Crew
Director/Screenplay – Dark Infinity [Dustin Ferguson], Additional Writing – Sam Mason Bell & Erik Anthony Russo, Producer – Ron Hauschild, Photography – Sam Mason Bell, Dark Infinity, Erik Anthony Russo & Bryan Wilson, Music – Karl Casey, Digital Special Effects – Mark Lunn. Production Company – SCS Entertainment.
Cast
Ellie Perez (Nora Owens), Mel Novak (Steve Owens), Erik Anthony Russo (Steven Kirby), Brinke Stevens (Rochelle), Scott Schwartz (Dr Hansen), Eric Roberts (Dr Johnson), Carl Crew (Dr Thompson), Ronnie Angel (Book Worm), Rene Perez (Manny Tortuga), Traci Burr (Ashley), Joshuia Moomey (Rodney), Nick Caisse (Tim), Christine Twyman (Erin), Janet Lopez (Paula), Ben Anderson (Billy), Breana Stier (Dan’s Girlfriend), Daniel J. Stier (Dan), Jarad Allen (Bum)
Plot
The space mission The Clairvoyant is destroyed by debris during its return journey to Earth. Samples from the experiments being conducted on board come down. People are now attacked by deadly plants and mutated shark people.
The killer shark film began with Jaws (1975), which produced B-budget copies for a number of years. By the 2010s, this had evolved towards the Gonzo Killer Shark film. This began with Shark in Venice (2008) and especially Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus (2009), which increasingly placed tongue-in-cheek and began to mix sharks with the most ridiculous things possible or create shark-related title puns. This reached its zenith with the bad movie hit of Sharknado (2013) and sequels.
There have been a great many shark films in a similar deliberately ridiculous vein – see the likes of Dinoshark (2010), Sharktopus (2010), Snow Shark: Ancient Snow Beast (2011), 2-Headed Shark Attack (2012), Jersey Shore Shark Attack (2012), Jurassic Shark (2012), Sand Sharks (2012), Avalanche Sharks (2013), 90210 Shark Attack (2014), Raiders of the Lost Shark (2015), Roboshark (2015), Shark Exorcist (2015), Ice Sharks (2016), Piranha Sharks (2016), Planet of the Sharks (2016), Sharkansas Women’s Prison Massacre (2016), Sharkenstein (2016), House Shark (2017), Trailer Park Shark (2017), Post Apocalyptic Commando Shark (2018), Ouija Shark (2020), Sky Sharks (2020), Noah’s Shark (2021), Sharks of the Corn (2021), Virus Shark (2021) and Shark Side of the Moon (2022), among others.. (For a more detailed overview see Killer Shark Movies).
Space Sharks comes from Dustin Ferguson, a director who works on micro-budgets and has made an incredible 150 films since the early 2010s – that’s averaging six films a year (although some of these are only episodes of anthologies). (See below for Ferguson’s other films). Space Sharks is listed as being directed by Dark Infinity, a pseudonym that Ferguson has adopted on several of his films.
Expectedly, Space Sharks is as awful as the rest of Dustin Ferguson’s films. It is worth noting that the film has a 2021 copyright date but did not see the light of day until 2024. Dustin Ferguson’s films all feel like random scenes shot with whatever actors he had to hand on the day. Here Ferguson at least gets in a couple of known names with Eric Roberts (the actor who will never say no to any offer) and 1980s Scream Queen Brinke Stevens, but in both cases their appearances are negligible, Roberts, for instance, only plays a lab assistant on the spaceship, and Stevens’s appearance is so brief that I failed to even work out where she was in the film.
There is no real plot to anything that goes on – just characters wandering around and occasionally something to do with the killer space sharks. Or for equally random reason killer plants (that somewhat resemble triffids). There is a sense of almost random improvisation at times – like the meeting between the FBI agent Erik Anthony Russo and Rene Perez in an SUV in a parking garage where Perez goes on with a completely random blather of conspiracy theory nonsense that makes no coherent sense involving the Grand Canyon, JFK, 9/11, lizard people, the Moon Landing, space flowers and space sharks. The film reaches an abrupt end and slams the brakes on without any point.
Ferguson’s films also feel padded by incidental footage. Here he manages to pad an entire sixteen minutes of the film’s 70-minute running padded with space scenes as the credits run. You suspect that the spacescapes and scenes of the returning ship are taken from a common use library as they are a cut above the rest of the effects used in the rest of the film. The actual shark effects when they appear look pitiful – humanoid figures with shark heads. The sound quality in many of these scenes is poor.
Dustin Ferguson’s other films consist of:- Terror at Black Tree Forest (2010), Silly Scaries (2011), The Legacy of Boggy Creek (2011), Black Tree Forest III (2012), Escape to Black Tree Forest (2012), Silly Scaries 2 (2012), Slumber Party Slasherthon (2012), Die Sister, Die! (2013), Doll Killer (2013), Horror Movie Workout (2013), Gloved Murderess (2014), Invitation to Die (2014), Occult Holocaust (2014), Demon Dolls (2015), Faces of Dying (2015), Meathook Massacre (2015), Shockumentary (2015), Silent Night, Bloody Night 2: Revival (2015), Blood Claws (2016), Camp Blood 4 (2016), Camp Blood 5 (2016), Grindsploitation 2: The Lost Reels (2016), Mondo Shock (2016), Tales for the Campfire (2016), The 12 Slays of Christmas (2016), The Amityville Legacy (2016), The Dummy 2 (2016), Tales for the Campfire 2 (2017), Tales from the Grave (2017), Aliens in LA (2019), Axegrinder 2 (2019), Dawna of the Darkness (2019), Direct to Video: Straight to Video Horror of the 90s (2019), Home Videos 2 (2019), Los Angeles Lifers (2019), Meathook Massacre: The Final Chapter (2019), Moon of the Blood Beast (2019), Penny Pinchers 2 – Scenes from the Underground (2019), American Terror Tales (2020), Angry Asian Murder Hornets (2020), Arachnado (2020), Asylum of the Devil (2020), Axed to Pieces (2020), Bootleg Death Tape II (2020), Bootleg Death Tape III (2020), Celluloid Slaughter (2020), Clowns of Halloween (2020), Creatures (2020), Found Footage of Fear (2020), Frames of Fear 3 (2020), Hollyweird (2020), I Drip Blood on Your Grave (2020), Sexiest Scream Queen Scenes (2020), Tales for the Campfire 3 (2020), Tales from the Grave: The Movie (2020), The Last Roommate (2020), VHS Violence II: VHS and KILL (2020), Apex Predators (2021), Amityville in the Hood (2021), Bubba’s Dead: The Final Massacre (2021), Doll Killer 2 (2021), Ebola Rex (2021), Ebola Rex Versus Murder Hornets (2021), Faces of Dying II (2021), Faces of Dying III (2021), Faces of Dying IV (2021), Last Roommate: The New Seduction (2021), Mondo Shock 2 (2021), Mondo Shock 3 (2021), Nemesis 5: The New Model (2017), Not for the Faint of Heart (2021), Penny Pinchers: The Kings of No-Budget Horror (2017), Rattlers 2 (2021), The Creeps 2 (2021), VHS Violence (2021), The Woman in the Room (2021), Zombi VIII: Urban Decay (2021), Beyond the Gates of Hell (2022), Deep Red Murders (2022), Demon Predator (2022), Don’t Trick-Or-Treat Alone! (2022), Dying Scenes (2022), Faces of Dying V (2022), Liza’s Palace of Pleasure & Pain (2022), Liza: Warden from Hell (2022), Lords of Acid: Hell Does Exist (2022), The Clown Chainsaw Massacre (2022), The Worst of Faces of Dying (2022), VHS Violence: Bootlegged (2022), A Bengal for Christmas (2023), American Terror Tales 2 (2023), Big Freakin’ Snake (2023), Book of Creatures (2023), Closet Monster (2023), Cobra Strike Force (2023), Cocaine Cougar (2023), Doll Killer 3 (2023), Demonoids from Hell (2023), Faces of Dying VI (2023), Hell of the Screaming Undead (2023), Mega Ape (2023), Stale Popcorn and Sticky Floors (2023), Summerhouse Slaughter (2023), The Beast Beneath (2023), The Creeps (2023), The Dark House of Mystery (2023), 10/31 Part 4 (2024), Apex Predators 2: The Spawning (2024), Big Bad CGI Monsters (2024), Creepypasta: Deathnet (2024), Grandma (2024), House on Haunted Hill (2024), Spider Baby, or The Maddest Story Ever Told (2024), Lifeform (2025), Sharks N Da Hood (2026) and Witchcraft 17 (2025).
(Winner Worst Film in this site’s Worst Films of 2024 list).
Trailer here