Shark Week 2015 and AGFA

Well Here We are Kiddies it’s Shark Week 2015 and it is off with a bang…Literally with the week being moved from August to July one day from Independence Day appropriately naming the date of Kick off as Findependance Day.

There has been some changes for the annual seal chomper and some of them are bittersweet.

With the new management of The Discovery Channel comes the end of the Shark Week Found Footage Mockumentaries which I have to say that I am happy about.

While Megalodon and Submarine were entertaining I feel that they are not appropriate for Shark Week and the Discovery Channel where audiences will be led to believe that the films were real and misleading.

Megalodon was okay I felt that Submarine was too far-fetched and scientifically inaccurate for the specials that we are accustomed to from Channel’s programing which has worked diligently in the past 20 plus years to change the image of the shark.

I also want to give credit to Spawn of Jaws and the tribute to Paul Walker who had loaned his talents to one of his many passions in the preservation of sharks in the oceans of the world.

Spawn of Jaws follows scientists and documentary filmmakers who are keeping track of a pregnant Great White hoping to film the birth of the Shark’s Pups.

While the film was in production Paul Walker was killed on Thanksgiving Weekend 2013 in a car crash and his death is acknowledged in the film and tribute to him is paid in the opening by his Fast and Furious co-Star Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.

My Favorate Flicks on this year's line-up is Bride of Jaws and Lair of the Mega Shark

One of my favorite additions to Shark Week is the inclusion of Shark After Dark to the line-up. 

Gone this year is Josh Wolf and Taryn Southern as they have gone on to their own endeavors.  Wolf can be seen on CMT with his own show and Southern can be found hosting Movie Therapy  on www.movietickets.com

Remaining to pitch Dunkin Doughnuts and Red Apple Ale is none other than Bob the Shark who remains in commercial capacity.

Taking the reins of Shark After Dark  is Horror director Eli Roth serving as host. With guests including Kevin Smith and Greg Nicotero.

The Discovery Channel is not the only place to celebrate Shark Week anymore! While other networks make it a point to have Shark related programing in their own right there are also Shark Week Themed gatherings at many beaches across the country as well as other Shark Week events in non-oceanic areas.

On Monday night Scarface and I headed over to the Alamo Drafthouse where they are having their own Shark Week Line-Up which began on Sunday night with Jaws 3D and other programing includes a gimic showing of Sharknado with flying Sharks in the theatre and one of my favorite Shark films Deep Blue Sea which I reviewed on a previous Shark Week entry here on the Video Creep.

The screening that we attended was the monthly secret screening of the AGFA.

Now there was much speculation on this film and while many of us predicted that the screening would be the 1981 Jaws mockbuster Great White which was sued by Universal Studios because of too many similarities to its 1975 inspiration that the United States release was halted and remains a collector’s item among Genre Fans.

While our speculation continued and included Jaws the Revenge and Cruel Jaws James Wallace took the stage with his Jaws t-Shirt and informed us that the film was 1969’s Shark.

Now this was another flick that I had seen in my childhood that followed Burt Reynolds as Cain, a gun runner who finds himself stuck in a small village by the Red Sea where he soon takes a job working on a boat with a mysterious woman and her partner.

What Cain soon discovers is that his employers are actually treasure hunters that are trying to retrieve gold from a sunken ship that happens to be in the prime feeding grounds of many killer sharks.

I have to say not too many Sharks in a film titled Shark but I am willing to look past that because the film was not too bad.

The film is what is and it reflects the time that it was made and the audience reacted much to the events in the film that were common back in 1969 but not accepted in today’s films.

The production was marred in controversy when director Sam Fuller fought with the producers to have his name removed from the film due to both their editorial fails as well as the marketing of the film using the actual death of a stunt diver during production of the film.

3 Dead Bodies

0 Breasts

3 Sharks

1 Runt

1 Drunken Doctor

1 “Fatso”

3 Betrayals

2 Stars

Check it out.