Everyone Do the 69! 'Shark Attack in the Mediterranean'
Mar 11th 2010 3:05PM By: Mike Bracken
In preparation for SyFy's world premiere of Dinoshark (airing Saturday at 9 EST/8 CST) The Horror Squad staff decided to take a look back at some of the other "killer shark" movies clogging up video store shelves and NetFlix queues across the globe. Here's my contribution, a piece examing the Jorgo Papavassiliou's Shark Attack in the Mediterranean.Ever since Steven Spielberg's Jaws made people think twice about taking a dip in the ocean, filmmakers have been trying to jump on the killer shark movie bandwagon. Most of the attempts have been pretty dire-although I'll admit to enjoying them on a trash cinema level. Occasionally, though, a film comes along that is so out there that it transcends being trash cinema and becomes something almost sublime. Jorgo Papavassiliou's Shark Attack in the Mediterranean (also known as Shark Attack in Mallorca and several other titles) is just such a movie.
Ralf Moeller stars in this tale of man vs. Megalodon as a former competitive swimmer-"the rough kind" as one line of dialogue points out-who's given up the water for piloting a helicopter after his wife was devoured by a large shark. Naturally, this gigantic prehistoric shark (Megalodon-ancestor of the modern Great White) is once again using the local waters as a feeding ground. Add in a ton of sublplots about a cop's wife with cancer, shark researchers (ooh-could they be the bad guys?), and Ralf's daughter's jet-ski racing career and you've got a film-or something that sort of approximates a film in that it was shot with cameras and attempts to tell a story.
Filed under: Movie Reviews, DVD Reviews



I was in a rented lodge in Park City, Utah, several years ago, and since the snow was really bad (or maybe the Sundance options were really meh), I opted to dig through some screeners from "the other festival," Slamdance. (That's not meant as a knock. I adore Slamdance.) I was in town to review some films, so when I came across one screener that indicated a running time of 47 minutes, I got skeptical.
It's no secret that I'm a big fan of independent horror. That said, having spent the last few years optimistically wading through the highs and lows of low-budget horror filmmaking in the hope of finding diamonds in the rough has, in all honesty, kind of jaded me. I have nothing but respect for anyone who picks up a camera and tries to making something to call their own, but, let's face it, more often than not low-budget amateur horror flicks remain relegated to the obscure world of the horror movie convention tradeshow floor not because they're unlucky in distribution, but because they're just not very good.
Barbara Steele (The Pit and the Pendulum), Joe Dante (The Howling), Camille Keaton (I Spit on Your Grave), P.J. Soles (Halloween), Adrienne King (Friday the 13th), Ray Wise (Twin Peaks), Heather Langenkamp (Nightmare on Elm Street), James Karen (Poltergeist) and Erica Leerhsen (Wrong Turn 2: Dead End) are all starring in a film together, which by itself is enough information to get me excited. The Butterfly Room is being directed by Jonathan Zarantonello and focuses on the story of Alice, a young girl with a few tricks up her sleeve, and Ann, who seems to be an empty nester but is nesting some very dark secrets.









