Cruel Jaws (1995) by Bruno Mattei

Director: Bruno Mattei
Year: 1995
Country: Italy/USA
Alternate Titles: Fauci Crudeli - Cruel Jaws; The Beast; Jaws 5
Genre: Sharks

Plot:
Following a series of strange accidents, the owners of a local sea park turn to a visiting marine biologist when they suspect a massive shark is responsible, but when the local mafia-owned corporations try to prevent them from interfering are forced to drastic measures to stop the creature.

Review:

When this one tried, there are some enjoyable aspects to like here. Among the more enjoyable elements featured here are the shark attacks which manage to engage some fine action setpieces. As they engage in numerous high-energy and lengthy set-ups focusing on the shark hunting the divers through the underwater reef along with the boat wreckage, a big attack on a canoodling couple in the surf which is ripped-off wholesale from another genre effort and the series of sequences looking at how the community is attempting to stop the shark before their big celebration can get started. That also includes the massive assault later on when the celebration goes off as planned and the creature begins chomping through the participants on the open water which has a lot to like about it as the shark chomps on numerous victims throughout. Other shark scenes, from a hunting expedition gone wrong to a series of frantic encounters trying to stop it out in the open sea, offers some enjoyable fun only in the sense of trying to spot all the pilfered footage and stolen plot-points that arise throughout here. These are what hold the film up.

This one did manage to provide a lot of flaws. Among the most obvious and the most egregious are the special effects which are legendarily cribbed from several sources. The look of the shark changes size and shape considerably throughout the film due to the fact that so much of it comes from rather varying sources as the stock footage is taken from several different movies with different budgets and even creatures, which just makes for an even more mystifying effort than expected. It adds a much deeper sense of cheesiness to the film where it can’t settle on a definitive look for the creature because it’s pilfering and lifting reams of footage from various sources that are aping the same storyline set up as this one is doing. Worse still is the fact that the footage lifted throughout here comes not just from various sources of differing quality but also different species entirely as the creature continually shown is a Great White yet the creature is named as a Tiger Shark, confusing matters significantly.

Moreover, the film also struggles with some unnecessary and overlong padding that doesn’t need to be there. There’s so much padding here with the scenes of the girlfriend hanging around the slutty group of friends that tempt her away from the biologist, the scenes of the park staff working at the park and the overlong series of scenes with the business-owners’ son and his friends hanging around the beach pulling pranks on his rival. It’s all completely unnecessary here with these scenes eating up so much screen-time instead of shark attacks in the middle of the film since all they do is give this the impetus for introducing the wholly unnecessary mafia subplot that goes nowhere other than providing more of a body-count. With a series of genre cliches showing up that seem to exist solely to hit the expected tropes of the storyline, these here are what hold the film down.

Overview: ***/5
A faulty way of building a killer shark film with the way this one goes about integrating the previously-shot attack scenes alongside the new scenes, this one will go entirely depending on one manner of speaking for killer shark movie fans. Those who are willing to go along with the subject matter or fans of the creative side will enjoy this the most while those that aren’t impressed with the construction manner will find this quite insulting and should miss this one considerably.