From producers Roger and Julie Corman and the director of WRONG TURN 3, this Sy-Fy Channel “original” has all the usual, erm, “qualities” of the sub-genre the network has maintained for years, but is richly laden with self mocking humor and more fun than most. Characters - including a pair of radio broadcasters - openly make fun of the film’s deliberately ridiculous premise, while it’s not unusual for a passing Robert Shaw-mocking figure to refer to the monster as having “black soulless eyes…like my third wife…”.

   At first you think Eric Roberts is hitting a new career low - but then you realize his phoned-in, barely straight-faced performance is just part of the movie’s intentionally shabby charm. In the very first scene a pair of bikini-clad non-actors narrowly avoid a dual-pronged attack by first a mundane shark and then the “sharktopus”. This monstrosity is the result of Roberts’ experiments to create “the Navy’s next super weapon” - as soon as we find out about its existence, Roberts and his tiny unit have lost control over their ludicrous creation, which heads to Mexico to wreak havoc. His daughter and a cocky, usually shirtless missionary are on its trail.

   “You’ve just unleashed an eight-legged man-eating shark on the world!” someone yells at Roberts at one point, to which he shrugs and calmly replies “A minor setback!”. With scenes of bungee jumpers eaten by loveably rubbish sub-video game level CG FX and shots of gals in bikinis every few minutes, this is goofy on every level but never less than entertaining. Its tone is set by the nudge-nudge comedy cameo from the tireless Roger Corman as a dirty old letch who watches one of those bikini beauties fooling around with a metal detector and, once she’s been dragged into the water to her doom, calmly retrieves the “gold” she has acquired, not batting an eyelid over the fact that THE SHARKTOPUS EXISTS!!! The movie’s slapdash nature is typified by the fact that it starts randomly using 24-ish split screens half way through and then stops as suddenly as it begun!

   The monster itself gets plenty of screen time and has the reassuring menace-level of Pacman on an off-day. It niftily uses its tentacle to down your boat so that the shark face can bite your head off. Much of the movie’s pleasure comes from daft reaction shots to the monster or smug one-liners delivered before cartoonishly gory death : “There is no such thing as a Sharktopus!”. Kudos to the drunk fisherman who screams “Oh no! Not like THAT!” as he’s ripped apart in an inglorious fashion. It builds to a pleasurable climactic frenzy, as our creature terrorizes huge crowd of approximately 12 extras (“Dude that’s awesome!”) while Roberts gets his throat slashed by a shiny CG tentacle.