A gunrunner loses his cargo near a small coastal Sudanese town so he's stuck there. When a woman hires him to raid a sunken ship in the shark-infested waters, he sees a chance to compensate for his losses. He's not the only one.
Outsider, Maneater, Hai, 4 bastardos para un lugar en el infierno, 鲨口夺宝, 4 bastardi per un posto all'inferno, Shark! Arma de Dos Filos, Ahol a cápa az úr, Съкровището на акулите, Caine, 鲨鱼, Людоед, Tubarão, 샤크!, Ludojad
MexicoC
USA
Germany16
Germany
Mexico
USA
Action! - Three Auteurs: The Narrative Tabloids Of Samuel Fuller
Truth be told, I'm a little disappointed. After that opening scene, I was actually expecting a version of Jaws directed by Samuel Fuller, but what I got was more like something resembling a James Bond film.
Now, as I started to get used to the kind of film I was watching, I was able to really appreciate Burt Reynolds' great performance as this clever smuggler with a touch of wit you would expect from the character of 007 in this film. Towards the end, the camera work and the way the fights are filmed reminded me of On Her Majesty's Secret Service. In this light, SIlvia Pinal plays a great…
Originally named after Burt Reynolds' character, Caine, Shark was retitled to take advantage of the tragic, widely publicized death by shark attack of a stuntman during filming. It was also re-edited without the consent of director and original editor Samuel Fuller, so the film has a pair of strikes against it right out of the gate.
In terms of the movie that exists, its tone is awkward, and the multiple editing philosophies at work are evident in the odd rhythm and the occasional conversation that feel hastily inserted. To be fair, the screenplay — written in part by Fuller — isn't great, either, particularly when it comes to Caine's sometimes uncomfortable cool guy dialogue.
That said, the movie nevertheless manages…
With a title like that, this should be the ultimate shark movie, but of course it's not even a good shark movie because it came out before "Jaws", before even Peter Benchley's "Jaws" novel, aka before pop culture knew how to make sharks scary. In fact, the reason they even called this movie "Shark!" is rather ghoulish and makes it hard to appreciate any such material within it: while filming in Mexico, a stuntman was killed by a great white, causing widespread publicity and a subsequent name change from "Caine" (Burt Reynolds' character) to "Shark!" to capitalize on the notoriety. Gross.
There are sharks in the movie here and there, including the climax, but it's not about their threat, rather…
appropriately scuzzy (if a little draggy in spots) for Fuller, sort of a Sunken Treasure of the Sierra Madre, what with everyone completely greedy and corrupt (except that everyone maintains shreds of humanity; the money they're all after would allow them to clean up their acts on top of providing a little nest egg). you can see why he disowned it, though. it features his nasty wit and unostentatious but expressive frames (witness the scene where Burt Reynolds tries to psych up Arthur Kennedy's totally soused "doctor" by pouring booze into him like an empty gas tank until he's in decent enough shape to attempt to revive a gravely injured little kid -- either all sweaty closeups or shot from above, behind a squeaky ceiling fan), but the cutting is strictly perfunctory. if you didn't know better, this might play like one of Cornell Wilde's pragmatically cynical adventure pictures, which isn't at all a bad thing.
“We're gonna be one big happy family. Happy father, happy daughter & happy son of a b*tch.”
While starting this movie there was a strange ode to stuntmen at the beginning which led me down the rabbit hole of finding out that apparently this movie was originally titled Caine after the main character and then it was changed to Shark after a stuntmen supposedly died by a shark attack while filming. The thing that makes it strange is the fact that there’s little to no information about this stuntmen which had lead people to believe it was a marketing hoax.
Anyways, the movie itself is okay at best. The tone is all over the place and the story seems cheaply executed…
The background on this movie is far more interesting than the movie itself as stuntman Jose Marco was killed by a shark during filming and footage of the attack is supposedly used during the opening scene. Although there's some debate as to whether that really happened or if it was all made up as a marketing gimmick and very little information on Jose Marco exists. The movie was also taken out of director Samuel Fuller's hands, re-edited and retitled to play up the shark aspects.
Shark is more of an underwater treasure hunting movie though with gunrunner Burt Reynolds finding himself stranded in a coastal town and going to work for a pair of treasure hunters. When the movie focuses on the treasure hunting and power dynamics between these three characters, it's fairly engaging. It spends far too much time on Burt wandering the town and mixing it up with the locals though.
Dirty, messy, and cheap in terms of production, story, and character. There isn't much worthwhile in Shark other than Burt and his relationship with the kid, and maybe that alcoholic doctor (one of my favorite movie character tropes). The rest of this mess is predictable and boring, and not at all helped by terrible editing.
Sharktacular Challenge
13. A Pre-Jaws Shark Film
Six years prior to release of the summer blockbuster that would forever solidify sharksploitation as its own genre, film noir mainstay Samuel Fuller (Pickup on South Street, Shock Corridor) made this Burt Reynolds-as-potential-fish-food vehicle on the cheap in Mexico doubling as Sudan.
Based on the 1955 novel “His Bones Are Coral” by Victor Canning, god only knows what possessed the filmmakers to abandon a title that marvelously pulpy for something as mundane as Shark!—then again, the picture was first titled “Twist of the Knife,” and subsequently “Caine,” after the lead character, so I guess we all have our battles to pick. After a couple of European shipwreck treasure hunters lose their local Sudanese…
Covered in the first episode of our Samuel Fuller season on The STACKS (support our Patreon here)
A more interesting production than it is a film. Fuller makes a standard adventure movie, the twist being everybody is crossing everyone. All are ‘the heavy’ as he puts it, layers of betrayal netted together in a web of differing motivations.
It’s a tough shoot and then the producers butcher it. It’s renamed. There’s a false story spread about death during the production. It’s entirely re-edited into a new form. The film is a mess.
It’s a mess with moments, though. Some great Burt Reynolds here and the shadow of interesting dynamics and compelling twists. You can see sequences battling against structure, the ghost of a solid film hidden under poorly edited sludge. A shame.
"You think that gold's going to take you right to the top?" - Caine,
- Fuller: boxd.it/hsWb2
Well, my luck with Samuel Fuller had to end at some point. It was fun to see the now mostly forgotten Burt Reynolds in this. Some of the direction was snazzy and a few parts were fun but this is pretty uninspired stuff from a director that I love.
Ranking the Shark Movies
I got 2 challenges out of this one. Although it's not a horror movie, but I've committed to it so I'm including it in Horroctober. I kinda hoped it might at least thrill here and there. The opening scene reminded me of Jaws, I was hoping it might be some sort of precursor. But that's where the similarities end. It's very talky and kinda dull. The film was a victim of studio interference. Director Samuel Fuller's cut was re-edited without his consent. I guess this particular Shark movie was watered down a little. Ahem!
Hard to watch. Like, literally, with my eyeballs, hard to watch because of a scummy, muddy image resulting from neglect and a bargain basement Troma DVD. (No hate on them; in fact, they’re the heroes for rescuing this thing from purgatory). Classic case of money hungry producers steamrolling a director’s vision, making their own cut and marketing hook, and leaving absolutely nobody satisfied. Wish I could have seen the version of this movie in Fuller’s head.
