SHARK LAKE (Jerry Dugan, 2015)

[Jox]

This is an almost 3 minutes long promo reel to show distributors obviously, so beware this promo is edited in a quite linear way, no major spoilers it seems, but sill showing quite a bit.

[Dida]

Looks good in my opinion...

[Tom]

I dunno. Looks kind of cheap and tacky to me. The shark looks awful. This is the sort of film I hope we see Dolph steering clear of after Skin Trade.
War Pigs is far more promising I think. This looks like a SYFY Channel premiere.

[Jox]

At first glance and not expecting much, it could be worse considering what it is I think. It looks decent and bad at the same time, but those promo aren't good for making asssessments and that's what why they're usually not shown to the public (if you had seen the SKIN TRADE promo, it didn't make much of a difference with other generic acion flicks, apart from a couple stunts, and some scenes weren't even well transfered). I'll take a "TV movie" that over any of the Serafini flicks (wanna be more serious but really tasteless).

Let's face it, tacky films will never go away, and he's got another go-project coming with the same producers and director Mike Mendez (THE CONVENT, BIG DASS SPIDER). They might even be even more now that these films get lower and lower budgets and schedules, and that in a way spending less time on a movie set/location and being just a "working actor" is somewhat convenient so that he only works his ass off for the ones that matters to him.

[DRC2013]

That actually looks a lot better than I had anticipated. I kinda expected it to look like another Asylum/Syfy cheap CGI crapfest, but it looks like a fairly serious movie, and the glimpses of the shark looked decent, like maybe a combination of real shark footage and a puppet/animatronic?

Sound editing and color correction obviously haven't been finished, since the sound is very rough and the colors are all washed out, but it all looks fairly good to me.

I can appreciate Dolph venturing off into these different kinds of movies lately, a shark movie, a war movie, a creature movie, sci-fi/zombie movie etc. They're not all home runs obviously, but to me it beats having to watch the usual DTV formula movies over and over where "X plays a former CIA operative who must go against the Eastern European mafia....yada yada yada"

I just hope that Dolph doesn't do too many of these 3-day or so roles like he did recently in 4GOT10, or in the Serafini movies, because it's not fair to the audience or for Dolph himself, since they always sell them as "Dolph Lundgren movies" and put him front and center on the cover.

That kinda thing only hurts an actor's reputation and their value on the market. That's what happened to many actors like Eric Roberts, Michael Madsen, Tom Sizemore, and it's starting to happen to people like Danny Trejo, they're now known as names you can get for any movie as long as you pay their fee, they're "gettable" which means that they do a LOT of movies every year, and most of them are crap and they're hardly in the movies since those ultra low budget productions can only afford to hire them for a day or two. And some of these name actors can be hired for fairly low fees (like $5,000 a day), so the budgets can be low.

Basically the entire cast of 4GOT10 are people like this, which kinda worries me, that Dolph has now "lowered" himself to that level. At least that movie looks pretty good juusdging from the still released.

I understand that the business isn't what it used to be, and you gotta pay your bills, but I just hope Dolph can keep a nice balance between the "paycheck roles" and the less than serious roles like in Shark Lake or Battle of the Damned and between the more personal projects like Skin Trade.

[Jox]

Apparently he enjoyed his character in 4GOT10 quite a bit. Good or bad move career wise and commercially, he's not trying to put himself front and center but rather to play different parts. I think he's trying to enjoy himself rather than calculate every move, and also as things come.

[savagesketch]

This certainly appears to be a different movie for Dolph. It really doesn't look like something I'd seek out if it wasn't for Dolph starring in it. And yes, I wouldn't be surprised if it makes its US premiere on SyFy...

Even still though, it looks loads better than any of the Serafini dreck he did a couple years ago. Between this and another shoddy production like BLOOD OF REDEMPTION, I'd take this... any day.

[Nathan]

Again, I'd rather he did stuff like this than the Serafini crap, that guy just has no clue. I rate Hard Rush/Ambushed as possibly the worst Dolph movie with almost zero redeemable qualities. This looks a tad generic, but at least Dolph seems to be playing a bit more of an unusual/different character, the physical filming in terms of competency looks a lot better, once graded and with final sound it should be a lot tighter, and at least they didn't bill it like Battle of the Damned, as some cheesy DOLPH LUNDGREN VS SHARKS type Z-movie. That said, the shark does look a little appalling but I'd rather a bad model than bad CGI (which always looks worse). At least this one looks semi-interesting, stuff like Ambushed he needs to stay as far away from as possible, that film is borderline unwatchable.

[Tom]

I guess this 3-4 film a year thing will probably continue for the time being and be a bit of a roulette game. Occasionally we'll stumble onto a winner, but mostly they'll stink. We'll see. At the very least this is indeed a change of pace for Dolph, whereas the Serafini were just essentially cheaper, shitter versions of the atypical Lundgren crime/action film.
This obviously won't go the cheesy humour route, as I think Sharknado has cornered the market on that.
Still we can't argue that his roles aren't fairly diverse and now there's two more differing films on the horizon which could well provide something interesting, if only for Lundgren's character alone.

Of these cheapies, I'm probably most curious about War Pigs and Don't Kill It, which at least seems like they might have a sense of humour to it, and undoubtedly some gore. Perhaps something along the lines of Battle Of The Damned in terms of tone. That film wasn't brilliant but I kind of enjoyed it and it was more fun to watch than BOR etc.

[Jox]

I think BATTLE OF THE DAMNED was at least trying to do achieve something more so than most of the past projects, some shots and the lighting in some scenes are rather elegant and made for the big screen, and the script and characters are smarter than they seem to be, had it been less cheap and not taking on the greyish monochrome trend, it would have been up there.

As for SHARK LAKE, it's obvious it was meant to be more of a serious thriller from the beginning (hence the original and leass tacky title THE LAKE) which is good (I'm not in to the SHARKNADO or even BIG ASS SPIDER type humor) and it looks like they're pulling too many punches on the blood either, another good point, the photo looks okay, I think what would have elevated the film is the cast, and that's the problem with most of these low budget flicks. Especially nowadays, instead of casting a mature actress in her 40s as the cop/stepmother, they get a 25-30 something rookie who looks like a late teen model for H&M, same for the other characters like Michael Aaron Milligan... Since the story seems to focus on other things than the shark(s) you want solid actors to elevate the film above the TV movie of the week type.

[Tom]

I believe they cast a lot of locals too didn't they? And maybe not necessarily even trained actors in some roles.
Dolph's Ol' buddy James Chalke seems to have a significant role and lets face it he's not the greatest actor in the world. ha ha.

[Jox]

I believe they cast a lot of locals too didn't they? And maybe not necessarily even trained actors in some roles.

Not in the main roles, or two other older locals actors actually seem to have quite a bit of credit.

Dolph's Ol' buddy James Chalke seems to have a significant role and lets face it he's not the greatest actor in the world. ha ha.

He's a co-producer.

[savagesketch]

I think in this day in age, it's difficult for anyone in Hollywood to really get solid, steady work. The climate has changed so much. Nowadays, anyone with a camera phone and access to Youtube can be an instant celebrity. Being a Hollywood star just doesn't carry the weight that it used to. The days where a film could be sold on an actor's name, and said actor could command $20 million a movie (thinking back to the '90's with "the next Jim Carrey movie!" or "the next Stallone picture!") are gone. Add to the fact that kickstarter has changed the climate in producing films, it's a completely different landscape. Today, the big name actors of yesterday are taking paycuts and roles in smaller features just to get work. Look at Schwarzenegger... He has an independent film (MAGGIE) being released VOD here in a couple weeks, and that has gotten zero promotion. And that's Arnold! Some could say that Arnold is trying his hand at something new, which is probably true, but if the film had a bigger budget, we'd be hearing about it a lot more.

So with that being said, think about how difficult it is for the b-listers (like Dolph) to command a big project. For every SKIN TRADE, there's gonna be a few paycheck roles. He's gotta pay the bills, just like we all do. As much as I'm not a fan of some of these cheap productions, they make it all the more evident that Dolph is a regular working Joe... just like us all.

[Jox]

Co-star Sara Malakul Lane's audition scene
https://vimeo.com/116923973
(She will be in the KICKBOXER remake)

[Jox]

The Hottie Stop interviews Sara Malakul Lane star of Sun Choke and Kickboxer

Tell me about playing Steven Seagal's daughter - I have to believe you have a good story or two about him?

Seagal's my daddy. [Laughs] He was my first movie daddy. When you're 19 and doing a movie and Hollywood comes to Thailand and there are trailers, movie stars... it was amazing, it was an amazing experience. My brothers just loved the fact that I've been in a Seagal movie and an Eric Roberts movie and a Dolph Lundgren movie, a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie, all those 80s action stars. It's that nerdy boy thing. They're all genuinely cool guys.

What else do you have coming up that you're excited about?

I'm definitely excited about Kickboxer, I'm in the remake of Kickboxer. Van Damme plays the mentor in it, it's got Dave Bautista in it, Gina Carano is in it. I'm more of the love interest in it, I stand around and look cute. And then I have a movie with Dolph coming out called Shark Lake, it's Jaws in a lake.

http://www.joblo.com/hollywood-celebrit ... kboxer-105