Cruel Jaws (1995)

 

Director: Bruno Mattei

Screenplay: Robert Feen, Bruno Mattei and Linda Morrison

Cast: Richard Dew as Dag Soerensen; David Luther as Francis Berger; George Barnes, Jr. as Samuel Lewis; Scott Silveria as Bob Soerensen; Kristen Urso as Susy Soerensen; Sky Palma as Glenda; Norma J. Nesheim as Vanessa; Gregg Hood as Bill Morrison; Carter Collins as Ronnie Lewis; Natasha Etzer as Gloria Lewis; Larry Zience as Larry; Jay Colligan as Tommy

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

Cruel Jaws is talked of in the documentary Sharksploitation (2023), about the lineage of shark movies before and especially after the cultural shockwave of Steven Spielberg’s Jaws (1975), as truly one of the most infamous ones, probably with Shark Attack 3: Megalodon (2002) right behind, if only for a final line to rival Billy Wilder’s Some Like It Hot (1959) for iconic memorability. Bruno Mattei was a man behind mondo films, a shameless and proud reinterpretation of Aliens (1986) named Shocking Dark (1989), infamous titles like Hell of the Living Dead (1980), and buddies with Claudio Fragasso of Troll 2 (1990), and he will at least have a place in my heart for a film like Zombi 3 (1988), the Lucio Fulci film he and Fragasso helped on when Fulci fell ill mid-production, which I have unapologetically fallen for as late era Italian cheese. Here with Crawl Jaws, long past the golden era of Italian genre cinema, infamously the film “borrowed” footage from other Italian Jaws rip-offs, including Enzo G. Castellari‘s The Last Shark (1981), but even from the Jaws franchise. This, for a complete lack of politely language, gleeful waved its dick precariously close to fire of copyright as a result of this, such much so that, when Shout Factory in the United States attempted to license the film for physical media release in 2017, on a double bill with post-apocalypse film Exterminators of the Year 3000 (1983), they decided to just release the later film by itself¹ due to these copyright issues. It makes it amazing now, with hindsight, that for our United American friends the film managed to be finally cleared by Severin Films in 2020². This is more so as there was even music from the the Star Wars franchise, or even in the version you can see so close it suggested the shark would fly in like a Tie-Fighter at one point.

They also provided the “Snyder” Cut, a joke which has actually aged faster than the film, as factoring in how Italian producers and filmmakers did try to sell their films as if they were American productions, Mattei took the pseudonym of “William Snyder” for this production. By the time Severin Films got the license, they were banking on a trend in that year over an online campaign to release Zack Snyder's original cut of the DC comic book adaptation of Justice League (2017), the four plus hour re-cut from 2021 its own subject to unpack, but now the most esoteric thing of this weird movie which has enough already to consider, including the fact that “Snyder Cut” joke on the promotion connects to them having access to the Japanese release cut for that release with more gore. As well with these films, co-productions and/or alternative releases of films existed, this presenting the dichotomy with Cruel Jaws that, in most scenes, this would be the Jaws rip-off you could show on Sunday afternoon television, family friendly enough were it not for the gore that occasionally appears, but could not be shown because of the amount of swearing and bizarre (and lurid) sex comedy dialogue you get throughout this schismed curiosity.

Premise wise, this is Jaws, as for those who do not know that film, it is about a shark, unlike those in real life, who deliberately goes out of its way to terrorise and attack humans off Amity Island, which repeats here with a shark in Florida. The major is happy ignore warnings from his police about these attacks so the windsailing regatta stays open, these shark and Jaws rip-offs, even those about killer animals on land, emphasising a distrust on small governmental officials’ ability to protect their citizens even if unintentionally, whilst Cruel Jaws also includes a subplot of a corrupt real estate figure trying to bulldoze an aquarium ran by Dag Soerensen (Richard Dew) to put a hotel there. Also infamously Richard Dew looks like he took hair and moustache tips from controversial pro wrestler Terry “Hulk Hogan” Bollea, which is more befitting as Dew was his stand-in for two films, two TV movies called Assault on Devil's Island (1997) and Assault on Death Mountain (1999).

Imagining Richard Dew attempting to body slam the shark aside, and whether a leg drop on it would still work into water, is contrasted by the fact that, as this film continues on as a a conventional shark film in premise, playing to Jaws’ plot points as slasher films had their own tropes, he is as much part of the tonal schism too as you have a subplot about his character and his disabled daughter, a cute moppet in a wheelchair, and their trained aquatic animals for their shows, two dolphins but especially the seal, who do come from a cute animal film where they need to save the aquarium by paying the evil businessman's rent through a reward, in another film by a competition, here eventually killing a deadly shark. This is however contrasted by a film where you also have a lot of cursing, lewd comments and a dose of scuzzier teen sex comedy language with some garbled attempts at one liners, like the guy part of the villains who, with apologies to female readers for having to quote this, thinks saying he is a “pussy inspector” needing to do his job is a good pick-up line for three women on the beach.

For most its length, even with some of the more gristly moments, mostly some blood and the chewed up remains of victims, this would have been PG-13 to use the American ratings system, but the script with Bruno Mattei co-writing too completely tips the scales in a peculiar direction, from the constant use of the word “fuck”, an obsession with balls and uncalled for use of fat shaming, even to a truly evil villain, with “shit” for emphasis, really undercutting the tone in what is neither fish nor fowl in tone. This is contrasted by how Cruel Jaws as a film is pretty conventional, and even its notorious use of other films’ footage will not stand out if you were to shrug your shoulders at it. The thing which stands out is its strange tonal choices in dialogue and mood. This is matched by how misanthropic this feels despite its happy ending: were it not enough his father is an evil stereotypical businessman with shady mob connections, leading to two thugs straight out of an Andy Sidaris film appear to try to get the shark, your villain's son does a family film crime of trying to poison one of the hero’s dolphins with poisoned fish, his cronies are obnoxious teens, and even another of the lead’s girlfriends, dating a marine biologist, become completely unsympathetic by rejecting his obsession, going out for a fling cold-hearted with villainous dolphin poisoning son, than everyone forget this and for her to be eaten by said shark.

There is also a sense of this mocking US culture, the idea of a resort town where the mayor and businesses will ignore the potential shark related casualties writing itself as satire if borrowed from Jaws, but one of the legitimately successful scenes of the film is where an Australian/British family, with kids, have come to the place hoping to see a shark eat a person alive. Most of Cruel Jaws is not this, a film which feels apt for the director of films I have enjoyed like Rats: Night of Terror (1984), but I will say that, for a large percentage of this, Cruel Jaws is entirely what it says, a slightly lopsided Jaws. It has a lot of lines of dialogue, unintentionally, which stick out, and it is strange to witness, but also you can see, if you are not on its wavelength, or a fanatic of these films, including the people who made the Sharksploitation documentary, that this will just cause people to scratch their heads in curiosity in what on earth the point this was attempting. Bruno Mattei would chug along, still making films even by the time of his passing in 2007, if just before the likes of Sharknado (2013) came to be; despite the fact Cruel Jaws is shambolic in many ways, I kind of wished he was able to have made another one of these, having to use CGI than footage from other shark films, and seen what madness he would bring to life, preferably with the fuller balls-to-the-walls attitude of his eighties films than this.

 

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1) Cruel Jaws - Blu-ray Release Cancelled, written by Das Wiesel for Movie Censorship.com, and published on December 14th 2014.

2) Severin Films Releases CRUEL JAWS, MASSACRE IN DINOSAUR VALLEY, AND PRIMITIVES Today!, written by "The Vault Master" for The B-Movie News Vault, and published September 29th 2020.