Le chasse au requin tueur

To be honest, before watching "Haialarm auf Mallorca"- "World Premier on RTL", I really had no expectations whatsoever. Now I have to say: this film is even a disgrace for the cheesiest German channel RTL (apart from RTL 2 and Super RTL). As you may have supposed the film is about a deadly dangerous super killer shark murdering people in Mallorca for no reasons. But there is hope for the terrified people of Mallorca. The great hero Ralf Moeller fights against the injustice, bravely challenging the epic monster, which isn't even identifiable nearly throughout the film. Having experienced a shark attack himself, in fact, years ago when his wife got raped, he has the opportunity to revenge now. However he has to bother with greedy scientists and corrupt police... Will justice win and the people of Mallorca have their own peaceful life back? You are going to have to see if you bother watching this masterpiece. T his horribly animated film would have been a great contender for the worst film of the year if it hadn't been German. The story is obviously rubbish and the acting wooden. Even the shark is not scary.

As a German you have to hope this movie doesn't reach a wider audience than Germany. But I'm sure it wont as there are heaps of real good films, obviously not produced by RTL. To be fair with the entire film crew, you will at least have a funny evening with a sufficient amount of alcohol and a nice company. I'm, hence, going to give this rubbish a 2.

Flimsy story that works for teenagers

Where to begin, where to stop, in this 'Jaws' rip off made for TV?

Rolf Moeller plays a tough former marine diver, living with his daughter all alone on the Spanish island Mallorca. A shark is roaming the waters, but not your ordinary shark. An ancient species supposedly extinct since 100.000 years. A couple of people die, till the secret of the sharks existent is revealed and Rolf could finish his personal vendetta, since this very shark had killed his wife three year back…

Did you notice Rolf never took his shirt of in this flick? Great you hire 6'6' actor Moeller and have him act in a leather jacket on a summer vacation island. I don't expect Rolf to act, but pump it up man… The story is so flimsy its real hard not to laugh all the time through. Best part is Janet Biedermann, (German starlet) who appears out of nowhere so she can plug her singing career. SFX on the shark aren't too bad for TV, while the sharks teeth are simply laughable. RTL produced this mindless story and shoots huge ratings, that's how TV works – unfortunately

The fact that this film presents itself like an amateur production, including an absurd story and terrible acting, would not be so bad if it would by trashy enough to give the viewer some good laughs. Instead, it is only extremely boring. Among other things, we are informed that Ralf Moeller's home cooking is rather poor, which supposedly no one had doubted in the first place. Undoubtedly, many viewers have turned on their TV set only to see Jeanette Biedermann, a German teenie idol, who adds one of her songs to this catastrophe. Others were probably fans of Moeller, but instead of playing at least some sort of hero, he fails in almost every respect, which is not exactly his fault - he simply is not an actor, but a good-looking male model. Overall: Love's lab ours lost ... completely.

Stumbling upon the 2004 German shark-themed movie titled "Hai-Alarm auf Mallorca" (aka "Shark Attack in the Mediterranean"), by random luck here in 2023, of course I opted to sit down and watch it. Sure, I wasn't harboring any expectations to the movie, given it being a German shark movie. But my love of the shark genre made me give the movie a fair chance.

Writers Jörg Alberts, Roland Heep, Frank Koopmann and Don Schubert put together a fair enough script. Sure, it was a very, very generic and predictable shark movie. And the storyline definitely was flawed, no doubt about it. But there are worse shark movies out there, actually.

I wasn't familiar with the cast ensemble in the movie, aside from actor Ralf Moeller. But I will say that the acting performances by the cast ensemble was actually fair enough.

The German language in the movie was not an issue, but why not keep a movie that is supposed to take place in Mallorca in English or Spanish? Would just have been a bit more authentic that way. And a boat with Germans in trouble in the waters at the Santoro Trench having the people do an emergency call in German just makes zero sense. Or a guy running around on a beach in Mallorca and yelling about a shark alert in German just made zero sense either.

My rating of "Hai-Alarm auf Mallorca", from director Jorgo Papavassiliou, lands on a three out of ten stars.

Still troubled by the death of his wife, a helicopter pilot feels worried about his daughter being out in the open water after a series of incidents lead him to believe that a massive killer shark is in the area, and teams up with a biologist to track down and kill the beast patrolling the waters.

Overall, this was a pretty enjoyable genre effort. Among the more enjoyable elements present here is the highly enjoyable and quite fun amount of shark action within this one. The fact that it's out rather early and is known to the one guy makes for a lot of rather fun ambush attacks to occur in the beginning as the shark takes out several tourists and other victims which are all written off as freak incidents. The main action scenes here, with the scientists out trying to capture the creature and taking the fight to it on the open water which results in a fun protracted battle with the guns on board as well as the fun race to the beach in order to rescue his daughter in the jet-ski competition, is all sorts of fun. Granted an over-the-top resolution to everything and a decent-looking shark, this works nicely. As well, the rest of the action here isn't too bad and has a lot to like. With the film going for the mixture of shark-based creature feature action and some more traditional Action film elements, there are some impressive scenes here including several rather energetic car-chases that feature some more exaggerated stunt-work than would be expected in a film like this. That carries over into the explosive finale which has some grander stunts than would be expected as well as giving the film a rather touching conclusion that ends everything on a positive note. There isn't a whole lot to dislike here but it does have some issues. One of the biggest problems here is the rather odd and somewhat disjointed pacing that takes place throughout here. Rather than build-up suspense about the series of accidents taking place slowly leading to the idea of the shark being out there, the fact that he knows immediately based on a single accident that admittedly seems out of the ordinary but has very little about it to suggest his theory would automatically be true. Likewise, the action stops in the middle of the film to deal with his romance with the scientist or trying to disprove his wild accusations which bring the focus away from the killer shark who is out and about from the very beginning. The other real issue to be had with the film is the rather obvious and continuous cliches throughout that seemed to be taken from several films and wrapped into one film. The whole concept of the prestigious scientist attempting to experiment with sharks as a means of cancer-cure research is an arc stolen completely from another film entirely, while the exploits of the scientist to rescue her imprisoned friend takes every cue possible from yet another beloved genre film. Riffs from wholesale dialog exchanges and the race to save the beach from the shark and much more are quite obviously lifted and taken from other films, leading to parts where it loses itself in these elements. Otherwise, this one isn't that bad.

Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Violence, Graphic Language and Brief Nudity.