Dir. Gustav Ljungdahl (2012)
A group of scientists genetically engineer a shark to walk on two legs and it goes on a murderous rampage with a chainsaw.
I honestly wanted to watch a more high-quality, Hollywood production for the last shark movie that I did this week, but after reading the description of this film, I simply couldn't pass it up. Mad scientists make a shark that has two legs, and it grabs a chainsaw and goes ham. There's no damn way I wasn't going to watch this movie. A Swedish shot-on-video film with dirt-cheap production values, barely in English, that looks like it was made in 1982 at the absolute latest... what could go wrong?
The cheap homemade suit of the Sharkman is phenomenal, like a Dollar Store version of that Street Sharks cartoon from the 90's. You can see the fasteners used to tie the suit together at the back, and the suit itself looks like it was designed for an elementary school play. One of the characters, Detective Tweed (Paul Willers) parodies the Pink Panther, jamming every British stereotype in existence all wrapped up in one character. The shark at one point tries to eat his victims ripped apart limbs with chopsticks. There's just... there's so much here that trying to analyze any one particular part of the film feels like a descent into madness.
This film is the Things of shark movies, except the comedy is on purpose. The gore is indescribably cheap, a mixture of plastic body parts and shoddily designed dummies. Several actors play multiple characters in the film, there are many references to other horror films, including a lineup meant to identify the killers that consists of Ghostface, Leatherface, Jason Voorhees, and Michael Myers. One character holds up a DVD of Sharktopus when trying to research the ManShark killer, and some of the funniest line deliveries I've seen since The Velocipastor. There's even a character named Mandatory Black Man, who is celebrating not being convicted after he was tried of murder, a fact that all of the characters seem to think is a miracle.
Jaws of the Shark is a hammerheaded (heh) cultural critique of America and American film, but it somehow works (the Norwegian flag-bikinied woman in particular, a clear reference to America's Southern culture, is brilliant.) It's cheap as hell, and it's a hard watch for anyone who isn't used to watching SOV films, but it's an absolute blast. This is a film that you can't put on for just anyone, as the vast majority of people who stumble upon this will likely turn it off in the first five minutes. If you're the intended audience, however, you're going to absolutely love it. It's strange as hell, ridiculously funny, and one of the wildest low budget films I've ever seen. It's indie sharksploitation on steroids.
Who this movie is for: Sharksploitation lovers, Mad scientist horror fans, Rebel flag bikini girls
Bottom line: Jaws of the Shark is an intensely bad movie, an attempt to skewer American cinema and culture that... somehow gets pretty much everything right? It's a bizarre Swedish SOV sharksploitation with a walking shark that uses a chainsaw on its victims. If that sentence didn't sell you, this film is not for you. If it did, you're gonna fucking love this one. It's streaming on Tubi right now, and this one is a must-see.
