After receiving a fancy widescreen VHS tape of Jaws for my tenth birthday and then bearing witness to the sudden chomping of Samuel L. As mere humans, we must respect that or face the bloody consequences.
This is what sharksploitation cinema teaches us. It is a subgenre with a robust history, with approximately , shark attack movies released since Spielberg opened the floodgates almost 50 years ago. This is the Italian rip-off to end all Italian rip-offs, with director and copycat maestro Bruno Mattei shamelessly and copiously reusing clips from films like Jaws , Jaws 2 , and Enzo G. Released in some countries as Jaws 5 , Cruel Jaws tells the oft-told story of a Florida beach community populated by a supremely whiny Richard Dreyfuss substitute and a random Hulk Hogan lookalike, among others terrorized by whatever shark is in whatever footage that Mattei has managed to scrounge up.
When is Mattei, who also helmed classic Euroschlock plagiarism cases like Shocking Dark a. Terminator 2 and Strike Commando , going to get his honorary Oscar? The protagonist of this film is a Vietnam veteran named Sonny who is able to psychically communicate with the mako sharks who live in the swamp around his home.
This results in a number of scenes where he engages in conversations with real sharks who just look confused, but they apparently inform him of their exploitation by the unscrupulous owners of a nearby aquarium. As a younger man, I was so profoundly moved and fired up by the documentary Sharkwater that I briefly thought about leaving everything behind to join the ever-more urgent shark conservation movement.
The first two movies in this series are certainly entertaining but the third entry is a gonzo classic. Shark Attack 3 is also exceedingly horny. The filmmakers admirably commit to the bit and also bring in Paul Sorvino, Joey Fatone, and half the cast of The Sopranos to play supporting roles. I should add one legitimately terrifying shark film to this list, lest you assume I solely watch garbage although you would be correct. This was one of those huge unheralded Sundance discoveries at the time but it seems to have been largely forgotten in the years since.
