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...!!
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...!!