Review & Interview: Syfy Swamp Shark 'Don’t be a douchebag, or you’re destined to be shark bait'

By April MacIntyre Jun 24, 2011, 21:04 GMT

Syfy\'s "Swamp Shark" is a must-see popcorn Saturday night film. Invite friends over and make margies or s\'mores - watch it with a group!

Syfy's "Swamp Shark" is a must-see popcorn Saturday night film.  Invite friends over and make margies or s'mores - watch it with a group!

You will be greatly entertained by this family-friendly, funny flick that takes a deep water prehistoric shark who has found a new killing ground -The Louisiana Bayou - and actually makes it scarier than the backlot of Merlotte's in "True Blood."

Plus, it features Baseball great Wade Boggs (Dep. Stanley), "Buffy The Vampire Slayer" star Kristy Swanson (Rachel Broussard), eternal ass kicker Robert Davi (Sheriff Watson), character actor great D.B. Sweeney (Charlie) and a very funny young actor named Jason Rogel (Martin).

Rogel's bus boy Martin has some hilarious scenes involving chum, processing the smell of chum and the unfortunate wearing of bloody chum. He should be called Chumley.

D.B. Sweeney gets his Roy Scheider - shark head homage shot to add to his illustrious career too.

Deep in the swamp, big ol' gators' heads are popping off their bodies and horny teens and jackass boyfriends are being eaten whole, as a rogue, crusty Shark cruises the mangroves at lightening speeds, just like another famous shark did off Amity Island back in 1975.

What makes our tale so darn delicious is fierce alpha male badass actor Robert Davi has a big gun and runs the show in this sleepy little Bayou town. Good times! D.B. Sweeney and Jason Rogel each get a fair share of rip-snorters for lines, and Swanson settles into this leading role like a boiled crawfish dipped in melted butter.

Laissez les bon temps roulez!

In a major wink and tip off the hat to the film "Jaws" with a smattering of "The Waterboy" - this campy and scary-ish film delivers surprisingly tightly turned out scenes and signature Syfy creature effects for the hardcore cheese fans.  It's really well-written and acted for the silliness that it is; perfect summer Saturday night fare.

The film is directed by Griff Furst, and debuts on the cable channel this Saturday, June 25 at 9 p.m./8 Central.

The writers and producers bring home what tv reality series "River Monsters" star Jeremy Wade has been saying for years; The gnarliest gnarlington fish are in the rivers and swamps.

The director, Griff Furst, was interviewed by Fango:  “It’s a graphic safety PSA for irresponsible youths who think it’s a good idea to go swimming in the swamp this summer. It’s a little-known fact that hundreds of aggressive sharks scour the bayous of Louisiana for fresh meat. If there is anything you learn from watching this movie, let it be this: Don’t drink if you’re underage. Do not have sex. And last but not least, don’t be a douchebag, or you’re destined to be shark bait."

Jeff Chase (Jason Broussard), Richard Tanne (Tyler) and Sophie Sinise (Krystal Broussard) round out the ensemble as the fine musical scoring of composer Andrew Morgan Smith serves the film well, he brings his 'A' game to a 'B' flick with great Cajun music and Zydeco flair. I absolutely loved the music in this movie.

You will dig this film, I promise.

Syfy Saturday Original Movie Swamp Shark will premier Saturday, June 25 at 9:00 pm Eastern and Pacific/8:00 pm Central.

Wade Boggs, Robert Davi, Kristy Swanson, and D.B. Sweeney spoke on a conference call about the film.

On how they all got involved with this project:

Robert Davi: Well, I got a phone call from the agents and they said, “Hey, there’s a Syfy movie called Swamp Shark.” So I was immediately intrigued by the title because I have a 10-year-old boy where all he does on You Tube is look for swamp shark images. And him and his friend -- his 10-year-old friends gather around that computer and they go, “Wow look at this shark thing.” So when I heard Swamp Shark I said, “Send me the script.”

I then read the script, and I enjoyed it - it had a great sense of fun, it had a great sense of humor, it had the tradition of course of seeing a film that was shot in Louisiana in the Bayou which is a great location, a sort of a different place to put a shark and I then asked them to, you know, the directors and the producers that had some ideas about the character and they were very open to that. And the process started forward and then of course the beautiful Kristy Swanson was involved.

Kristy Swanson: Oh, I also got a phone call from my agent to read the script and I thought that the title of it was very interesting as well. And then I heard Robert Davi was on board and I’m a big fan of him and a good friend of him and so I thought this would be a really good experience to work with him and be a part of the project. I really liked the character that I would be playing. She’s a very strong female role and I’m always attracted to that and that’s how I got involved.

D.B. Sweeney: The reason I got in, I heard Wade Boggs was in and I’m a big Red Sox fan - a big baseball fan. So I had all kind of chicken recipes I wanted to try out and I had already gotten on the plane before I found out Davi was in it. It was too late to pull out so I had to go down and make...

Robert Davi: I know. That was already signed because when I found out D.B. was in it, I was going to pull out.

D.B. Sweeney: But no. I know Robert and Kristy and it sounded like it was going to be a lot of fun and it certainly was. And I went to school in Louisiana for awhile, so I love that part of the country and it was just a lot of good reason to do it.

Wade Boggs: I was in a golf tournament in Orlando with Jeff Chase and he plays the Swamp Thing, and he asked if I would be interested in doing a bit part in a movie that he was doing down in Louisiana -- for up in Louisiana rather -- and I said, “Absolutely.” Being a baseball player, you’re a ham any way and got an opportunity to play somebody other than myself in an acting role. So I was really looking forward to it and just had an absolute blast with meeting Robert, and D.B., and Kristy, and the whole cast. It was really a special opportunity for me.

On baseball and acting, and if there are any similarities:

Wade Boggs: Well actually I think they’re somewhat different. I know that the concentration has to be exactly the same. You have to portray an individual and people have to believe, and I think being an athlete you don’t have the opportunity to say cut, Take 2, cut, Take 3, cut, Take 4. You either strike out or put the ball in play. So I think there’s somewhat similarities, but by concentration. Like I said about knowing your lines and coming across, but if I had to have a druthers I just love acting.

And being a baseball player you’re an actor, too. You’re playing in front of 45,000/50,000 people every night and so you’re on stage. So basically that’s the acting bug that comes out in you.

On D.B.'s film Eight Men Out and being in a movie with BB great Wade Boggs:

D.B. Sweeney: Oh yes. I mean he’s one of the all-time greats and when I did Eight Men Out Wade was with the Red Sox at that time and his career batting average was pretty close to…that’s when I was able to measure how well Shoeless Joe Jackson did in his era. One of the metrics that I could look at was that Wade was one of the dominant hitters at that time. So it was a big thrill for me.

I mean I’m sure he deals with it all the time but when you’re a baseball fan I think that part of you that’s 9 or 10 years old comes out when you get around the guys you watched on TV.

On how Swamp Shark compares to some of the other Syfy creatures we’ve seen:

Kristy Swanson: Well he’s a lot more different looking than any other normal shark, but to be honest I haven’t seen all of those other monsters so I don’t really know how to answer the question properly, you know. I’ve seen the movie and I think it’s really great and it’s really fun and it’s got a lot of suspense and interesting stuff and it takes place in a really beautiful part of the country and I think that you’ll really enjoy it.

Robert and D.B.' preference for good guys and bad guys in acting roles:

Robert Davi: Well right now I want to sing. I’m doing an album that’ll be out called "Davi Sings Sinatra" and that lets me be the good guy. But no, it’s a great way to slip in a plug. It’s fun playing all kinds of characters if they’re fun and interesting and whether it’s good guy or a bad guy. And you know, this was fun for me because I played a guy that was kind of like going back East but then move to the Bayou for the last 25 years. I had an uncle that did that. He had the strangest accent, so I kind of like fashioned it after him and it was fun to do that. I’m open to all kinds of interesting characters.

D.B. Sweeney: I think a lot of times playing a bad guy is more fun I think because you got to stir the pot, you know, the protagonist often has to walk a sort of straighter line. When you’re the bad guy anything goes. You’re not constrained in the same way as the guy who’s in every scene and the audience has to sort of root for.

On Wade's acting career and how it began:

Wade Boggs: Well actually my first acting job was Cheers in 1986. I did an episode playing myself during the bar wars when Gary’s Old Town Tavern and Cheers were going back at it and exchanging good fun and trickery and things of that nature. So that was my first acting job and went on to do a guest on Simpsons and actually I just finished up an episode on Psych up in Vancouver about two weeks ago.

So I love acting, but once it bites you it sort of consumes you and it’s something that I’d like to pursue a little bit more. Not only playing myself, but I like going into character. I like trying various accents and things of that nature trying to come up with a Louisiana do dat Cajun accent a little out of the ordinary. But yes I love acting and I respect each and every actor and actress that does a role very well and my hat’s off to all of them.

On the most challenging aspect of filming Swamp Shark for each one of you?

Kristy Swanson: The weather. It’s really hot in Lafayette, Louisiana in June and that’s what it was year. It was so hot. I think that was the most challenging was just the heat and sort of working on boats and near the water is always a challenge. So that was the toughest for me.

Robert Davi: For me it was staying away from the rich Cajun food let me tell you. They had some great crayfish down there and Etouffee and all that good stuff. Everything is fried so... I love the heat and I love the humidity of that even though it was tough because it’s part of the character, you know. So you could of like meld into that for me. Any time an actor can have a condition - like when I did Stargate Atlantis -- we had these scenes where we were in the rain and it was terrible - it was horrific, but I enjoyed it because you’re in the elements. You don’t have to act it it’s there so this whole experience and the gorgeousness of the Bayou.

We had a terrific director Griff Furst and producers and Louis and Tim that made things as comfortable as possible for us down there. And it was just a blast.

Wade Boggs: Well as far as I was concerned, I was inside the jail and it was 125 degrees in there.
And probably the most difficult part was keeping my makeup on. I didn’t want my makeup to run too much...

Robert Davi: You wore makeup, Wade?

Wade Boggs: Absolutely, absolutely.

Robert Davi: Oh that image just destroyed a whole week for me. Okay.
You know, Robert Nixon once said...

Wade Boggs: I was trying to keep the fake blood on my nose and that was the most difficult part...

Robert Davi: I never thought you would have worn makeup.

Wade Boggs: I was sweating so bad and trying to keep the blood on my nose after I got punched out by the swamp thing.

Robert Davi: Here it is macho Wade Boggs wearing makeup. It’s like what Robert Mitchum said, “There are no actors only actresses.”

Wade Boggs: Perfect.

D.B. Sweeney: I had a great time driving the boat around. I like it when they let me either drive a car or drive a motorcycle on a blocked off road. That’s kind of the funniest thing, but acting in this case we had this great boat that I got to drive around and the biggest challenge was to drive it really high speed and keep Kristy from puking so...

Kristy Swanson: Yes. Remember I nicknamed you Captain Crunch.

D.B. Sweeney: Well we were on a tight schedule and there were a lot of shots where I had to drive up to the dock and it was a shark chasing after you. You can’t come in like under full safety with flags or anything. You have to sort of come in kind of hot. So we ran up on more than one dock.

Kristy Swanson: Yes.  Wade, I just did (Psych) four weeks ago.

Wade Boggs: Did you?

Kristy Swanson: Yes.

Wade Boggs: Those guys are awesome. They are a hoot. They are an absolute hoot.

On how they got started in acting:

Robert Davi:  I always wanted to act as a kid and in fourth grade I did a play -- George Washington Slept Here -- where I played Sam the black butler. I was typecast from the beginning. So, you know, I was a character actor from the beginning so then I wound up getting the buck for it and the teachers in my school were encouraging my parents to put me in the arts and then I wound up in high school winning a lot of awards for dramatic interpretation, for singing, and first place in New York State.

Then got a scholarship to Hofstra and then studied with Stella Adler and then went off to the Actor Studio and studied with Miser and (Chekoff) and all these guys and then did my first film with (Chanocha) and then they put me under (Kaiser) at Columbia. The rest is either uphill or downhill. However you want to look at it.

D.B. Sweeney: After I won American Idol it was sort of a natural progression for me. I didn’t really want to have a recording contract so I thought, you know what I’ll just go take a job from a real actor so that’s what I did. No I started out in New York and I did a

Robert Davi: How did you win a ribbon in American Idol? I missed those episodes? My daughters watch that all the time.

Were you the guy that did the George Gobel impersonation?

Wade Boggs: Pass on the ground.

D.B. Sweeney: I just started on theatre, I never thought they’d let me into Hollywood, or movie, or TV and, you know, I figured I’d just do...

Robert Davi: I don’t know why they did.

D.B. Sweeney: I’m on probation.

Robert Davi: You’ve got the longest probation in history.

D.B. Sweeney: No that’s all I had. I’m a one trick phony.

Robert Davi: Hardly.

Kristy Swanson: I guess my background is similar to Davi. I started when I was very young. I was pretty much always performing, acting, anything I could get my hands on when I was a little girl 6 years old doing any church plays or musicals that were going on or community stuff or school stuff. And then I had some friends that did commercials in Hollywood and I talked to their mom and I got their mom and my mom to talk and I said, you know, “I could do what those kids do on TV. I want to do that.”

And my parents were school teachers from Orange County. They’re like Hollywood let’s just say knew nothing about it. They didn’t want me to get involved with it, but after me persisting and persisting they finally just decided okay well we’ll send some pictures to a children’s agency - Mary O’Grady Agency.

And they asked me to be a client and I went on my first audition in the next day and I got the job and then I got the second job, and then I missed the third but got the fourth. So I was kind of on a roll right at the beginning when I was 9 years old and I just been doing that every since so, you know, 32 years later it’s just kind of like all I know. That’s what I do and I love it.

On what was their favorite part?

Kristy Swanson: Well my favorite part was the cast and the crew and the directors and producers, everybody involved in the project. Seeing them everyday and working with them everyday, you know. I mean we were in some extreme heat, you know, down in the swamp with lots of bugs, you know, so there were tough elements and stuff. But everyone made it a lot of fun and we had a lot of laughs and, you know, just always had the upbeat, you know. So that was the most fun for me was working with everyone.

Wade Boggs: I'd ditto on that. When you’re behind the scenes and watching how everything comes together and not really knowing what the final product’s going to really look at and how your segment is going to blend in with everything else and then because I haven’t seen the final episode yet - the final product. So this is going to be all news to me Saturday when I look at it so. I think the best part was...

Robert Davi: You’re not in the picture, Wade. They took you out.

Wade Boggs: It won’t be the first time I wind up on the editing floor. But it was just working with extreme professionals and finding how the things behind the scenes work and how much preparation and everything goes into it. It was just a tremendous experience.

Robert Davi: D.B., do you want to go next?

D.B. Sweeney: I think it’s always fun. I mean, you know, I read sometimes actors talking about how hard it was to do their part. I mean, you know, it’s a long day. Yes, you might work, you know, 12 hours or some movies you work 14. So we were pretty much tied to daylight so there’s only about 12 hours of that. So, you know, it’s never really hard like a manual labor job but it can be stressful and so it’s good when you have good people around you like Kristy, and Robert, and Wade, and Jeff Chase, you know, and Griff. Griff, the Director was really good at keeping things kind of light and, you know, we had a lot of laughs so it was definitely one of the fun ones.

There’s jobs that you kind of like looking at the schedule and counting down the days until you get the airport and get away from all these people and then there’s jobs like this where you’re kind of sad that it’s over.

Robert Davi: No I mean to me it was you had the whole experience I guess like I said being in the Bayou, the people down there. Like what Kristy said: the cast, the crew, the support team from director to producers. Also the most fun was, you know, interacting with some of the Cajun locals. We shot this one location that’s terrific that’s off the swamp. I forget what it’s called, but it’s like, the guy that - there’d been generations down there,  Cajun, Louisiana and hearing some of the folklore.

You go to a place and you learn about that and that’s what the audience will get to experience there - that because I think they really showed the Bayou in the picture. Griff did a good job opening it up and showing that there and then watching D.B. sweat. I had a blast watching him sweat.

On their first impression when seeing the Swamp Shark creature:

Robert Davi: Well, the first impression is the shark’s that in the water they got to do some CGI effects for. We didn’t get to see the final CGI stuff until later on, but they had something in there that looked - at least if you looked on the surface - was a little bit scary for you. You know, it was better than I see at Universal on the ride that kids go on and get terrified on. And they did the CGI stuff and had what they had.

What’s funny is that there have been spottings now of sharks in the Bayou. Did you know that?  Yes there’s actually -- I saw it on AOL -- a couple about two months ago. There are sharks that have been in the rivers or in the Bayous that they’ve never seen before so how out there is this concept is what’s funny to me.

D.B. Sweeney: Yes and to Robert that maybe they get older or they get a little sick and they start to look for different ways to get food and they come up into the Bayou.

Robert Davi: Yes, it was very interesting.

On mechanical failures with the Swamp Shark creature:

Kristy Swanson: Yes I believe we did.
We had a puppet head that we worked with. It was more like this, you know, just a head that would come from the water up to the surface and then it had tubes with blood in them coming out the teeth, you know, that kind of thing. But the rest of it is mostly all CGI.

On why Robert Davi decided to make the Sinatra album:

Robert Davi: Well first I did my first film with Sinatra and secondly as a kid I was singing. I was winning awards, I studied in Florence, I sang at City Center, and singing was one of my, concurrent passions, very strong. And I had always in the back of my mind - I directed a film a couple of years called the Dukes, it won a bunch of awards, and I sang in that, got the bug and then put this whole album together. And with Phil Ramon who’s gotten 23 Grammy’s or so, he did Sinatra’s albums, Tony Bennett.

 He just did Paul Simon’s and he’s doing a new duet album for Bennett and Billy Joel. I mean he’s a legendary record producer I did at Capitol Records with a 30-piece orchestra and terrific arrangements and it’s something that is really who am I. More of who I am than anything I’ve done in film and so people say, “You look like a different person up there.” It wasn’t that I was a different person, it’s finally who I am. I’m able to express the totality of myself in the music.

The cast then spoke about unusual stories that may have happened during filming:

Robert Davi: The one weird story I had was they have this place I forget what it’s called, but they make these crayfishes right. You know, you have this crayfish. You know, I remember having crayfish in LA, you know, in New Orleans when I’ve been there. You know, you have a few on the plate but I said, “Can I get them to go?” “How many pounds do you want?” “What do you mean how many pounds do I want? I just want a couple of crayfish.” She said, “We order it by the pounds” and they was 5 pound increments or something like. So all of a sudden a fish gets put on the table of crayfish that are mounded about 2 feet high.

And this is how they eat the crayfish like this because they’re not big, you know what I mean? They’re like - they have a little meat, but now that to me was just a unique experience. You know, I’m Italian. I’ve seen a spaghetti pile like that, but never crayfish so. It was amusing, tasty, and fun.

D.B. Sweeney: The last restaurant I went to with Robert Davi was an interesting experience because Robert really knows food and is a very specific food that they’re making down there in Lafayette, Louisiana and it’s fantastic. But I don’t think it’s the stuff that Robert grew up with.

Robert Davi: No, it wasn’t necessarily I didn’t know some of the stuff. Although there were, you know, the Italian and French influence is on the food but it was very delicious and we went to this Greek restaurant quite a bit, remember?

D.B. Sweeney: Yes. That was great.

Robert Davi: There was a Greek restaurant, but the Cajun food was with the catfish and stuff like that that was all. I didn’t do the alligator and the frogs. Didn’t do that, but the crayfish mounded there 2 feet high was quite impressive looking and kind of like bite the head and suck the tail or something like that so.

D.B. Sweeney: Have you been looking at my Twitter again?

Kristy Swanson: It was a water moccasin. Remember that, D.B.?

D.B. Sweeney: Yes.

Kristy Swanson: When they were on the boat and the water moccasin came by and I started screaming bloody murder and...

Robert Davi: Oh for God’s sake.

Kristy Swanson: ...you were all looking at me wondering why.

Robert Davi: You can see water moccasins over here.

Kristy Swanson: You guys were wondering why I was screaming.

Robert Davi: You can see water moccasins in LA for God’s sake.

Kristy Swanson: They hadn’t cued that the shark had arrived yet, you know, and that’s when we were all supposed to scream. But I screamed like long before I was supposed to, but it was a snake right in front of me. But that was about it.

Robert Davi: The snake was D.B.