User reviews

Franco Nero is a shark hunter and treasure seeker who has a handful of allies, and also antagonists at every corner.

The film has fistfights, car chases, foot chases, seaplane vs. speedboat chases and some nicely incorporated shark attacks, but no genuine urgency. The music score is very cool, but at times you get the sense that it's expected to carry along long stretches of the film by itself. And the underwater scenes slow down the pace (inevitably).

All in all, pretty forgettable stuff, but not bad. (**)

Franco Nero goes platinum blonde, dons a strange wig and heads for the Caribbean in a frankly bizarre and not entirely successful outing for Enzo Castellari.

Nero is The Shark Hunter, a mysterious fellow on the island who appeared from nowhere but is rather good at catching sharks. He's got his girlfriend, who has caught the eye of local thug/potential rapist Werner Pochath, who works for local crime lord Gomez. Nero has found something out there in the sea, and he's suddenly got loads of people following him.

Following a requisite bar fight with Pochath, Nero begins to work with a happy-go-lucky guy who has the diving experience and the gear to dive over three hundred metres. This guy seems trustworthy, so Nero reveals that what's down there is plane with one hundred million dollars in it. When asked what he'd do with the money, the guy says he'd spend it on orphanages and hospitals for the poor. Care to guess what happens to him?

Gomez wants to get his hands on the money, as does a stranger American fellow who arrived on the island. Can Nero get to the money and suck it out of the sea using that vacuum gadget and that huge inflatable ball? Would that even work in real life?

There's still the question of who Nero is and why he knows the money is there, and that gives him a chance to do his near-crying acting and have a few flashbacks. There's not much in the way of gunplay in this one but Enzo Castellari does get to punch Franco Nero right in the face. I wonder if that's why he gave himself such a big role? Some frustrations with his actors rising to the surface there.

Werner Pochath makes a good bad guy so we don't need to worry about that, but there's something strangely lacking from this one. I could have sworn it was aimed at kids until the end where people started getting eaten by sharks and harpooned in the chest. It's not a bad film, don't get me wrong - it's just not Castellari at his best.

Strange credits too - F. Nero? W. Pochath? Did they run out of money or something?

"Guardians of the Deep" could more or less be described as a rip-off of Peter Benchley's "The Deep", only … this version is a whole lot better and numberless times more entertaining! It's a very silly and immensely grotesque adventure movie, with highly implausible stunts and unrealistic characters, but the whole thing is so spirited and so vividly directed by Enzo G. Casterllari that you can't help but be amused. Spaghetti western hero Franco Nero (wearing a blond wig that nearly makes him unrecognizable) stars as a treasure hunter on a quest to recover $10 million from a plane wreck that lies on the bottom of the Caribbean Sea. The valuable loot is located nearby a shark-infested cave, but that can't be an issue, as Mike also happens to be a fearless and ruthless shark hunter who doesn't even hesitate to crash down in the open sea with a parachute to take on a Tiger Shark with his bare hands, now how about that?!? His search is complicated when other parties learn about the treasure as well, like a CIA agent on "holiday" and a bunch of corrupt local police officers. "Guardians of the Deep" features a constantly high level of spectacle & suspense and the film benefices extremely from the lusciously exotic photography by Raúl Cubero. This film is very beautiful to look at … and to listen to, as the De Angelis brothers' score is downright phenomenal and dreamy. Although not exactly a legit entry in the "Sharksploitation" sub genre (like "Great White", "Monster Shark" or "Tintorera"), this film contains some of the greatest and most masterfully enacted shark attack sequences ever in low-budget cult cinema! The sharks in the cave assist Mike during the finale and explicitly devour a couple of his opponents. The action scenes are impressive at sea as well as on the mainland, with tough macho fistfights, wild car chases and shootouts. This puppy is quite obscure and difficult to find, but worth tracking down if you like tropical settings, shark-action and Castellari's versatile repertoire.

I saw this movie almost a thousand times when I was a kid. I had it on VHS. And I loved it every time. But now the tape has been lost for years, and I miss this great movie, especially the music score. Is there anyone out there who can tell me how to get this film? On DVD would be perfect, but I don't think that is possible. Even on DivX or SVCD is just fine. I would be VERY grateful...

In his review of this film in "Stracult", Italian film critic Marco Giusti claimed that Franco Nero's performance was undoubtedly the worst he ever gave. Ridiculously decked out as he is in a long blonde mane and hippy garb, he can't be too far wrong I guess...

Anyway, Nero plays a bitter loner who, having lost his wife and kid in a traffic accident, voluntarily enlists for dangerous missions for an unspecified organization but then, unceremoniously, quits his job and relocates to a Carribbean island whose seas harbor the carcass of a sunken plane with a fortune locked away in its safe. The problem is that the site is infested with sharks but, of course, Nero has a penchant for killing sharks with his bare hands a' la Johnny Weissmuller. Those sequences depicting Nero's particular skills reach an unheralded level of silliness when he sky dives into the water onto a moving shark and slits its torso open without batting an eyelid! And what about his dragging a shark onto his motor boat after having previously pursued it on foot?!

I don't really know why I should go on writing in detail about such trash (especially since most of you probably won't ever have the chance to see this for yourselves) but, then again, why not? Anyway, there's a love scene early on between our Franco and a native girl, a couple of fistfights with the local bully (featuring a running gag of Nero sticking a piece of chewing gum onto his opponent's forehead), an alliance with a buffoonish salvage expert, a member of the organization is hot on his heels, as is the ubiquitous Edoardo Fajardo who is obviously interested in claiming the fortune for himself and, in the climax, an all-out shark attack replete with fake floating limbs.

Director Casterallari (who frequently appears in his own films a' la Hitchcock...yeah, right!) has a fairly large part here as a killer pursuing the man from the Organization! He was still fixated on sharks a couple of years later when he made THE LAST SHARK (1981), a film which was partly shot in Malta and featured such second-tier American actors as James Franciscus and Vic Morrow. For his pains, Castellari was even taken to court by Steven Spielberg and Universal Studios for plagiarising JAWS (1975)...although, if one is to believe Castellari's own statements at the 61st Venice Film Festival, Spielberg and Co. were merely envious that THE LAST SHARK had been more profitable (in the expenditure/profit ratio) than JAWS itself...!!

So-so adventure/thriller movie filled with underwater scenes , astonishing fights, well handled sharks scenes and violence. Mike (Franco Nero) is a shark hunter, he's crusty recluse on a Caribbean island who is dedicated to destroying sharks using any means, even jumping from a parachute. Later on, Mike gets involved in a hunt for buried treasure. But he's a mysterious man whose past nobody knows anything about, not even his girlfriend , Juanita (Patricia Rivera). Then comes Acapulco, a sympathetic and expert diver (Jorge Luke), who immediately befriends him to carry out a dangerous mission. But the situation worsens when Donovan (Michael Forest) appears -accompanied by Rosy (Mirta Miller)- who in the past worked with Captain Gomez for the Organization. Mike is actually the only one who knows the position of a plane that sank with a hundred million dollars . And certainly a hundred million dollars are tempting to many, willing to do anything to get them. A threatening Mafioso (Eduardo Fajardo) threatens Mike to reveal the whereabouts of the treasure. There's a local thug (Werner Pochath), who works for local crime lord Gomez and goes after Mike and his woman. Along the way, all of them attempting to retrieve gold bullion that lies deep in shark-infested waters . See the most sensational shark fight ever filmed!. The hunt is open, but this time not to sharks !.

This is an unexceptional, old-fashioned sunken-treasure tale with routine scenes and action enough. The ordinary garden-variety B-grade adventure in which a lot of adventurers and mobsters keep running across an underwater sunken loot. The pulse of any trash addict must pound over some ideas behind this mediocre but entertaining film. This is a violent adventure movie that earned notoriety because of on locatio , a sea pleny of hungry sharks (although there is a lot of stock-footage), as stunt divers were really injured by sharks. It stars the tireless Franco Nero, still acting here and there today, playing an adventurer gets ensnared in the mob's net off the mexican coast as they race for a cache of sunken milions. There are some botcher set pieces and one great totally unexplained scene. It is a typical Enzo G. Castelari film with action-infested dumbness and plenty of thrills , brawls , as well as strong confrontations. The naivite and oddity of the screenplay can scarcely cope with the diverse strands of script queueing up and waiting to be dealt with : underwater searches for a loot. The film was made in the wake of ¨Steven Spielberg's Jaws¨ (1975, nowadays a classic) , but it seems more like a remake of the unknown and obscure film ¨Sharks' Treasure¨ (1975) about a sunken-treasure adventure with Cornel Wilde as one man show by writing/producing/directing and acting, while the same director Enzo G. Castellari made the infamous ¨The Last Shark¨ two years later. Being an Italy/Spain/Mexico co-production, actors of these countries show up, such as: Italian as Franco Nero; Spaniard as Eduardo Fajardo, Mirta Miller; Mexico as Jorge Luke, Jorge Reynoso, Patricia Rivera; all of them give functional interpretations.

The film benefits from a colorful photography by Raúl Pérez Cubero, shot on location in Cozumel, Quintana Roo, Mexico . Adding a messy script full of some silly and ridiculous incidents from Tito Carpi, Jaime Comas Gil and Jesús R. Folgar (who produced as well). De Angelis brothers' (Guido and Mauricio) soundtrack is downright bombastic and dreamy but excessive, with synthesizer's cheerful sounds from the beginning to the end of the film. This molto cheapo movie was averagely directed by Enzo G. Castellari. Enzo is considered to be one of the best Italian artisans, who has made a nice career, shooting all kinds of genres such as Wartime : Counterfeit Commandos , Eagles over London. Adventures : Scaramouche, Shark hunter, Tuareg , Shark 3 . Sci-fi : Bronx warriors, Escape Bronx, Warriors of wasteland. Thrillers : Light blast, Il grand racket ,The day of Cobra, La via della droga , Forajidos 77. Terror : Diabla. Westerns : Keoma, Tedeum, 7 Winchester for a massacre, Matalos y vuelve, Johnny Hamlet, Any gun can play . Rating Il cacciatore di squali(1979): 5/10. Only for Franco Nero fans, fans of the Italian action genre of the seventies and completists of the attractive career of Enzo G. Castel.

Decent enough mob flick/ Jaws ripoff, has Franco Nero sporting a supremely annoying, floppy wig, scouring the waters around small islands in the Caribbean, searching for millions of dollars, the result of a plane crash. Other searchers, as well as corrupt politicians, turn up looking for it as well- despite the fact that it is believed to be located in shark-infested waters. Well photographed in the Caribbean, and with a few good action scenes, but there is a few long stretches of nothing in between the action, and the music is sometimes effective and sometimes almost comically overpowering.

Overall, it is good, but nothing really memorable.

Actor Franco Nero and director Enzo G. Castellari made it again with this film.

After some very interesting films like "High Crime", "Cry,Onion" and "Keoma", Castellari and Nero worked together in this great, brilliant adventure or action film, as you like. The beautiful photography, the wonderful music and fine acting make this film most enjoyable.

Franco Nero does a great performance as usual... Eduardo Fajardo performs a very bad and cruel villain as usual too... This film has many great underwater scenes, car chasing, fights, and a solid plot, oh... and a quite surprising ending.

Who can ask for anything more??...

It´s absolutely worthwhile watching it!!.

The 'Poor Man's Peckinpah' triumphed once again at a time when poor Bloody Sam was Hemingwaying himself into a way, way, way too early grave. One of the most reliable Italian genre names of the era, good ol EG (as his buckle proclaims) once more as in Street Law combines his aforementioned master, Shakespeare, impressive stunt work and a confident leading Franco Nero to thrilling effect.

A sharp script, great score and outstanding photography aid the proceedings and elevates Shark Hunter above most euro-action and at a time when the trend was beginning to slip into a still not awakened comatose.

It's about time this and several other of E.G.C's outings once again see the light of day as they're damn classy fun. That being said, there are always pacing problems with Castellari's pictures, but usually nothing major. Still, they're a lost form of the action film which needn't rely on grit or angst to tell a good story but rather operatic flair which elevates the audience's participation into more than just a spectator. These films are full of life, warts and all and i suppose that's just not some people's idea of escapism. But hey ho, there's room for all of us.

A great Castellari with Franco Nero as a retired shark hunter! The soundtrack is A+ (another great tube from Guido and Maurizio De Angelis). Also, Take a look at Castellari, in a cameo, punching Nero in slow-motion near the end of the Movie! A must see for Nero and Castellari fans.

Years ago, a plane crashed near the coast with a gazillion dollars on board. Mike Donato (Franco Nero) works as a shark hunter, secretly has found the wreck and hopes to recover the treasure soon. But the American agent Donovan (Michael Forrest) and the local former police captain Gomez (Eduardo Fajardo) hope to get their hands on the treasure, too.

A fast paced, straight forward adventure story about a treasure and a bunch of bad guys chasing the hero - they don't make them like that anymore. In the exotic Mexican location, it's Fun with a capital F from the experienced hands of director Enzo Castellari who previously worked several times with star Franco Nero already and plays one role as Gomez' best killer himself. Eduardo Fajardo was Nero's opponent in "Django" 13 years earlier already. Although shot shortly after 'Jaws', the movie displays a realistic view of sharks. They are not terrible monsters here, but simply animals that usually don't attack humans.

I compared the 92 minutes English language version against the 80 minutes German version. One rather long diving scene was shortened, some hotel dialogs cut, and one scene where one of Gomez' henchmen is harassing the hero's girlfriend. Maybe not essential scenes, but annoying cuts nonetheless.

I'm a lifelong 'judge a B-Movie by its bodacious-looking cover' guy, and I'm big enough to admit, this foolishness has oft led me astray, but any genre film created by Enzo Castellari & Franco Nero is a guarantee of excellence! While, perhaps, more than a little inspired by Peter Yates's The Deep, The Shark Hunter is a boisterously entertaining Euro-Snapper in its own right! The blue-eyed Monsignor of macho, Franco Nero, replete with a bountiful blonde coif, armed only with his depthless testosterone and a humble spear, goes mano a Squalo with unrivalled manliness in Castellari's thrilling deep sea treasure hunt.

Let's be honest, if you are about to experience an unwanted intimacy with man scoffing sharks, who better to call than Django, dude? If celluloid hadn't been thus far invented, The Shark Hunter's righteously entertaining premise would strongly demand it! Highpoints: phooken everything, dude, for real, but The Shark Hunter gets bonus points for Guido & Maurizio De Angelis's uncommonly sweet score, and Werner Pochath's sleazy reptilian hood makes the sharks look like tadpoles! Interestingly, Franco Nero's bluff Shark Hunter returned much later for more maritime mayhem in 'Killer Mermaids'.

Actually more similar to Cornel Wilde's SHARKS' TREASURE from 1975, the same year as JAWS, which is literally mentioned in Enzo G. Castellari's THE SHARK HUNTER and that he'd ingloriously rip off in THE LAST SHARK two years later...

But this is really a pulpy and hard-driven, treasure-hunting picture: Within a cavern of "resting sharks" is the tail of a plane that fell deeper than the fuselage, holding a hundred-million dollars...

So while the caper's described by our "gringo" in Mexico, Franco Nero as Mike, with a long surfer blond wig resembling vanilla seaweed glued on within a tight, omnipresent headband or scuba mask, most of the film has an array of stealthily, espionage-genre assassins trying to jump in on the action (working for a crooked millionaire), which results in tons of just that...

One chase sequence involving an avenging Nero in a small, water-landing airplane chasing a baby-faced killer (played by the director himself), zipping his speedboat through jungle-tree isles of what looks straight out of the Florida Keys, is a standout, and the music sounds like a porno shot on Benzedrine, with just enough techno synth and 70's funk rhythm guitar to guide the energetic pace that never lets up...

And there are intriguing characters who matter to the plot whether they yearn to work for, learn from or are simply against our hero, who we initially see literally wrestling sharks (in one scene after spotting his victim from a parasailing perspective), using seemingly inhuman strength.

Meanwhile, he's tethered to the only Yankee on board in the original STAR TREK Apollo, Michael Forest (who also transcribed the dialogue for all the non-Americans), and Spanish REVENGERS actor Jorge Luke plays a young, excited, comic relief sidekick. But despite the surrounding color, Nero's Mike is a rogue's rogue in this wonderfully sun-drenched Italian sharksploitation that, as of now, can only be FOUND HERE online. So grab that treasure while it's still around.

Actually more similar to Cornel Wilde's SHARKS' TREASURE, which came out in 1975, the same year as JAWS, which is literally mentioned in Enzo G. Castellari's THE SHARK HUNTER and that he'd ingloriously rip off in THE LAST SHARK two years later...

But this is really a pulpy and hard-driven, treasure-hunting picture: Within a cavern of "resting sharks" is the tail of a plane that fell deeper than the fuselage, holding a hundred-million dollars...

So while the caper's described by our "gringo" in Mexico, Franco Nero as Mike, with a long surfer blond wig resembling vanilla seaweed glued on within a tight, omnipresent headband (and/or random scuba masks), most of the film has an array of stealthily, espionage-genre assassins trying to jump in on the action (working for a crooked millionaire), which results in tons of just that...

One chase sequence involving an avenging Nero in a small, water-landing airplane chasing a baby-faced killer (played by the director himself), zipping his speedboat through isles of what looks straight out of the Florida Keys, is a standout, and the music sounds like a porno shot on Benzedrine, with just enough techno synth and 70's funk rhythm guitar to guide the energetic pace that never lets up...

And there are intriguing characters who matter to the plot whether they yearn to work for, learn from or are simply against our hero, who we initially see literally wrestling sharks (in one scene after spotting a shark from a parasailing perspective), using almost inhuman strength...

Meanwhile, he's tethered to the only Yankee on board in the original STAR TREK Apollo, Michael Forest (who also transcribed the dialogue for all the non-Americans), and Spanish REVENGERS actor Jorge Luke plays a young, excited, comic relief sidekick. But despite the surrounding color, Nero's Mike is a rogue's rogue in this wonderfully sun-drenched Italian sharksploitation (that can be found, for the time being, on youtube).