Once again it’s every Discovery Channel fan’s favorite week of the year – Shark Week! For the 22nd straight year, the nature network gets to have its cake and eat it too by airing (and re-airing and re-airing) documentaries with terrifying titles like Great White Appetite and Sharkbite Summer, all in the name of shark conservation. You see, these so-called man-eaters are simply misunderstood! Here at the Screengrab in Exile we’re all about misunderstanding, so we choose to celebrate Shark Week with a quintet of sharksploitation movies…just when you thought it was safe to go back to the video store.
If we can all agree that Jaws was the first of the modern blockbusters, it only stands to reason that Shark Kill was the first mockbuster. A 1976 rush job of a made-for-television movie, Shark Kill has recently surfaced on DVD, but rest assured this is no lost classic lovingly restored for the ages. The most amazing thing about Shark Kill to me is that I’d never heard of it before now. I won’t go through my whole Jaws spiel again (you can still read it at the Screengrab), but the notion that a shark movie could have slipped under my radar in 1976 is very troubling; it’s like I don’t even know nine-year-old me at all.
Thirty-three years later I have finally rectified this oversight. (You owe me one, nine-year-old me.) The story concerns a series of shark attacks along an oil pipeline. Rick Dayner (Phillip Clark) is the free-spirited marine biologist who recognizes that the site has a great white problem. Wouldn’t you know it, the suits from the oil company don’t believe him, nor do the divers who work along the pipeline (all played by actors who look like they’re killing time between gigs as “Thug #2” on The Rockford Files). Eventually, of course, Dayner is proven right, and a $20,000 reward is issued for the capture or killing of the shark.
Dayner teams up with Cabo Mendoza (Richard Yniguez), a diver whose brother was maimed in one of the attacks, and together they rent a boat from a curiously disinterested sea captain. (It’s as if Quint had told Brody, “Yeah, yeah, just take the boat. I’m gonna stay here and whittle.”) A proto-bromance blossoms between the hippie dude and the working class stiff, especially once their boat is decimated by a yacht full of drunken revelers in the movie’s comedic highlight. Left to float in the ocean until daylight, the fellas pass the time swapping stories (but fortunately not singing “Show Me the Way to Go Home”). Eventually the Coast Guard and the shark arrive nearly simultaneously and order is restored in not-exactly-nailbiting fashion.
The extended repartee between Dayner and Cabo is a function of the limited budget, but nonetheless probably the most enjoyable aspect of Shark Kill; Dayner is something of a blowhard, but Cabo’s a guy you’d like to have a beer with, and he manages to bring out the best in his fellow floater. As you might expect, the shark action leaves much to be desired, consisting mainly of stock footage unconvincingly intercut with shots of actors trying to look scared. It should be noted for the record that the DVD transfer of Shark Kill may be the worst in recorded history – washed-out, blurry, with frequent blackouts and a pervasive pinkish hue, it looks like it’s been salvaged from a bootleg Betamax cassette discovered in Davy Jones’ locker. In this particular case, however, this isn’t really a complaint; in fact, I’d go so far as to say this is how Shark Kill was meant to be seen. Nine-year-old me wouldn’t mind.
- Scott Von Doviak
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