Genre Run-Through - A History of Sharksploitation Films, Part 1

Welcome back to another exciting edition as we're going to start our special coverage of shark-related articles we've been featuring all month so far in the lead-up to the premiere of Sharkando 6 on the SyFy Channel. This time, we're going to look at the special history of the genre and go into this first part of the films that emerged in the genre's history.


So, let's start at the beginning here take a quick look at the films that spawned Jaws. The traces of the genre's history begin with the release of The Birds in 1963, a tale by Alfred Hitchcock that details the incidents of a group of birds that attack a seaside resort which is regarded as the first real animal-attack film in the history of the horror genre as a whole. A modest success on the heels of the directors' previous film Psycho, this one ironically never spawned much in the way of imitations or rip-offs beyond a series of low-budget monster films in the burgeoning exploitation underground with monster films attacking couples in nudist colonies which constitute the majority of these kinds of films for the main part of the '60s. The early '70s saw very little improvement, in the form of low-budget, drive-in quality fare like Zaat or Frogs, which are hardly sterling examples of the genre as a whole.

Considering that beginning, it's easy to see why Jaws was so revolutionary for the genre. Not only was it expertly made and created which was a new concept at the time, but this one was the first film to effectively explore the idea of something inhuman yet still clearly of this Earth preying on humans as the very real fear of being eaten alive is a huge part of the film. While it still rings true for other aspects of filmmaking as a whole, this area of the film is so expertly crafted that it manages to uphold the majority of the film's other outstanding positives into a wholly captivating experience. A blockbuster in every sense of the word, the film changed the game in terms of American cinema by ushering in the age of the summer blockbuster and brought the concept of the creature feature for the audience being a great first installment for the genre. Now, it had become obvious by this point that a special formula had been set in place: a creature appears and starts attacking people, the investigation by the authorities reveals the existence of the creature but the politics of the situation won't allow for it to be revealed to the public, more people are killed which alerts the creatures' existence to the point that action must be taken against it. A vast majority of the following films we'll look at will follow this plotline to its own detriment and offer up minor variations overall.

Considering this success, there's no doubt that a series of imitations would finally emerge, the first one from the great Dino De Laurentis who provided us with Orca. Copying a lot of the storyline success here from the tragedy that occurs to the main hero, the continuing assaults on the town to draw him out to sea and the big protracted battle at sea that leaves the lone survivor, the film manages to play like a loose adaptation of its superior inspiration only featuring some of the trademark De Laurentis exploitation by offering up the sickening scene of a dying killer whale aborting it's offspring out through a wound inflicted upon the creature during the ordeal for no real reason and bringing up even more of a body count during the creatures' attacks.

Not being a huge hit, there's little influence taken here from the film other than the Italian predisposition for the filone, pronounced fill-ohn-nee and is a tactic that displays the mindset of the country in a nutshell. Translated into 'wave,' this essentially means to wait for a successful film at the box-office and then just make countless rip-offs in a wave until the money dried up and then it would move on to the next film that jump-started the cinema. Looking back at the countless number of films in specific genres that occurred from the country shows this philosophy in practice, and that eventually worked its way to Italy with a small slew of titles. After the release of Orca, several other releases quickly emerged including Tentacles, The Great Alligator River, Killer Fish and Island of the Fishmen, this last title being brought to America with a tacked-on opening shot by Roger Corman before being released as Screamers. As well, not a true killer shark film but one that's definitely worth noting is the Enzo Castellari effort Shark Hunter, but we'll hear from him proper later on.

Back in America, several films that took inspiration from Jaws also appeared after the overwhelming success. Moving it away from the water at first, legendary schlockmeister William Girdler offered the Jaws formula onto dry land with his effort Grizzly, as for the most part, it's the exact same film just in a different setting. It was a more modest success than the previous films and helped to usher a few other efforts. Ranging from a double-shot of killer shark films released immediately afterward in Mako: Jaws of Death and Shark Kill to a sequel to the original film, it brought forth a series of big killer animal films that offered several other big titles. Rip-offs of a rip-off found other killer bear films appearing in Claws as well as Prophecy: The Monster Movie, yet the main point of sea-going creatures found Piranha, Barracuda and Up from the Depths appearing to round-out the 1970's.

Before the '70s were finished, several other foreign countries also popped up with titles appropriate to the scene. The great Rene Cardona Jr. offered a stellar entry with Tintorera, a Mexican take on the formula that offered plenty of softcore groping alongside the traditional attacks. Shortly after that appeared, the disaster film effort Cave of the Sharks appeared which also blended different elements into the traditional formula that was ongoing at the time. However, the main film worthy of notice in the list is the Thai/Korean effort Agowa Gongpo/Crocodile Fangs, a truly notorious film that is worthy of mention. Originally released in 1978, the first version of the film was issued theatrically tagged with a directors' credit to Lee Won-se, yet when the film got around to Thailand it was renamed Chorake and credited to Sopmote Sands who rearranged the material, chopped out much of the remaining material and added new scenes to the existing film. This version of the film was subsequently sold to the US and became the film Crocodile which fired up a storm of controversy as protest groups wholly opposed newly inserted shots that showed the giant crocodile model used in the film being shown to actively hunt a captive wildebeest that's in visual distress in the situation as the creature is shown interacting with it on camera. For this reason, it is mostly suppressed in the country to this day.

Moving on into more rewarding pastures, the 1980s saw some nice titles emerge. The first efforts to emerge, Alligator and Humanoids from the Deep showed decidedly different takes on the material. Alligator is far more of a fun and slightly cheesy take on a creature feature which makes for a big cult favorite, yet Humanoids offers more sleaze and trashy charm that makes it even more of an underground choice. Elsewhere, the Italian scene offered up one more effort to go along with their first films in the 70's by issuing The Last Shark, directed by Enzo Castellari and was another big film that ran into trouble in the US by being summarily sued out of theaters by Universal Studios for infringing too closely to the Jaws series. It has still not received a legitimate home video release because of the incident, yet the whole affair more than likely had a huge dent in the budget for their own series due to the look of the effects in their own entry in the series right afterward. However, it still didn't stop other efforts from being produced around the world as Italy offered another effort in the Lamberto Bava-directed Devil Fish, Turkey offered a ripoff with their title Çöl/The Desert, yet neither one has received a release in the US and Australia released their version featuring a trademark local animal in the Ozploitation classic Razorback that again took the formula out of the water and onto dry land.

It would be several years before anything else appeared in the scene, whether due to a lack of interest in the field due to the burgeoning horror/comedy scene overwhelming the genre or the fear of being sued for their work, but regardless the next genre effort is also one of the worst films in horror as a whole with Jaws: The Revenge which brought the series to a close and effectively turned the genre into a joke. Not even foreign efforts like the Italian efforts Killer Crocodile and its sequel, the shark film Deep Blood or the Mexican Murderous Fury did anything to revive the genre's fortunes, even with the sea-creature efforts Leviathan, DeepStar Six and Lords of the Deep emerging close enough to each other in order to capitalize on the sci-fi effort The Abyss. Director Juan Picquer Simon offered his own variation with Endless Descent but by and large very few efforts were made to capitalize on the genre.

The 1990s were bleak for the genre where it had so few entries made it was in danger of dying out. While Tremors offered a few beats taken from the genre, it's still nowhere near qualifying as a genre entry and is a big example of what happened to the genre in the decade. Beyond a made-for-TV remake of the original Piranha, the only other big films emerged in the time-period where Bruno Mattei's jaw-dropping cash-in Cruel Jaws which was officially marketed in select countries as Jaws 5: Cruel Jaws as well as the Bollywood ripoff Aatank which comprises all of the genre efforts  One last gasp arrived in the form of Deep Rising, which was a great last chance which did bring about a few other last-ditch efforts before the close of the decade with the rapid-fire arrival of efforts Lake Placid, Shark Attack and Deep Blue Sea, all giving this at least a nice send-off for the millennium. These last two films are especially important as we're going to look at these two in more detail next time.

And indeed, it's time we left this for now as the start of the new millennium where we are now is a fine spot to leave this one. Join us next time as we delve further into this subject and look at the explosion of films in this sub-genre that appeared in the new millennium. Thanks for reading.