Review: Cruel Jaws (1995)
Directed by: Bruno Mattei
Starring: David Luther, George Barnes, Jr., Scott Silveria
Written by: Robert Feen, Bruno Mattei, Linda Morrison
Music by: Michael Morahan
Country: Italy
Available on: Blu-ray (Severin)
IMDb
Bruno Mattei isn’t a good or imaginative filmmaker, but he’s audacious as hell, and I can’t help but admire him for that. He’s personally responsible for two of the most blatantly plagiaristic films ever made: 1989’s Shocking Dark (a mashup of Aliens and Terminator) and this, Cruel Jaws (or Jaws 5, as it’s sometimes marketed). While Shocking Dark mainly recreated entire scenes from the films that inspired it, Cruel Jaws does that at least a half-dozen times while also lifting footage straight out of killer shark movies like the Jaws franchise, Deep Blood (1990), and The Last Shark (1981). I’m surprised John Williams isn’t receiving royalties, because a handful of the score’s cues are reproduced nearly note-for-note from his Jaws and Star Wars themes. The film has been tough to find for years because it’s basically a walking (swimming?) litigation hazard. But thanks to Severin FIlms, we’re blessed with this majestic mess. Honestly, I kind of loved this movie. I have a soft spot for these amateur reproductions of Hollywood films. Mattei just put all of his fucks into an old chest that he placed in the corner of his basement, with water-logged love letters to old girlfriends, and forgot all about them, because he sure as hell doesn’t have any to give here. This movie was made with careless, mad abandon and it’s amazing. The main character is a kind-hearted Hulk Hogan lookalike widower named “Dag” (obviously supposed to be the Roy Scheider) and he’s helped by a marine biologist or scientist of some kind named Billy (the Richard Dreyfuss character). They’re trying to save the marine theme park Dag runs with the help of his handicapped daughter (there’s actually a surprising amount of heart at the movie’s core). Alas, their livelihood is now threatened by a ravenous “tiger shark.” That’s in quotes because Mattei uses stock footage of all sorts of sharks as stand-ins. The main physical model used is a huge great white, and then there’s a much smaller rubber puppet that looks more like a manatee that forgot how to swim. I’m pretty sure there are also attempts to pass dolphins off as the shark. That’s just one example of Cruel Jaws’ beautiful ineptitude. The acting is atrocious and it’s obvious everyone’s lines were fed to them moments before they stepped in front of the camera. The dialogue, written by Italians with a loose handle on the English language, sways between inane and aggressively asinine (Billy, the one with a Ph.D. of some kind, says with a perfectly straight face, “The shark we’re looking for is no ordinary shark … its behavior’s anonymous,” obviously meaning “anomalous”). And while Steven Spielberg attempted to use Dreyfuss’ character to point out that sharks aren’t just mindless killers and that they have an important role in ocean ecology, Mattei’s hatred for sharks runs pathologically deep. Every character is out there spewing vitriol towards the fish, including our pal Billy, who says, “That motherfucker is acting so strange; it’s almost as if someone’s trained him to attack and kill.” For some reason, a character responds to that with, “We can only hope so.” I could write a whole lot on how often words are used incorrectly in this thing. Anyway, if there’s a message to be taken from this film, it’s that sharks are rotten murderers that need to be murdered. To top off this melting pot of incompetence and laziness, it ends with the most inappropriately chipper smash cut you can imagine. Oh gosh, the corrupt mayor whose gross negligence led to dozens of deaths just got pushed into the wawa by a sea lion. That’s funny! While it could have used more graphic shark maulings, Cruel Jaws is an astonishingly brazen film that offers a relentless barrage of entertaining idiosyncrasies.
Overall rating: 8.5 out of 10
