Skip to main content

Cruel Jaws


From Bruno Mattei (Hell of the Living Dead, Rats The Nights of Terror, The Other Hell) comes this cheap Jaws ripoff. The story follows much of the plot of Jaws, with a shark terrorizing a resort, and the greedy landowner who is hesitant to close things down because his annual start of summer race is coming up. They even have a scene where a shark is killed and the landowner goes on with business, despite the scientist proclaiming that they may not have caught the killer shark. The big race goes on, and several people are attacked by the title fish, resulting in a group hunt to kill it.











The movie uses a bunch of stock footage, as well as clips from the various Jaws films, and Italian movies Deep Blood and Great White. This results in lots of footage of a great white, despite the title terror being a tiger shark. The dialogue is ridiculous, the acting is awful, and the ripped off plot all add up to a fun b-movie. As long as you don’t take anything seriously, you’ll enjoy it.











Some of the funnier sequences involve the race that turns into a bloodbath, especially when a little girl who’s in a wheelchair and her young caretaker are running towards the ocean instead of away (?!?), resulting in the wheelchair rolling off on its own and dumping the kid into the water. There’s also some fun scenes of people getting eaten, as well as a boat accidentally blowing up, and a helicopter being dragged into the ocean by the shark. Several subplots involving young romance and the landowner’s dealings with shady partners are also filled with humorous, bad aspects.












Cruel Jaws is the typical awful but fun offering from Italian director Mattei. If you’ve seen some of his other “gems”, then you know you’ll be in for low budget, nonsensical shenanigans. This movie was also released under the title Jaws 5, but has more in common with the bad sequels than the original hit. It’s available to stream on YouTube.












 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ultraman Omega finale

Episode 25, the series finale of Ultraman Omega aired this Friday. From the very first episode I was hooked, and the series continued to maintain a high quality until the surprisingly emotional end. Sorato (Omega) regained all his memories, learning that he was one of many Space Gazers, who's job is to watch a planet and not interfere with any wars between the species (in Earth's case, humans and kaiju). A space Gazer's job is to observe, study and take notes, to learn from a planet's successes and mistakes, in the hopes of finding the right formula to achieve universal peace. Having returned to his previous role as simply a watcher, Kosei, Ayumu and Sayuki were forced to rely on themselves and their team to defeat the powerful kaiju Zomera. As he continued to watch the battle, Sorato/Omega found himself wrestling with the inactive role he was meant to do and his memories of the friendships he had forged with the others, as well as the examples of human kindness he had ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Help Me… I’m Possessed (1974) / #Missingcouple (2024)

I've watched some weird, obscure horror movies throughout my life. I can now add this lurid 1974 schlockfest to that growing list. In a castle in the desert, Dr. Arthur Blackwood runs a sanitarium filled with mentally disturbed patients (as well as staff). He claims to be working on finding a way to cure people of any violent tendencies they have, and brags about his younger sister, innocent, child-like Melanie, as evidence that his treatment works. When she was a child, their parents had to keep her locked up and chained in the basement, to control her violent fits. Now that he's cured her, Arthur has his wife Diane come to the castle to meet Melanie, so that they can be one big, happy family. Diane begins to grow suspicious that something is amiss after a Sheriff shows up investigating the murder of 2 local teens, and sets about on her own investigation, hoping to uncover the sinister secrets that she feels her husband is hiding. Help Me... I'm Possessed is an outrageous,...
Post a Comment
Read more

S.H. Figuarts Father of Ultra

Last week I received the latest SHF Showa Ultra figure, the one and only Father of Ultra, who made his debut in the series Ultraman Ace. He’s the 1st of the two Ultra related August releases I had pre-ordered (the other being Ace Killer). Father of Ultra is easily recognized by the huge horns on his head. The rest of his body is the standard red and silver color scheme that the other original Ultra brothers have (different colors wouldn’t be introduced until Ultraman Tiga decades later). Bandai did a fine job in capturing his look, much more accurate than the highly stylized Ultra Act version, which made him quite muscular. For his accessories, he comes with 6 pairs of hands (fists, two sets of holding, 2 sets of flat/karate chop, and grappling). He has an extra right flat hand that shoots out his signature beam, called the Father Shot. What makes this different from other releases is that the beam and hand are 2 separate pieces, with a clear plastic peg on the side of the fingers that...
Post a Comment
Read more