Tintorera: Killer Shark (1977)

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

One of my all time favorites.

Fresh and Exciting

Excellent but underrated film

Going by the year of its release, the title, the director and the gloriously over-the-top promotional art, one might reasonably expect ¡Tintorera! to be little more than a mindless, exploitative rip-off of Jaws, but while certain elements of the film have undoubtedly been inspired by Spielberg's '75 summer blockbuster, the film is surprisingly free of massive man-eating fish action for much of the time, focusing instead on the liberated sex lives of two men living life to the full in the Caribbean.Hugo Stiglitz plays businessman Steven, who is recovering from a nervous breakdown; Andrés García is gigolo Miguel, who trades sex for cash. Initially love rivals, both vying for the interest of the same woman, the men eventually become pals and, after sampling the delights of two care-free American girls (whose morals are so loose that they actively encourage a pair of rapists), they enter into a love triangle with sexy blonde Gabriella (Susan George). All is going swimmingly until Miguel is eaten while hunting sharks; after that, Gabriella ups and leaves (one man clearly not being enough for her) and Hugo dedicates himself to killing the fish that ate his friend.Steven and Miguel's constant womanising mean that the film is loaded with enough gratuitous nudity and sexy shenanigans to keep the viewer entertained until the chomping of not-so-innocent swimmers begins in earnest. And for those who like their films extra exploitative, and who aren't of a highly sensitive disposition, the film also features lots of real animal killing (purportedly stock footage, but I'm not so sure) which, although not quite as disturbing as that in Cannibal Holocaust, is still quite callous, with a cute manta ray bleeding from its gills being particularly unsettling.As far as the attacks on humans by the tiger shark are concerned, the first is fairly tame (a weak copy of the opening scene from Jaws), and a later feeding frenzy on a group of skinny dippers leaves the water bright red with blood, but it is Miguel's death that packs in the gnarliest gore, the poor guy having his legs torn off and his head left rolling around on the ocean floor. Tintorera was either extremely annoyed at the number of sharks that Miguel had killed or seriously disapproved of his philandering ways.

Hooray for the internet.Tintorera is a movie I had read about since my youth, and I knew it to be an exotic shark-based action adventure with some sauciness, featuring two of my favourite English actresses of the early 70s, Susan George (Straw Dogs) and Fiona Lewis (Villain), and furthermore the sauciness meant that there was a more than passing likelihood that they might be skimpily dressed. Or less.As I said, hooray for the internet. Tintorera was found.Oh dearie dearie me.It turns out that my wish to see Mesdames George and Lewis in states of deshabille was sadly inadequate justification for sitting through, how can I put it, 90 minutes of tripe. The two English roses are more or less incidental, and one of them - sorry for the spoiler - becomes shark num-nums fairly early on in an almost exact retread of the opening sequence of Jaws. Except for the suspense, thrills and music.Most of the film appears to concentrate on what, apart from their skirt chasing, would appear to be a fairly overt gay relationship between the two main (male) characters.Irrespective of the sexual proclivities of the two fellows who spend much of the movie prancing around either in their bathers or bare-bummed, this film simply isn't very good.

I recall watching this as a kid on a now defunct Sicilian TV channel; however, given the ample nudity on display and, for a film of its type, the excessive length of the thing itself, it's very probable that it had been cut to some extent.Anyway, this is a JAWS (1975) rip-off with a difference – in that it's a ragbag of exploitation items as opposed to a real 'shark' film; for long passages, as a matter of fact, the creature is completely forgotten with the plot (if so it can be called) concentrating on the sexual escapades of the two rival/buddy protagonists! It's only in the last half-hour (of this 126-minute picture) that the chase is well and truly on – after the shark attacks and kills one of the two men; still, this doesn't take the other's mind off sex – resulting in perhaps the film's highlight as a group of revelers is attacked at night, with the girl (one of two American sisters vacationing in Mexico) accompanying the hero ending up killed. Apparently, the creature is really after the latter – and eventually he gets to work on executing his personal vendetta… Being a Spanish-British co-production, the film features two English actresses among the bevy of willing beauties – Susan George (whose contribution is the most important, even if it comes exactly half-way through the film and extends to little over 30 minutes of screen-time) and Fiona Lewis (who appears early on and is actually the shark's first victim). The repetitious ménage-a'-trois situation results in some serious padding and a generally tedious film; that said, the shark scenes aren't very creatively handled either (apart from the gore) – so that it can't hope to offer any real competition to the Spielberg classic it's imitating! For the record, I recently watched the even more popular (if still essentially dismal) horror/wrestling hybrid NIGHT OF THE BLOODY APES (1969) from this director's father and for which they both contributed to the screenplay.Naturally, the look and sound of TINTORERA! (the title being how the Spanish refer to the Tiger Shark species) screams 1970s – including an agreeable recurring song but especially the disco-driven, drug-fuelled boat parties; frustratingly, though, the full-length print I viewed kept not only alternating between English and Spanish dialogue but had English subtitles popping up for the latter and vice-versa!

I consider myself a genuine fan of bad cinema as much as the next guy but this film was truly awful, in an often hilariously inept kind of way. I understand that this was an exercise in exploitation but it just seemed to lack any real sense of cohesion whatsoever. Whatever sense of suspense and/or horror the movie strives for is invariably trumped by a total sense of ineptitude and absurdity. To add insult to injury, the relentless use of actual real-life footage depicting the merciless slaughter of marine life of every kind only made an already tough movie going experience almost unbearable.Sitting through this movie is like rubbernecking one's way past a bad pile-up on the freeway involving a caravan of clowns or circus performers.