The cheesy movie of the week award goes to some familiar faces though they are not on their usual channel. John Schneider and Armande Assante are joined by F. Murray Abraham ( an Oscar winner in the cheese of the week?), Daryl Hannah and Roark Critchlow ( best known as Mike Horton on Days of Our Lives). Here is the premise- the blonds are the good guys- and the greasy brunettes are the bad guys. Assante is a scummy real estate developer who is in league with equally greasy townies who have sold out. The bad guys are dumping fish killing poisons into the coastal bay to kill the fish and drive out the fisherman so they can put in pricey condos.
The problem- the chemicals draw in sharks who start eating people that venture into the water! It takes some fancy technology to defeat the shark hoard and bring the bad guys to their knees. The green vs mean theme is not too preachy. This is not a brilliant work of art- it is the cheese of the week afterall but the solid cast delivers on a fun time. The movie does run on the long side- 2.5 hours - but there are lots of swimmers to munch on in this town. The Hallmark Channel is not the normal cable destination for this kind of fare and the writers of the film themselves were surprised by it.
David Rosiak wrote this about the film on the blog QuietEarth:
” Though it’s airing as a “Hallmark Original,” I can tell you that it was never written with that label in mind. We’re both huge fans of the “nature run amok” films of the seventies,films like DAY OF THE ANIMALS, KINGDOM OF THE SPIDERS, GRIZLY, etc. and we strove to evoke that fun, mildly over-the-top seventies vibe throughout the script. To that effect, we even named F. Murray Abraham’s character after cult director William Girdler.
Though I’m not sure how much will be cut for the Hallmark airing, we wrote an intensely bloody script, and I know that much of the more gruesome stuff was caught on film (there are a ton of kills). Genius Products will be releasing the gorier version on DVD on June 6th as part of their “Maneater Series,” so you’ll get a chance to see plenty of the red stuff then.”
Shark Swarm comes to DVD on June 3 and the bargain price of $12.99 is well worth the price! Cheaper than a movie ticket with a small popcorn.
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Shark Swarm
