The U.S. Navy’s special group “Blue Water” builds a half-shark, half-octopus for combat. But the sharktopus escapes and terrorizes the beaches of Puerto Vallarta.

Legendary schlock producer Roger Corman returns to the genre that he pioneered (and makes a hilariously chintzy cameo appearance, to boot) in this sensitive character study of a misbegotten shark/octopus hybrid that escapes the control of its navy handlers and begins to snork down surfers off the coast of Mexico. For fans of this sort of thing, all of the base elements of a superior creature feature are present, including cold-blooded scientists, beefy soldiers of fortune, and acres upon acres of postage-stamp-size swimwear. Unfortunately, while star Eric Roberts delivers a gloriously straight-faced performance as the creator of said majestic killing machine, much of the supporting cast indulges in the sort of broad winking at the camera that marks too many of the modern exploitation movies. Still, a concept this goofy won’t go down without a mighty fight, and the sight of the titular character casually picking off bungee jumpers and crawling up on land (sure, why not?) to harass unsuspecting musicians is pretty irresistible. If, in the final accounting, the movie is only half as enjoyable to watch as the title is to say, that’s still an awful lot of fun. –Andrew Wright