Twenty 20-Sharks is a chronological survey of shark attack movies. In this entry we enter the 90s with the last of the 80s Italian sharksploitation films we’ll be covering in this series with the aptly named Cruel Jaws.
Steven Spielberg’s Jaws is many things, but in 1995 Italian director Bruno Mattei apparently decided it just plain wasn’t cruel enough. That’s the only conceivable reason why he hired a cast and crew, dragged them all down to the Florida Keys and made a Jaws knockoff so legally dubious that in some parts of the world it was literally released as Jaws 5.
This is, without a doubt, the flimsiest, phoniest, most hilariously pitiful shark movie we’ve covered in this series to date. Up to now I’ve been able to find at least a sliver of a silver lining in most of these things. The fact that most of them aren’t great is assumed at this point, so I’m trying to meet these movies halfway. But with Cruel Jaws, there’s nothing you can do but laugh at it. This is as bad as Bad Movies get. And the sad part is that this was almost certainly 100% intentional.
Cruel Jaws is, for better or worse, the plots of both Jaws and Devil Fish grafted onto one another, with a thick layer of early 90s sleaze spread across the whole thing. The film takes place in the fictional coastal town of Hampton Bay. Just like how Amity Island is a fictionalized version of Martha’s Vineyard, I’m pretty sure they mean for Hampton Bay to be a stand-in for The Hamptons on Long Island. One of the main locations in the film is the Theater of the Sea marine park in Islamorada, Florida, so as far as I’m concerned, that’s where the movie takes place.
In the film, the marine park is owned by Dag Soerensen (Richard Dew). Dag bears a comically uncanny resemblance to Hulk Hogan, which is hilarious on its own, but Dag is also father to three children: Large adult sons Bob (Scott Silveria) and Larry (Larry Zience), and young paraplegic daughter Susy (Kristen Urso). When we first meet the family, Dag is watching as Susy swims with two of the dolphins at the marine park. Really hoping this is some kind of aquatic therapy and Dag isn’t making his handicapped little girl perform for guests.
After a grisly shark attack in the opening scene, we meet marine biologist Bill (Gregg Hood) and his girlfriend Vanessa (Norma J. Nesheim), who arrive at the marine park to meet Dag. It’s not immediately apparent why they need to meet Dag here, and with the way Bill greets Susy, I assumed they were siblings. (Also doesn’t help that he addresses Dag by his first name, and I thought he was saying ‘dad’ until the subtitles said otherwise.) Anyway, the Soerensens are in danger of losing their marine park to local businessman Sam Lewis (George Barnes, Jr.), who enters the film dressed like Lex Luthor. And just like Lex Luthor, Lewis wants the marine park for himself so he can sell the land to an interested party who may or may not actually be the mafia.
When one of the dead scuba divers from the opening scene washes ashore with giant bite marks on his abdomen, Bill and local sheriff Berger (David Luther) agree that the beaches need to be closed until the shark can be dealt with. This attracts the ire of Sam Lewis, who insists the beaches stay open so his resort can make money with the upcoming Memorial Day regatta.
At this point in the movie, it was fun pointing out all the little nods to Jaws that the movie kept throwing in. The young couple stumbling upon the first shark attack victim; the sheriff telling off the local business mogul; the scientist insisting on doing an autopsy on the victim1; the different young couple who go swimming at night. I could go on, but the movie really starts to pile on the Jaws references, to the point where it becomes clear this is no simple homage or ripoff we’re dealing with here. This is a straight-up attempt at remaking Jaws, right down to actually stealing a bunch of underwater shots from every single Jaws movie.
Oh, but it doesn’t stop there. Cruel Jaws has so little respect for the franchise it’s ripping off, that it starts ripping off moments from the entire series. The plot may be the same basic plot as the original, but guess what? This shark pulls a Jaws 2 and eats a helicopter! And remember the scene in Jaws 2 where the water-skier gets eaten, and then her friend tries to kill the shark by dousing it in gasoline, only to set the whole boat on fire?
Sam Lewis’ own idiot failson Ronnie (Carter Collins) takes his buds out on his boat to try and kill the shark to claim his dad’s $100,000 reward, and the above sequence of events is how all that turns out. Because guess what? This shark is no ordinary shark. This is a tiger shark (like the first one they caught in Jaws!) bred and trained by the US government to attack enemy combatants! Which means now we’re entering Day of the Dolphin territory, because this movie truly gives zero fucks about which movies it references and when.
Hell, to go a step further, when Ronnie and his buds sail out to go kill the shark, they do it with the opening Star Wars fanfare blasting in the background! I guess they figured it would be too obvious if they started cribbing John Williams’ Oscar-winning theme music, so they decided to pivot and steal music from one of John Williams’ other Oscar-winning scores…
I’m conflicted with this one. On the one hand, absolutely everything is terrible and wrong about Cruel Jaws. The acting is abysmal, the shark effects vary from comically inept to “literally stealing shots from Jaws“, and the plot has ten too many characters with absolutely nothing to do. It’s as bad as bad filmmaking gets. But on the other hand… All of those things made this movie an absolute joy to watch. I said it in my piece on Night of the Sharks, and it bears repeating here: There’s a charm to these shoddily produced Italian movies that you just don’t get anywhere else. It’s the same kind of charm you get from watching any Bad Movie. You never know what’s gonna happen next, or how they plan on executing it.
In its own way, that puts Cruel Jaws in a class of its own. We’re way past the heyday when these movies were coming out by the bushel, but now we have an entirely new breed of bad movies in the direct-to-streaming avalanche of content. Maybe one day we’ll look back fondly on those movies, too. Though honestly? I doubt it.
FINAL RATING
1.5 stars (out of five). S’pretty damn bad, y’all.
NEXT TIME: Deepest! Bluest! My hat is like a shark’s fin!
- There’s a hilarious bit where Bill says an autopsy is the only way to find out how this scuba diver died, and the film smash cuts to the morgue, where an annoyed coroner immediately goes “yeah no shit, this guy was eaten by a shark.” ↩︎
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