Now Over 5500 Reviews and (near) Daily Updates!

WELCOME! Use the search engines on this site (or your own off-site engine of choice) to gain easy access to the complete MAKSQUIBS Archive; more than 5500 posts and counting. (New posts added every day or so.)

You can check on all our titles by typing the Title, Director, Actor or 'Keyword' you're looking for in the Search Engine of your choice (include the phrase MAKSQUIBS) or just use the BLOGSPOT.com Search Box at the top left corner of the page.

Feel free to place comments directly on any of the film posts and to test your film knowledge with the CONTESTS scattered here & there. (Hey! No Googling allowed. They're pretty easy.)

Send E-mails to MAKSQUIBS@yahoo.com . (Let us know if the TRANSLATE WIDGET works!) Or use the Profile Page or Comments link for contact.

Thanks for stopping by.

Wednesday, December 11, 2024

SHARK (1969)

Director Samuel Fuller, the Man with the Tabloid Touch, hadn’t made a feature in five years when he took on this lowball assignment, a water-logged thriller designed for quick payoff in the international market.  It’s got a pretty lousy rep, Fuller disassociated himself from it after the producers wanted to use footage of a stunt diver who died on the shoot, while journeyman Mexican director Rafael Portillo did some scenes.  (Which?)  Yet no pall of crumminess hangs over the film, it’s all bright energy and probably exactly what everyone involved must have expected.  A pre-stardom Burt Reynold (working under his own thinning hair) looks like Brando and sounds like Sinatra as a cocky gunrunner caught with his pants down when his cargo blows up (his truck explodes a fraction of a second before impact) leaving him to wander the desert until he stumbles into a corrupt town and a new gig  helping sunken ship salvagers Barry Sullivan & Mexican diva Silvia Pinal.  And Fuller loads on all the usual filler: Cute local kid to show Reynolds the ropes and get under his skin?  √  Alcoholic doc to get the DTs just when he needs to operate?  √  (Arthur Kennedy: weirdly good.)  A shark attack when the men dive for the underwater bars of gold?  √  Pinal needlessly exposing her breasts for Euro-sales?  ☒  Oh, well, you can’t have everything.  Fuller (or his stunt coordinator) goes overboard on the fights (see Reynolds needlessly screw up his knees), plus lousy stock shots, bad sound and a post-Code super ‘60s cynical ending.  For a bad film, what’s not to like?

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Eleven years would pass before Fuller directed another feature.

No comments: