I missed my chance at picking this film up on Bluray a while ago, when Severin Films had to pull their distribution of the title due to some (unsurprising) legal issues with Universal over the title and contents of the film…However, Full Moons streaming service recently added the title to their catalogue. So I figured this was probably the closest I was going to get to seeing a HD copy of the movie and…man oh man is this thing a car crash…
There are two questions you need to ask yourself going into this:
*Did you enjoy the Zombie vs Shark fight scene in ‘Zombie Flesh Eaters’?
And:
*Do you think the idea of someone NOTORIOUS for exploitation sleaze, taking a look at ‘Jaws’ and going ‘Easy m8. its nearly 20 years on. I can do that! no trouble with todays tech!’ is an inherently funny idea?
Because if you answered yes to one of both of those questions…You’ll probably really quite enjoy this.
Essentially; Its just the key beats from Jaws, slightly rearranged with all the nuance, well written characters, in depth research that went into it, the talent of Spielberg, the A+ casting…essentially the heart…RIPPED clean out of it. and replaced with stock footage of random sharks (I spotted Great white, Tiger and Goblin AT LEAST) across the runtime, and an intrinsic horniness that DOES NOT LEAVE THIS FILM ALONE.
Basically, they add a lot more semi naked ladies into the mix, they add a subplotline in involving a rich guy on the island being in deep with the mafia and the change the order in which our ‘Not Quint/Hooper/Broady’ do things…Oh! and because this is an italian exploitation film, theres OF COURSE some bizarre and unbelievable moments, such as the shark attacking a helicopter, and the shark attacking a windsurfing competition.
I will give the film this, it’s shark (in my opinion) looks better/more interesting than the original Jaws prop. Thats literally the only thing it (probably) does better. In every other regard, its a big dumb horny action movie about 3 guys (one of which looks like a dollar tree hulk hogan) trying to take down a MASSIVE shark, seemingly out of goodwill and vengence because the shark kills a few folk.
The scripts a bit slow burn until the very VERY end, theres a lot of repetition. the lack of knowledge about sharks or their habits means a lot of this film is just guys stood around going ‘we gotta get that shark!’ I mean…I know ‘Jaws’ kind of does that too…but at least they had some ACTUAL discussions about shark behaviour, WHY its doing what its doing HOW to hunt it…rather than them treating it like some kind of stray cougar thats been stealing from the dumpsters.
There is a pretty clean act structuring for this thing, but its got hard ‘clunks’ in tone shifting between those acts. Its campy as all hell, with moments that genuinely left me with a bewildered grin.
The directions sloppy, largely reliant on Video quality stock footage and it seems like a lot of the decisions made in this film, were made because ‘Jaws did it’ rather than it ACTUALLY making any kind of logical sense here…for example, In the opening of Jaws the films tinted slightly blue to help emphisize the dusk footage as being night time rather than early morning. its a styalistic choice…
Here? they hard tint the footage blue at random points…its not day for night, these scenes are supposed to be happening during the day…they’re just doing it ‘Because Jaws did it’. They do the ‘close the beaches’ storyline…but whereas in Jaws they slowly build the tension and pressure cook the evacuation of the beach. here? they dont seem to understand how to do ‘slow cook’ tension…leading to a scene where a cop is BELLOWING through a megaphone for everyone to get off the beach now, and the edit hard cuts between him and shots of dozens of legs just kind of…briskly walking…it doesnt quite cut the mustard.
The cine is mixed to poor, lots of mid wide locked off shots, no clear colour or lighting choices that wernt stolen and randomly crammed in from ‘Jaws’ The edit is a HOT mess of random cuts to random footage…randomly. It feels like a rush job, and while *some* scenes do end up looking not half bad…it misses more than it hits…
The performances are ALL sickly sweet or Campy hamtasmic joy. I loved almost every line delivery in this thing and it feels very much like everyone was dialled up to 11. its pretty crazy in places.
For some reason the soundtrack keeps *almost* using the ‘Star Wars’ soundtrack…I say almost because they definitely use big chunks of it across the runtime, but it almost always crossfades into some kind of ‘soundalike’ royalty free track before the bit (most) people remember kicks in…which was weird…
I…dont know how to feel about this one. On the one hand, there are moments here that are GENUINELY hilarious, the 3rd act is some serious grade A cheese. But at the same time, the opening act and a half is SO thin on the ground in terms of plot or fun moments. It takes WAY too long to get going, and while SOME of the bad moments are genuinely entertaining and fun. There are a LOT of bad moments that are just kind of dull or there to kill time…
Im glad I caught it this way, rather than shilling out £40-£80 for an Ebay copy, if you have $4 to spare on a months ‘Full Moon Features’ subscription, I’d say it was absolutely worth that! But I think im gonna have to catch it again some time to say if I definitively love it or not. As it stands, best I can say is, I WOULD watch it again, and if you like Italian ‘knock off’ movies or Italian exploitation. You’ll probably REALLY enjoy this one.
TYTD Reviews 