Hammerhead

Hammerhead

Starring: William Forsythe, Hunter Tylo, Jeffrey Combs, Elise Muller, Arthur Roberts (II)

Review By: Matt & Becky Pelishek

Most shark movies revolve around either the great white, or the megaladon. In fact I can’t think of any that deal with sharks aside from those. For years, however, I’ve thought the industry was missing a very important part of this niche: The hammerhead! While this isn’t EXACTLY a shark movie in its usual sense, more along the lines of a ‘Sci-Fi Channel original movie’ its close enough for me. While we still need more movies specific to the hammerhead, this is the only one for now, and it will have to do.

It wastes absolutely NO time getting to the good stuff. Amidst a school of hammerheads, a grotesque, hammerhead-like beast kills off the couple out for a swim off of their expensive yacht. Sadly, this is the first and last time we see any actual hammerheads.

What I like here is we don’t wait forever to find out the plot. It’s simple. Scientists are trying to cure diseases and experimenting with stem cells, but they feel the best way to do this is by creating a shark man, and then having it mate with a human woman. I’m a little shaky on my biology these days, so I’ll just trust that this all makes sense within the scientific method. The idea behind this is that sharks do not ever get sick, somehow they want to translate this for the better good of humanity. Anyways, experiments continue, as the creature has mated, but the offspring always have complications. It is here that we witness the C section of an enormous shark creature baby. I threw up a little in my mouth.

The guy in charge of these unsettling experiments also dabbles in botany. He feeds mice to his oversized venus fly traps, and worms to a killer aloe plant. Also, it is notable on the FAR too many close-ups of this guys face, that there was not room in the budget for a realistic mustache.

We finally get a decent glimpse of the hammerhead monster for the first time at a meeting the bad mustache man is holding. It has a distinct likeness to the fan favorite creature from Jabbas palace, Amanaman. Turns out, shark-man is actually the scientists son. He had cancer, but his father ‘cured’ him by making him ‘perfect.’ In other news, perfect is apparently now defined by becoming horribly deformed, impotent, and de-evolving into our basic animal urges.

The protagonists in this story are a group of people. That’s it. That’s all I can figure out. I don’t know where they came from, or why they are involved, but they are. They are not the bad guys, so I guess they are the good guys. Mad scientist sends his attack shark/son to kill them. They don’t seem to get that if they stay out of the water, they stay alive. They learn this lesson slowly…One at a time. Wait, nevermind. It can attack on land now too. The highly predictable death of the prissy girl, wearing three inch high heels on the jungle trek (yes, they are in a jungle now) is promptly eaten.

The next 30 minutes or can be summarized by acting that’s as bad as the creature is ugly, and random, bloody attacks. A few gun fights are involved too, but they are about as exciting as competitive ice skating, but not as gay. The good guys try to escape in a copter, but it blows up. That’s the way it always goes. Only 3 people are still alive out of about 7. Two are captured and brought to the mad scientist, the third is looking for a harpoon that would work well for killing diseased shark-people. As the girl is being lowered into the creatures tank, its father the mad scientist moves in to share some fatherly advice. Shark boy doesn’t like it, and eats his dad’s arms. The harpoon man comes in and sprays shark face with anti-freeze, which is of course the only weakness of the hammerhead shark. It dies, and the entire lab blows up.

The bad news on this film is that we really didn’t get to see enough of hammer head sharks (though I probably never could). The good news is that there is plenty of room in the market to produce a true hammerhead shark movie!