Michael Helms 05.05.2008
fangoria.com

The Down Under killer-fish film previously known as “Malibu Shark Attack”, which we last told you about, has just finished shooting in Queensland under the title “Goblin Shark Attack”. Longtime New Zealand producer Dale Bradley (“Cave In”), supervising his first job in Australia, passed on a couple of production pics, notes that the title may return to Malibu... and explains the moniker change, noting that his movie's predators "are based on a species called goblin sharks, which don't look like your normal great white. They're very fearsome-looking creatures. Ours are actually larger than the real thing, but modeled on them for the look that the CG Company is creating.

“People do catch these things,” he continues, “but ours are monsters that get released from a big underground cavern during a seaquake. The resulting tsunami washes them ashore. Not only do car parks and basements of buildings, but we have sharks inside buildings as well. There's a recipe for something cool there.”

This production, whose backers include the Sci Fi Channel but which may receive an Aussie theatrical release, is still set in Malibu and stars local-born Peta Wilson (“La Femme Nikita”) as lifeguard heroine Heather. Her fellow cast members include Warren Christie, Chelan Simmons (“Final Destination 3”), Sonya Salomaa (“Blood Angels”), Rachel Barton, Remi Broadway, Jeff Gannon and Mungo (“Undead”) McKay. The director is David (“Blood Of Beasts”) Lister, with previously announced helmer Brian Trenchard-Smith still producing from a distance.

“The central characters are lifeguards on Malibu Beach,” Bradley explains, who survive the wave but get trapped under their building. The sharks know they are there and break in. There's another great location — a construction site that's also flooded-and the survivors manage to escape there, thinking it's safe. But next thing, the sharks bash down the roller doors and swim inside, so they're trapped in the basement. We've got a bit of “Alien” in there, and some good mayhem: amputations, people chopped in half. We shot one today featuring some lovely prosthetic work by makeup artist Sharon Robberts where a guy has lost both his legs. We've got another scene that's a bit of a homage to “JAWS 3-D”, where we have a parasailor getting into all sorts of trouble and ending up being half the man he used to be.”

As the action gets more intense, this variation on the “JAWS” franchise also homages another mid-'70s genre classic, Bradley reveals. “The survivors attack the sharks with chainsaws and concrete cutters because it's a construction site,” he says. "We got real dead sharks for those shots, but their skin is like steel. It was really hard to get a chainsaw to go through the skin of those sharks for close-ups.”