Hammer Time = Time Well Spent

About a week ago, I was flipping through my DVR's TV Guide and saw Hammerhead: Shark Frenzy. Thinking it was a documentary on hammerhead sharks, I hit record.



I came home from work a few days later, ready to unwind with some good documentary shark footage. (I know, I know...That's embarrassing. But that's what a blog is for.)

Within the first 30 seconds, it was clear this was no documentary. Megan points out that the name should've tipped me off. True. But it didn't. What did tip me off was the anonymous couple in love yachting and getting eaten alive. I would've stopped there, but what followed was just too good.


First, another foreboding establishing scene in which a white-coated scientist exclaims to his assistant that his experiment is almost complete at which point the lab shark bites off the assistant's fingers. Next, cut to some high-tech government DNA lab where an impossibly hot DNA scientist (played by Hunter Tylo. Hunter. Tylo. What kind of name is that?) says some incomprehensible stuff about DNA and then puts on a bikini and starts swimming laps at the high-tech government DNA lab lap-pool. Awesome.


Anyway, I will try to avoid spoilers in case anyone wants to find and watch this gem, because really, you should. But basically the idea is that when a mad scientist tries to cure cancer by combining human DNA with hammerhead shark DNA the results are not pretty. You get the chance to admire said un-pretty results in many jars in the lab Kunstkammer-style, but chief among them (I'll call him Hammerhead) is unfortunately not relegated to such a jar or formaldehyde.


The special effects were completely terrible. The severed limbs that get flung about are SO clearly rubber it's not even funny. (Few characters escape the carnivorous maw of Hammerhead, but several limbs remain. Not clear to me why such a blood-thirsty creature would leave random limbs uneaten, but I guess plausibility was not the aim.) But that's not the worst/best of it. The worst/best is Hammerhead himself. Things go best when you see only his dorsal fins--that's scary in a traditional shark movie way. And it's even kindof creepy when you get a zoom-in of a single eye, which is large and sortof humanish, but of course on the side of a head, so again creepy. But when you see him in his entirety--well, see for yourself:






For another view, check the movie poster:




And really, how awesome a tag line is "Half human. Half shark. Total terror"?


I must also say that it is one badass IT guy who can throw knives with deadly accuracy at a distance of like 40 ft. He also seems to be the only one on the island with any ability to aim a firearm. Cuz the professional guards hired by the mad scientist guy to keep victims on the island... well they just keep firing and missing. I guess that's why said IT guy gets to sleep with Hunter Tylo.




Choice Dialogue:
Dr. Preston King: Can someone tell me why these people aren't dead yet?



***

Amelia Lockhart: You're going to impregnate me?

Dr. Preston King: No. [looks at the hammerhead shark in the tank] He is.





Some online review I read noted the failure to utilize lots of shark puns. While I cannot concur in this reviewer's general negative feelings about the film, I suppose it would have been a better movie if the lines "Shark the herald angels sing" or "I guess his shark was bigger than his bite" had been included. Or my favorite, though it's non-sensical, "Time for a little dancin' in the SHARK." Said online reviewer does not offer any of the many available M.C.Hammer puns that would have been absolutely revelatory. ("Hammertime" being the most obvious.)



Now, you're all probably wondering about the scientific accuracy of this movie. Well, I did some research on this point.

• First, it is true that hammerhead sharks do have internal gestation complete with placenta like mammals do. I confirmed via Wikipedia, which offered the choice observation that "Hammerhead shark mating courtship is a violent affair." It also offered the fascinating fact that hammerheads can also reproduce via parthenogenesis, a word I have always loved since it was in the lyrics of that 80s song "Dead Man's Party." (But only the females. If males could do this... well, the movie would've really fallen apart.)


• It is, however, not true that sharks do not get cancer. Although widely believed until somewhat recently, a quick Google shows that shark immunity to cancer has been debunked by such esteemed organizations as the American Cancer Society, National Geographic, the American Association for Cancer Research.


• This was not discussed in the movie, but apparently hammerheads get suntans and burns, just like pigs and people. Just thought I'd share.

I will also note that I was fascinated to find that if you simply enter "hammerhead" into Wikipedia, the disambiguation page has 23 entries, including the Corpus Christi arena football team and a character from the cartoon Darkwing Duck.

More info on Hunter Tylo:
You know you're interested. Wikipedia offers a few interesting tidbits on this soap opera actress:

• She's Texan. Woot.


• She won $5 million from Aaron Spelling in a discrimination lawsuit after he fired her because she was pregnant. (She was cast to play the Taylor McBride, whose name rivals Hunter Tylo's for awesomeness, on Melrose Place but Lisa Rinna ultimately played the part.)


• Her daughter apparently had like a semi-miraculous spontaneous cure from retinal cancer. I wonder if shark DNA was involved... because Tylo's son was found mysteriously dead in the swimming pool...

Editorial addition: Yesterday some sharks at the Moody Gardens Aquarium (in Galveston) died when ozone levels in their tanks got too high. Full article from chron.com here. I mention this because apparently efforts to revive the sharks involved giving them lots of steroids... which, I guess because I've been thinking too much about this movie, seemed like a dangerous idea to me. (~Tex, 4.16.08, 1:34p.m.)

If you want the spoiler:

~You've been warned.~

There's this bit at the beginning about how Hunter Tylo knows the mad scientist, because she used to be engaged to his son. But his son died of cancer. So that's why the scientist is obsessed with curing cancer. Fine, nice motivation.


Well it turns out that the experimental subject is his son. So every time I talk about Hammerhead, imagine I'm saying "Paul" and it gets even more ridic.


After the whole impregnation bit fails because they spray some chemical on Paul (which is conveniently located in a cabinet labeled "Shark control") Hunter Tylo should've made some sort of "U Can't Touch This" remark. That would've made my life. Or at least the 92 minutes of my life spent watching Hammerhead: Shark Frenzy.