeah, it's so ridiculous. And then the thing, it loses that thing on it. The thing like shakes off immediately, and also we're like, oh crap, now we have to chase it, find the thing.

Yeah, poor planning. I don't know, I feel like it's too unpredictable, the Sharktopus.

Plus that sensor thing's not on it, but there's still some kind of a weird trace.

They're still able to track it. That's— I was like, how are they doing this? How are they tracking it on their computers? I mean, they could track it by You know, people spotting it like, oh, there's a Sharktopus there.

And maybe, maybe however they put it together, maybe it's got a, like, a weird radiation signature that they can pick up on.

It's got a brain chip.

Yeah.

Well, yeah, I guess it's got the brain chip thing as well. You just can't, you can't follow it as much as you can because sometimes they could find it and other times they're like, oh, you're putting way too much thought into it, Keith.

I don't know what it was.

Whatever it was. Yeah, they just, it's, it's not going very far. It's going on like a quick little buffet around the Mexican, uh, resorts.

It's going south, but when they hold the map, it's going north. Uh, that really bugged me too. Just turn the map the right way.

Yeah.

Or there's like, uh, you know, it's gonna go, it's gonna find some girl who's looking for gold on the beach and Yes. Swipe her away while the old man just sits there and watches it and is like, huh, all right.

I think that was my favorite part of the movie.

That's the best part.

It's a low, it's a low bar.

Uh, it's a very low bar.

Yes.

He doesn't, he doesn't make, he doesn't make any noise at all.

And then he just, yeah, he's not shocked.

First of all, he's being, he's being a creeper in the first place.

Mm-hmm.

But once she's gone, he walks over, he's like, oh, and even bites it.

He goes like, like gold, the blue gold coin.

Yeah. That would not be comfortable.

Probably worth a ton of money.

Dug up out of the sand in my mouth. I'm not doing that.

No.

I'm gonna rinse it off first.

Yeah.

And I don't know how that little bite test does, um, in that situation.

They do that in every movie where like somebody gets a big old coin.

Yeah, but well, yeah, so it's like, oh yeah, it's not made out of chocolate, but like, I wouldn't want to eat it raw.

Buried in the sand on the hot beach.

It looked like it was a chocolate coin though.

I wouldn't be surprised if it like bent when you bit it. Yeah, like bit it in half.

Yeah.

What is that test? Is it made of real gold?

Yeah, I don't know.

Yeah, I guess that's— I don't know, it's like a stereotype.

But it didn't look like gold, it looked like copper.

Yeah, maybe he has like a really hypersensitive like taste buds and he can taste the metal.

He can taste the difference. He's, he's a metallurgist and can—

He just walked off from like a different really cool movie where there's this specialty detective who can taste metal.

He's like, uh, what's the, what's the, um, The guy in the, the Rudolph, like, claymation thing who's always looking for silver and gold.

Oh yeah, Yukon Jack or whatever his name is.

Yukon Cornelius.

There it is.

And, and he just, like, he'll hit some stuff and they, like, taste, uh, yeah, and he's like, yep, okay, nope, nothing here.

Hey, that's the same thing.

That guy can do that.

Yeah, yeah, this movie's full of just vignettes like that. It's like little, like, Let's have someone die doing bungee jumping. Let's just have someone die on their—

That was fire. I gotta say, I enjoyed that scene because as soon as she's like, I want to go again, first of all, I'd be like, why didn't you say something before we took the entire suit off? Now we're gonna put you back on, we're gonna let you drop back off again, and bam, right at the end, the thing jumps up. It's larger in certain scenes, it's smaller in other scenes. I don't really understand how that works.

That's— yeah, yeah, I don't like that it can walk around on land with its tentacles.

I hated that so much.

I think that's so stupid. Like, oh, I thought—

now see, that's what I thought would— like, if the thing didn't look so dumb, that was like the creepy thing, was like it could walk up on land and start wiping at stuff.

It looks so bad. Like, it doesn't make sense physically at all. No, I know it's not supposed to. It's Sharktopus.

But yeah, I already explained to you it doesn't It didn't propel right.

It's like, that's the problem. It's like, it doesn't look good at all. And so it's like, I can't buy into this at any point. And I know you're not supposed to probably buy into it, but it's not funny either, really. So like, I can't really get into this. It feels so soulless.

It's impossible to suspend your disbelief in any capacity whatsoever while watching this movie because the Sharktopus does look terrible. It looks better when it's underwater, but filming underwater sucks unless you're doing like You know, cameras, stuff.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And it could get really close to people despite how large it was. Mm-hmm. Uh, I think when it kills that one dude Santos, it's like he's looking over the edge and it's like 5 feet away from the boat, just popping up sneaky. And it looks like it's popping up to look at him unless it like has like eyeballs on the tentacle or something when it pops up to look, you know?

That's disturbing.

Yeah.

Don't like that part.

But it, it just like, it's awfully close to him and he doesn't seem to notice that it's there. Even though he's supposed to be looking for it.

He probably can't see it because it's, uh, CGI and it's not there until after the movie's been filmed.

Yeah.

Yeah, I, I hate how it looks. I think it looks stupid and it's not my— I can't buy into it. Like Derek said, it's just like I can't get invested. It'd be different maybe if like the storyline was good or like the characters were decent, but nothing is good.

And, and so I think that's another thing. Like, I, I remember that it was on TV. I knew it wasn't like something that got released in theaters or something like that. I, I really didn't expect the CGI to be as bad as it was. Like, it was, it was like, it was worse than I actually even thought it would be.

Mm-hmm.

Um, and I think that's another, that's Probably one of the things that really bothered me the most was especially like, I messaged you guys like 5 minutes in when they first show the thing and I'm like, oh, oh no, no, what have I done?

Yeah.

But also I like, I still think the idea, like the idea of like this like crazy shark thing that can go up, like even if it's not part of like a government plan thing, the idea of the shark thing go up and like it can climb up on land using its tentacles and all, and like in attacking people or like grabbing at people. Is enough of like a, I guess like a cool enough concept that like if you actually had somebody put together like a decent script around it, it would be better than whatever they threw together here.

I don't know.

I mean, it's not gonna, it's not gonna take much to do better than what they did here. I will also say though, I, I did enjoy, um, so the, again, the guy from the opening clip, he's a pirate radio guy. I was like, he just sits on a boat and like broadcasts. I was like, that seems like a fun job.

And somehow he's living the life. Yeah, doing pirate radio. How does that happen?

I don't know, but that's, that's the kind of job I'd love to have.

It's kind of what podcasting is.

Just, yeah, just hanging out on the boat and like being a radio DJ whenever you kind of really want. It sounds great.

Can't argue with that.

No.

So I can argue with the acting in this movie.

Yes, please argue.

It's so terrible.

Yeah, it's every—

even the, the great Eric Roberts Eric Roberts is the best one, but he's not doing that great.

My favorite moment in this whole movie besides the old man on the beach, and it was an acting moment, is when the reporter— can't remember what her name is— she's on the phone and she goes, gracias. She has this, this super— she's like just brutal prior to that. It's like, gracias, señor. if she's on the phone, I'm like, oh, making a real strong effort to be, uh, you know, they have that Spanish dialect.

Yeah, nobody does a good job. The what's-his-face, they're like mercenary guy, he's just not— he's so miscast. Like, he doesn't look like the— like the way they describe him, like he's some retired rough-and-tumble like mercenary. He's just like a young kid, and it's like, no, I don't buy this.

Yeah, so when they first show him, I'm expecting him to like you know, get yanked out of the pool by like a, you know, tentacle popping up there. And it's like the first thing that, you know, the first time the shark's supposed to attack somebody at the resort. But no, then he pops up. Also, he's underwater without a hat, and when he pops up, he has a hat on.

Mhm.

And he's just— yeah, you're right, he just, he looks way out of the place as this thing. And it should have been like, you know, the more like a more grizzly vet, um, who was, you know, would go out there and Get Eric Roberts to do that.

I bet he didn't want to be that physical, but be that guy. He would be way better. Horrible acting all around. Nobody was really good.

No, it was bad. And I, I don't know which was worse, the effects or the acting.

That's a good debate to have. I don't know.

Hmm, probably.

Well, I think the— I think you could have improved the effects. Uh, there was no improving the acting.

Yeah, I'd go with the acting's probably worse, and that says a lot because the effects are like absolutely terrible.

Like I feel like if the act—the problem is I think the acting would actually—if it was all good—it would make the movie like it would elevate the movie more so than the the CGI would. So yeah, like I think it would make a bigger difference if at least the acting was decent.

See, like every time those tentacles came out of the water and like wrapped around something, and you could just feel it. You're like no, that's. It looks so weird and wrong. Um, I think that would take you out no matter, you know, even if you had better actors in this.

Keith, you had a big complaint last week about how many other fish were in the film besides sharks. Did this bug you at all that it's not even technically a shark but a half shark? So you're only getting 0.5 shark the entire film. There's no—

And there were no other fish.

Yeah.

So honestly, it was worse than last week. On the shark level.

Yeah, but I was only looking for a sharktopus in this one. I wasn't looking for other things.

I see, I see. Your expectations were different.

Yeah, the shark water had a lot of other fish in it.

It did. This only had one quote-unquote fish.

Yeah, and that's, that's all I was looking for was a quote-unquote fish.

And then you got it in spades.

Yeah, they do. They're not shy about him. They're not shy. They show him a lot.

So that's, yeah, that's good. I didn't think about it much while I was watching it, but after you guys said the size of the Sharktopus changes quite a bit, do you remember he reaches up out of the water and rips a car down?

Yeah.

So that means his tentacles have got to be like 100 feet long.

Yeah, and he doesn't have traction to pull these things.

Yeah.

Oh, he gets the— he kills those 2 guys that are like painting the side of the boat.

Yeah, or of like a, like a battleship type thing. I did like those guys. I'll admit that those might be my favorite. Talk about ways to die. Yeah, and then I love how his final words are not like this. Like that's like his worst imagination. Killed by a shark to have a dolphin pinch her.

Yeah, I did like that.

That was kind of a funny little scene. Yeah, it all was downhill from there though.

Very much. There's It was, it was already downhill. Like, we were at the bottom of the hill at that point already, and it was 5 minutes in.

It was nice to have a plateau before I started rolling down the hill again.

You— Ah, well, I just let you guys know this will never happen again.

Oh, Sharktopus? I hope to God not.

It's too late.

There's already 4 of them. Like, I'll never— you'll never come back to do this. I'll never do this kind of lack of research again. I won't pick a bad, bad movie.

Well, well, look, this is honestly— when I picked sharks, I was preparing for something like this where everybody's gonna pick their weirdest shark film they could think of. I thought I was gonna be like the, the classy one with my pick, and then Derek blew that out of the water picking a documentary.

And I blew both of you out of the water with the classiest of shark films. I mean, look, there was— so again, Jaws 2 was a consideration. I also thought about The Meg.

Oh, that's a great one.

Um, that would've also worked for, uh, Book Month, uh, a few weeks, a few months back.

Sure.

So those, I, I gave consideration to a handful of other things as well, but like, uh, for some reason this one just stood out.

Did we do it? Did we get through Sharktopus from 16 years ago?

Wow. I can't believe it's been that long.

I think so.

Hmm. I know what we think, but let's sum it up. What'd we think?

I've said I've apologized multiple times, so I will continue to apologize. Uh, I can't— I don't even want to justify the fact that, like, you know, you guys have each picked at least one stinker along the way. I just— that makes no— that's not— I can't use that as defense. Uh, this was all on me, and I picked, like, maybe one of, like, the 3 worst movies we've ever watched here.

An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.

Now, Terry, that's another one of our sayings.

Yeah, we say that at least once every episode. Um, Keith, I forgive you. I was expecting people to pick crazy shark movies like this. I'm shocked it was you who was the one who did it, but somebody—

So that means there's only one other person that it could have been.

Well, because you have a very— you vehemently stated in the past, you're like, I cannot watch a movie that I know is going to be bad.

Yes, and this is like the prime example of like everyone knows about these like Sharknado, Sharkapus things, and it's like that's the, the pop culture reference of bad good movies. But yet you surprised me, and you know what, it's really bad. I don't think it's good at all. Um, yeah, there's not anything maybe except for those 2 guys sitting painting the boat I liked a little bit. Um, But it was a hard movie to just pay attention to.

Yes. This was one of the toughest watches we've had yet.

I mean, challenging.

And this is coming from a DTFY2 that has had Red Sonja, Jiu-Jitsu, and Cat in the Hat. I know your feelings on Cat in the Hat, Terry, but they are, they are the exception to the norm. Right.

And Dreamscape was up there too. Dreamscape.

I like Dreamscape better than this by a lot. Yes. By a whole shot.

But also it was, it was a bit disappointing, uh, as far as rewatch.

I think Y2's had some, uh, rough times.

We've, we've had, we have scraped the bottom of the barrel. This is, this, and this is a rough watch.

And just think about it though, the, the, it could have been worse, but the lovely, lovely Wheel, who we all love so much, um, And, and the vetoes that we had.

I don't know. I've never seen those movies. I— could it be worse?

Kept us from watching, uh, Madame Web and kept us from watching Green Lantern still already.

But they can't be worse than Sharktopus.

I guarantee I would much rather— I'd watch Madame Web 100 times before I watch Sharktopus again.

Uh, 99 times. And I gotta— I take a break and I gotta watch Sharktopus. Uh, but, but like, I mean, we've had like other opportunities for us, some other very bad things to pop up. So yeah, we have actually Yeah, man, I'm, I'm very disappointed in myself.

I'll be honest, I think this is the worst movie we've watched. Yeah, I was thinking about it. I was looking at my ranking list and I'm like, yeah, it's even worse than Lone Wolf McQuade.

Yeah, it's, it's really bad.

At least Lone Wolf McQuade, it's all— if there's no horrible CGI, right? It's at least it's all real.

But if it was made now, it would have horrible CGI. Yes.

Yes.

What, Lone Wolf McQuade or Sharksplosive?

Yes. Lone Wolf McQuade would have terrible—

Yeah, it would be one of these, it'd be like, look how goofy this name of this, you know, that'd be like a gimmicky thing, like, isn't this hilarious, his name is Lone Wolf McQuade. Back then they were all serious about this thing.

Chuck Norris would, uh, he'd take care of the Sharksplosive with a roundhouse kick.

From— not from beyond the grave, he wouldn't. Well, we know what we thought. What did the internet have to say? Well, on June 22nd, 2013, Robbie Gray had this to say. I chose it because of the title. The erect movie about a shark octopus.

The what?

The erect movie about a shark octopus.

The erect movie.

That's what he says.

I'm gonna have to hear what he has to say at the library.

Let's find out. I recently bought this film at a bargain price of £2. So he's British. I couldn't believe when I started to watch it that it was that cheap. A brand new unopened DVD of a film from 2010.

What a steal.

A DVD of that age usually retails for around £10. And this film is a classic waiting to happen. No. The special effects are questionably the best I've ever seen. Yeah, questionably. There's no way this is real. The character arc and story is amazing. Getting background to the main characters and producing a bond between the watcher and the characters that makes you feel attached to them.

Huh?

Feel as they slowly die. The bungee tower scene is— can simply sum up the perfection of this film. Amazing and a must-watch. I feel for anyone who is unlucky enough to have not seen this great film. 10/10. Nobody found it helpful. Nobody not so much. Ten out of ten.

This guy's never seen a movie before.

Clearly erect or otherwise. Yeah, erect never.

He never explained it. Maybe it's like a UK, a British thing.

Like oh, it must mean different in or he was watching a different version of Sharktopus.

I was wondering that until I said the bungee thing and I was like oh okay, he's talking about the same movie.

Watching the porn parody.

Hmm. Yeah, that's, that is prime for that.

Not to be outdone, on September 25th, 2010, Galahad58-1 had this to say, and I chose it because of the title. Sharkto bad.

I like that.

Sharktopus is a good example of terrible moviemaking. The script and the dialogue are absolutely pitiful. People sit and wait for the creature to attack them; a couple watch 3 people die and decide to go fishing like nothing happened; a reporter, parentheses, the usual stupid stuff, end parentheses, allows people to die and just worries about the story over lives; and the scientist in charge feels that it is all right for people to die in the search for scientific advancement.

Mm-hmm.

This is the same horrible grouping of clichés from every single siffy, S-Y-F-Y, bad movie, bad horror movie. This movie is a mess and not worth watching at all. In a struggling economy, it is a miracle someone gave money to people to make a piece of trash that is this bad.

Oh, don't bring it up like that. That makes me sad.

17 found that helpful, 22 not so much. 1 out of 10.

That money could have gone to like a charity or something.

It could have gone to lots of— the roads or something, right? Phew.

Let's fill some potholes. Not very many, probably, but a couple.

6 or 7, probably. Oh man, we did it, boys. We got through the first 3 weeks of Sharktopus. Sharktopus week.

Oh God. Well, there's enough to do a whole month on Sharktopus.

The first 3 weeks that has culminated in Sharktopus, that means we got something very special we gotta do.

Oh boy.

We gotta go to that goddamn wheel.

I'm so excited. I always love Wheel Week.

All right, well, we got to the wheel. What we each— what we do every Wheel Week is we each pick a movie that has tangentially been mentioned in a deep dive or whatever, you know. happened this last month. And then we put those on a wheel along with a spin again, and then we spin to see what we watch next month or next, next week. This, this week has got me discombobulated.

This episode is— yeah, this was like a, um, uh, like a shock to the system.

A shocktopus.

It's like, oh no, that's a good idea. Let's write that down.

An octopus that's electrically charged.

But it's still a pun off of Sharktopus for some reason.

Oh, it's half electric eel, half octopus.

So what we did was we each chose a movie and put it on the wheel. So, Terry, this is your month, as we established. What did you choose?

I chose the 2025 film Keeper.

Keeper.

The mysterious film I've been meaning to watch.

Keith, what did you choose?

Oh, well, I decided to go with what my other judgment call would've been this week, and that was Jaws 2.

All right. Jaws 2.

It's got the lower Rotten Tomatoes score than Shark Bliss, but it's got a few more people.

And I decided to prove by my, my theory that the SnyderBroverse and the Alita: Battle Angel Trutherverse are— that's a solid circle Venn diagram, and I chose Alita: Battle Angel.

All right.

We put those 3 on there with a spin again. I doubled up a few times just so it fills out the wheel. Look, this looked nice. And as the twist, all of us going into the last wheel of the cycle have our vetoes.

Oh, that's true. We all have it. We can all veto. Oh no.

Oh, it makes me nervous.

I'm using mine. Even if a legal battle issue comes up, I'm gonna use my veto.

You gotta use it or lose it. You don't get one next time.

They're like timeouts in football and basketball. I can't take them to the next game, right? Okay. So, uh, here we go.

It'd be funny if it keeps coming up Alita: Battle Angel and we keep—

just keep vetoing it. It could be. There it is. There's our wheel. It's spinning. I'm just— I'm not gonna wait for anybody. I'm just gonna click the thing. There it goes.

Uh-oh.

Oh yes. Veto.

Hey, come on.

Don't get too excited, Terry, because Keith just vetoed it. That means Keeper got vetoed. Here we go.

Oh, veto.

It landed on Jaws too. That's getting vetoed.

You know, I vetoed it. Here we go.

Oh no, that means Alita Battle Angel and Derek doesn't have to use his veto.

Son of a— it's use it or lose it. I'm vetoing Elite of Bandle Angel. You picked it. I know, I'm still vetoing. I'm doing it for the lols. Here we go. Oh, okay. Oh, spin again.

Wow. Veto, veto, and veto.

This is the longest wheel ever. Here we go. If it lands on Keeper again, that means it just like successfully just went one to the next, the next. Oh wow.

Oh, look at that.

Damn, Jaws 2. I was really hoping for Alita Battle Angel. Oh well.

I was hoping for a spin again.

Um, there we go, Jaws 2. It's fitting to our theme. I like that.

I see. Damn it, I should have not vetoed my Alita Battle Angel.

Oh well, you can't help it if you got it.

Yeah, gotta, gotta use it, right?

Just for chaos.

Yeah. So we're on to Jaws 2. That's a lot of wheel spins to get back to Jaws 2.

That might be the most wheel spins we've had.

It was.

Well, it's also the first time that we've had all the vetoes still just sitting there.

And we all vetoed it. And you guys, you guys vetoed each other with like conviction.

Yes, he really came at me hard, so I felt like I had to go back.

Yeah, it felt like there was a— some, some malicious intent there.

Like revenge almost. Yeah.

Oh, it's not equal revenge yet. I'm not gonna get you a couple more times.

Not equal? When did I ever do you wrong, Keith?

Naked Gun.

Oh, that's true.

Yeah, I'll never take that back. I, I still stand by that.

Well, that's fine. I'll just, I'll figure out one when we get to that point this year to just, you know, cut your heart out and that's fine.

Cut your heart. You, your heart was cut out from that, huh?

Emotionally destroyed Keith for that.

He does. He brings it up quite a bit.

I'm stuck picking Sharktopus. Yes, I've obviously been affected by that.

You were not stuck. Let's be clear. You were not stuck picking. No, you had 100% free will on that.

There was only There's only 3 shark movies out there, people. I picked that.

And funnily, we're gonna watch our 4th next week.

Yeah, I made a— I found a new one.

Just think, you found a new one? 1982's Jaws 2?

Ah, well, I— we're on to Jaws 2 for next week to round out our Shark Month. I guess that leaves us with nothing to do But to end this the way we end everything.

Yep. Yes. There's something in that bay, Nita.

Tell me about that creature you saw. It was a shark. The big one with tentacles, maybe.

Whoa.

Did it look like this? Yeah.

What is that?

What's wrong? You don't have internet? The damn thing has a Twitter account!

Hey, it already followed me back!

You will bring me the creature's heart. Thanks for listening to Fumbling Through Film. New episodes drop every Thursday. Got feedback or questions? Email us at [email protected]. You can see our films to fumble before you tumble into the grave and other musings on Letterboxd at Fumble Through Film. The through is T-H-R-U. You can also follow Keith on Instagram at KG3030 Lives and on Letterboxd at KG3030. Terry is on Letterboxd at Terry2099. Derek is on Letterboxd at Derek the number 9 and then the word 9. All original music is done by the Dr. Dre of Kansas, Terry, so hit him up for them bangers. Our new podcast logo is done by the delightful and talented Sanjay Vicky Nayak. You can find her on Instagram @einkstein. That's Einstein with a K in there. We'll see you next week as we keep on fumbling.