Twenty 20-Sharks is a chronological survey of shark attack movies. In this entry, we look at one of several Italian films made to capitalize on the success of Jaws: Lamberto Bava’s Devil Fish. Or Monster Shark. Whatever you wanna call it.
I could have chosen any of a number of Italian knockoff Jawses to cover in this one. But the one I chose for this series is Lamberto Bava’s 1984 cult flick Devil Fish1. There are a number of reasons for this:
1) It’s available on Tubi, the People’s Streaming Service.
2) It clocks in at brisk ninety-four minutes. (Hooray for short movies!)
3) It moves us along in our shark-movie timeline, landing a year after Jaws 3-D (which we will not be covering).
All the pros outweigh the one big con working against it: The killer shark in Devil Fish isn’t a shark of any kind. I didn’t know that going into this film, otherwise, yeah, I probably would’ve picked something else. But, the notoriety, availability and running time made that decision for me, so here we are.
The film comes from Lamberto Bava, son of Italian horror maven Mario Bava. Lamberto got his start running second unit direction on a number of his dad’s movies (among them Danger: Diabolik2) before striking out on his own with 1980’s Macabre.
Devil Fish is pretty indicative of the era. Much like Mako: The Jaws of Death and Jaws 2, the film was shot along the Florida coast. Unlike any of the shark attack movies we’ve covered thus far, though, Devil Fish, decides that the only thing better than a killer shark on the loose is a bioengineered hybrid creature on the loose. This is the start of a trend we’ll see frequently in this series, where shark attacks in and of themselves aren’t sensational enough, causing filmmakers to resort to making up their own goofy creatures and needlessly intricate plots, shoving them into the conventional shark attack movie mold. There is exactly one shark in this entire film, and it’s stock footage of a tiger shark fleeing the scene.
The film opens as the coast guard investigate a shipwreck and haul away a dead boater missing both of his legs! We then meet Dr. Stella Dickens (Valentine Monnier), who works with dolphins at a local aquarium. She notices her dolphins acting funny in the water, panicking at a mysterious rumble in the deep. Stella discusses the incident with her colleague Bob (Dino Conti), who also noted anomalies aboard his Seaquarium boat. Stella then hires her electrical engineer/makeout buddy Peter (Michael Sopkiw) to rig up some special equipment for scanning soundwaves underwater. Whatever is causing the dolphins to act up is only getting worse.
We then pivot to the morgue, where Sheriff Gordon (Gianni Garko) examines the dead boater with the coroner, who tells him it couldn’t possibly be a shark attack, because the bites are just too damn big. Gordon then goes out to the waiting room to console the victim’s mother in a scene that feels intentionally cribbed from Jaws. It doesn’t really work, though, because a) it’s way too early in the movie for this, but also b) it’s not like the sheriff knew there was a devil fish in the water.
So the town sheriff is on the case, the local marine biologists are on the case; we’re gonna get to the bottom of this, right? Hold on, because now we pivot to another science lab, a fancier, more official looking science lab. It’s here that we discover a conspiracy is afoot. A sexy, adulterous conspiracy, as a matter of fact. First, a mysterious woman with poofy red hair arrives to seduce one of the scientists. This is Sonja West (Dagmar Lassander), who claims her scientist husband is much too busy working toward a Nobel prize to pay her any mind. So, naturally, she hooks up with Davis Barker (Paul Branco), deputy director of West Ocean International. They’re caught by one of the lab assistants, who claims she’s going to the press with knowledge of their plans. (And she’s not talking about the affair.) And if you’re thinking that’s the kind of talk that can get a movie character killed, you’d be one hundred percent correct. West and Barker start offing people left and right, even sending goons out to rough up Peter and his research assistant (Iris Peynado) and destroy the equipment he’s been hired to build.
The murders are upsetting, to say the least. This is an Italian horror movie from the 80s, after all. But this isn’t even what we’re here for. We’re here for the devil fish, dammit! Soon enough, Stella, Bob and Peter ship out on their boat to hunt for this elusive creature. To this point in the film, we’ve only seen it briefly in extreme, jarring closeups.
Eventually, we learn the ugly truth: West Ocean International has genetically engineered an aquatic monster to help them control the high seas and make the ocean safe for commerce (but specifically only their commerce). This monster is half squid—which we see as giant tentacles lash the boat during its attacks—and half a prehistoric amalgam of what another scientist refers to as “living fossils”. Then another idiot takes that information and assumes this creature is millions of years old.
The creature’s DNA reveals that it’s only ten months old, but also that somehow, it can reproduce at the cellular level. Sonja’s husband, Professor West (William Berger), realizes if the sheriff goes through with his plan to blow the monster out of the water, they’ll have millions of smaller devil fish to deal with once the thing regenerates. I appreciate that the sheriff immediately listens to the scientist for once, understanding the stakes. He immediately pivots from his “let’s blow it up” plan to a more holistic plan of “fuck it, let’s set the entire goddamn Everglades on fire”. And they do! And it’s great! For this brand of cheese, the finale is pretty fun.
But is Devil Fish a good movie? No, not particularly. The monster design is pretty cool—a half-dunkleosteus/half-squid monster is unique for the time, at least. It ultimately feels more like a proto-Sharktopus3 than anything else, but I’m here for it. Devil Fish is sleazy in the way that only an Italian horror production filmed in 1980s Florida really can be. It’s got plenty of sex, plenty of violence, and some truly nasty kills. In the end, isn’t that all we really need?
FINAL RATING
2.5 stars (out of five). It’s 100% trash, but it’s delightful trash.
NEXT TIME: Night of the Sharks (1988)
- Alternately known as Monster Shark, or Shark – Rosso nell’oceano. Bava himself protested the second title because, as he put it “There’s not a fucking shark in the movie!”
↩︎ - Itself featured on the final episode of the original run of MST3K. But if you’re reading this column I’m sure you know that.
↩︎ - Which we’ll be covering eventually, I promise. ↩︎
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