Twenty 20-Sharks is a chronological survey of shark attack movies. In this entry, we take a look at the first wave of Jaws imitators with a gonzo movie about a man’s psychic connection to sharks.
I shouldn’t have to tell you what a big deal Steven Spielberg’s Jaws became. Worldwide sensation; half a billion dollars at the box office; three Oscars; Spielberg became a household name practically overnight; literally changed the theatrical distribution game for generations to come. It even got three sequels (we’ll talk about one of them next time).
So naturally, imitators followed. Rip‑offs, riffs, and “similar but legally distinct” killer‑animal movies that followed the exact same template, many of which we’ve already name‑dropped in this series.
But there would also be films that only got made thanks to the popularity of Jaws and the subsequent demand for more like it. Director William Grefe had developed a story about a man who shared a special bond with sharks in the early 70s, but was unable to secure funding. On paper, it’s not difficult to see why: This film would not only require lots of underwater photography, but also for someone to swim with the sharks on-camera. Even assuming some degree of camera trickery or safety measures, just imagine the insurance policy on a production like that. But when Jaws became a sensation, Grefe was finally able to talk his way into financing his pet project.
Mako: The Jaws of Death1 is a trashy, low-budget affair that has less to do with exploiting people’s fascination with sharks, but is instead more interested in preserving their good name. It’s frankly kind of refreshing coming off the fever pitch generated by Spielberg’s film. In the wake of Jaws, shark-hunting became so pervasive that scientists speculate certain types of shark won’t fully recover for hundreds of years2.
And weirdly enough, that’s kind of where this film picks up. Mako begins on a fishing boat off the coast of Key West. Three drunken fishermen are out hunting for sharks. When they hook one and start reeling him in, a mysterious scuba diver appears out of nowhere, cutting the fishing line, setting the shark loose, and then boarding the boat to murder all three of the fishermen.
We quickly learn that this is Sonny Stein (Richard Jaeckel), who wears a shark tooth medallion at all times and seems to have a special bond with these sharks. Sonny is the protector of sharks in these waters, willing to do whatever it takes to keep his friends out of harm’s way. And I say ‘friends’, because Sonny keeps two pet sharks in the waters beneath his boathouse. Matilda and Sammy don’t exactly look like mako sharks to me, but then I’m no marine biologist. (My untrained eye and a brief Google search suggests they’re probably bull sharks.)
Sonny begins working with a marine scientist whose mission is to photograph a shark giving birth in the wild. To accomplish this, Sonny reluctantly volunteers the services of his shark friend, Matilda. He’s not too keen on the idea, but the scientist cajoles him into it, saying the more they study sharks in their natural habitat, the less likely the government might be to classify sharks as a bounty fish. You really have to wonder if that was originally a part of the script, or if they added it after Jaws gave everyone shark-hunting fever.
The local fishermen hired by the scientist already think Sonny is weird. They start making jokes about how he probably fathered all of the shark pups himself. These two bundles of fun are Charlie (John Davis Chandler) and Pete (Harold ‘Odd Job’ Sakata3). They also happen to be the hired muscle for a local strip club owner named Barney (Buffy Dee4), who’s desperate to find a new act to attract people into his club. His stripper girlfriend Karen (Jennifer Bishop) just isn’t doing the trick, even though we can clearly see all the drunk dudes going nuts for her as she swims in the tank behind the bar.
Lucky for him, Sonny just happens into the club that night, and follows Charlie and Pete out as they accost Karen in the parking lot. A brief car chase and fistfight later, Sonny rescues Karen and takes her back to his home, where she learns about his shark friends, as well as his detailed backstory, told to us in a lengthy flashback.
Seems Sonny was on a salvage ship off the coast of the Philippines during the Vietnam War when his crew discovered sunken treasure. Bandits killed most of his crew and chased him into shark-infested waters. His attackers were eaten alive, but Sonny emerged completely unscathed, and was granted a special medallion by the local shaman which gave him a telepathic connection to all sharks. Sharks protect Sonny so long as Sonny vows to protect sharks.
This, admittedly, is a hell of a lot to take in at one time, so the movie hardly lingers on it at all. Instead, Karen brings Sonny to the attention of her boss/beau/probable pimp Barney. She informs Barney that Charlie and Pete just tried to rape her outside the strip club, news at which Barney seems… nonplussed?
To make a needlessly long story short, Karen talks Sonny into loaning out his other shark friend Sammy to Barney, who intends to put it in the tank with Karen while she swims. Of course, he’s no monster; he fully intends to put a plastic partition between them, and just to make sure people don’t notice, he also wires up the tank to set off a high-frequency tone to drive the shark crazy. Despite the fact that this whole thing has ‘bad idea’ written all over it, and that every single other person objects to it, Barney does it anyway, which naturally leads to Karen getting eaten in the tank with everyone watching.
The back end of this sordid tale goes pretty much how you’d expect. Sonny finds out that Pete and Charlie have been killing sharks and selling them to tourists who just want a fun photo op to take home. He tracks them down and shoots Charlie dead with his own shark gun, leaving Pete in the water to be taken care of by his shark buddies. Sonny’s bloody trail of vengeance ends with him taking out the scientist, who we learn has also killed Matilda, and eventually evading the authorities by escaping into the sea, where his fate is left a mystery.
Mako moves at a brisk ninety-one minutes, and the final stretch goes by in a blur. Some of the shark attacks are fittingly gruesome, especially for such a low-budget affair, but one does get the sense that some of these sharks weren’t exactly handled with care. I admire the film for going down the whole eco-friendly route, but it’s hard to really appreciate given how cavalier the whole production seemed to be.
Mako doesn’t even really get much mileage out of the whole “psychic link” gimmick. Sonny wears the medallion around his neck, which allows him to swim with the sharks undeterred, but he also claims to be able to talk to them as well. We see plenty of him actually talking to Sammy and Matilda, but it’s left to the viewer to determine whether the sharks actually hear him or if he’s just some nutjob who talks to fish.
As one of the first films to truly capitalize on the Jaws gravy train, Mako is at least an interesting little film. It’s sleazy and kind of nasty in all the right ways, and it’s also mercifully short. Unlike a couple of the films we’ve already covered in this series, though, Mako really doesn’t get much of a boost from its tropical locale. The backwaters and exterior shots have such a grimy, low-rent feel to them that this could take place in any old coastal swamp. Hell, before they say we’re in Key West, I just naturally assumed we were in the Louisiana bayou.
But for a B-movie curiosity? It’s certainly more watchable than it could have been. You take your wins where you find them, I guess.
FINAL RATING
3 stars (out of 5). Cheap and tasteless, but its heart is weirdly in the right place.
NEXT TIME: Jaws 2 (1978)
- Alternately billed as either Mako, The Jaws of Death, or Killer Jaws. We want people to know this is a killer shark movie, but not that killer shark movie.
↩︎ - Admittedly I’m being a little reductive here, but this article from the Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel makes it pretty plain.
↩︎ - That’s not an editorial comment. That’s actually how he’s credited. It’s Odd Job from Goldfinger.
↩︎ - In real-life, Buffy Dee owned a bar in Miami. His entire filmography is almost exclusively made up of roles he played in movies filmed near his bar. ↩︎
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