Welcome to the third instalment of my on-going project/personal journey into film hell to review Dickshark, a zero-budget horror film that is not a porn story (according to its one IMDB review).

If you haven’t done so already then you should read Part I and Part II or else you won’t understand what the hell is going on (if you do read them you won’t understand what’s going on either, but you’ll at least know why).

We left off at breasts being fondled.

The fondler is none other than our down-market Bill Bailey, last seen treating underwear-clad Vanna to al fresco dining, back in the Premier Inn, where his friend, Julian, first displayed the eponymous Dickshark.

His new lady friend seems less than impressed with his performance and tells him that his fondling isn’t exciting her. He lectures her that sexual excitement isn’t just about pressing the right buttons and getting a result. Then there’s a long pause while the pair of them have a bit of a think about whose line is next.

I must say, 2.1 scenes in, that what this film needs – even more desperately than a writer, actors who can act, a premise that isn’t stupid as all get-out or even a desire to stick to its own ridiculous continuity – is an editor.  This film is 2½ hours long, did nobody think that it might be worth editing out the missed cues, the pointless ad-libbing, or even Bill’s (obviously unscripted) “Ow!” as he walked off set at the end of the last scene?  Was every piece of this a priceless gem from the film-maker’s rich jewellery box? Answer; no. I think this is the result of somebody betting they could make a film in less time than it takes to watch.

It turns out that Bill isn’t just breast fondling because he’s the director and this was the only way he could get to touch a human female (even if his mugging at camera would lead the naive to assume that’s exactly what’s happening), his lady friend needs to be aroused so that “love vapours” will emanate from her “love canal” to entice the creature, which is, after all, a penis…albeit a shark-shaped one.  This is how  hard sci-fi should be, people.

Failing to arouse her with a from-behind fondling Bill offers to try something new, and fondles her boobs while standing in front of her. It’s hard to image who, or what, would be more aroused by being able to see Bill, so naturally it fails to work.

“I just mean that my vagina is not yet lubricated!” explains the well-fondled lady, continuing the film’s commitment to using literal anatomical words in the worst possible context.

Bill suggests that she should get into the bath.  Well, as she’s still wearing her knickers and stockings she’s clearly overdressed for this film (which, I remind you, is not a porn story).

It seems the plan is to lure the creature to the bathtub and, despite a general willingness to be fondled by somebody who looks like he might just have unstapled the chicken from his jeans, in the name of science the victim is a little concerned.

“Is it going to eat me?” she asks, not unreasonably.

“Well, even if it did, you probably wouldn’t orgasm.” explains Bill.

Well, that’s all right then.

“It has a mouth, but you probably won’t get bitten,” he adds, then, when he should really have ended the sentence, he continues, “You’ll mostly just get penetrated.”

I’m going to be using those censoring black squares a lot more, aren’t I?

“If what I’m doing with my hands isn’t exciting you […] perhaps you’ll get turned on by my personality.” says Bill, a statement which makes a living shark-penis seem massively less far-fetched in comparison.

“Humour is the way to a woman’s vagina,” he explains (after a short detour up a cul-de-sac of misremembered lines). I can’t even bring myself to report on the exchange that follows – it’s that bad – then we cut to a bath running, in slow-motion, because, as previously noted, there seems to be some contest to make this film run as long as possible.

The heavy metal soundtrack, unheard since scene 1, reappears as the unnamed lady, now divested of what few clothes she had, lowers herself into the bath and (eventually) we cut to the shark’s point of view.

Now, horror films have long tradition of female members of the cast being attacked mid-ablution, and with a good director it needn’t be gratuitous. Hitchcock had Janet Leigh viciously stabbed to death while she showered without showing enough to worry the 1960 censor, even in the slasher genre Wes Craven had Freddie Krueger’s clawed glove appear in Heather Langencamp’s bath without upsetting her modesty.

This director is not Alfred Hitchcock.  He’s not Wes Craven.  He’s not even John Craven.

As the metal music enters an inappropriately soulful section the bather wrestles with a toy shark and, less successfully, wrestles with her inability to hide that she’s simply holding it against her groin.

Still. In. Slow. Motion.

We are at least treated to another A-grade special effect, where the impression that the shark leaps out of the water is cunningly created, at great expense, by her dropping it and then the film being played backwards! See, they have got an editor…man, are they shit at their job.

Having finally freed herself of the shark she immediately throws it down the toilet, thereby undoing everything for which she was scientifically fondled and shark penetrated.

So another scene ends, without really advancing the film at all, but, hey, at least Bill got to touch a woman.

The review continues here