By Eric Ortiz (@EricOrtizG)
Steven Spielberg’s Jaws (1975), based on Peter Benchley’s novel, is one of the most influential films of all time, for various reasons. In addition to creating the Hollywood blockbuster, Jaws marked a before and after not just in movies featuring sharks but also in the general perception that people have of these aquatic predators.
Stephen Scarlata, director of the new Shudder documentary Sharksploitation (2023), revealed in an interview with the Fantastic Pavilion that his fascination with the ocean and sharks began precisely with Jaws: “I saw the re-release when it came out in the theater. It had such an impact on me that throughout my entire life, even until now, I need to see any type of aquatic horror movie, shark movie, or even crocodile movie, because it’s almost like I’m chasing that thrill of first seeing Jaws, but it’s never going to happen again.”
Sharksploitation takes us to times long before the cultural phenomenon of Jaws, when sharks were part of folklore and mythology, but were not portrayed as inherently evil. In some places they were even considered gods. For this kind of insight, Scarlata turned to author Christian Bogh and Dr. Emily Zarka: “While exploring the documentary and trying to put it together you start realizing, when did this all start? Bogh’s book From God to Movie Villain (Fra Gud til filmskurk) touches on that quite a bit. Then Dr. Emily Zarka touched on that also in one of her YouTube videos from her show Monstrum. I reached out to both of them and they were both really kind to be in the movie, because that stuff definitely needed to be a part of it.”
In the history of cinema, as mentioned in Sharksploitation, there have been movies with sharks since the 1930s – like F.W. Murnau’s Tabu: A Story of the South Seas (1931) and Howard Hawks’ Tiger Shark (1932) –. The aquatic horror subgenre is broader: Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) and some of Roger Corman’s low-budget sci-fi monster films are highlighted.
Scarlata, in fact, began his film career with this legendary producer and director: “My very first paying gig on a movie was on a Roger Corman movie back in the 1990s, as an art department guy. I immediately reached out to him first, of course there was a reason why, because of She Gods of Shark Reef (1958) and all these types of films. As he describes in the documentary, when Jaws came out, it kind of scared him. The same thing happened with Star Wars (1977), where it was like ‘all of the sudden Hollywood is making these bigger budget movies out of what I was doing my whole career.’ His reaction to Jaws was Piranha (1978), one of my other favorite horror movies. So I definitely needed him in the movie.”
Before Jaws there were also treasure hunt movies and some of them featured sharks, like Samuel Fuller’s Shark! (1969). Stories like the one behind Shark! are part of the dark side of Sharksploitation involving real sharks. In Scarlata’s words, “Burt Reynolds did this Sam Fuller movie that was supposed to be called Caine, just like a treasure hunt movie. On the set, a stuntman was killed by a shark, the story was sold to Life magazine. They (Fuller and Reynolds) wanted to take their names off of it but they couldn’t. When the producers released it as Shark!, they advertised on the poster and even showed a couple of sketches of the shark attacking the stuntman. That was in 1969 and then when Jaws came out, they re-released it as Man-Eater. That’s a rough story.”
Sharksploitation addresses sharks’ negative image, pointing out how the media has turned the spotlight on shark attacks on humans for many decades. The arts have fueled the idea that sharks are practically human-eating monsters. Some of the interviewees in Sharksploitation mention those James Bond films where the villain is linked to these animals.
But no movie caused as much impact as Jaws and its great white shark. It was the one responsible for making people afraid of going into the sea. In response, many even began to ruthlessly kill sharks. For Scarlata, “it was just all by accident, Spielberg was an upcoming filmmaker at this time and he sees this book on his producer’s table, picks it up and he’s like ‘I want to make this.’ Also the fact that the shark was broken all the time on set, and he cast his writer so they were able to make all the character moments so much stronger in that movie having extra time with it. He’s such an incredible filmmaker, he made too good of a movie, I don’t believe it’s his fault, he had a job and he did it.
“There is this negative side to what happened, it’s really awful. When I was grabbing those newspaper clippings of all those shark tournaments, it’s really disturbing. That’s why we have that marine biologist (Gregory Stone) talking about how he wanted to be Matt Hooper (the character in Jaws played by Richard Dreyfuss). That was the other thing I learned throughout the process: Jaws got oceanographers and marine biologists obsessed with sharks, so in a way it helped bring more of them into the scene. What happened to the sharks is awful, but having now all these new marine biologists being influenced and taking on, hopefully they’re helping other ocean entities out there.”
In the post-Jaws era, a lot of derivative rip-off movies were released, naturally seeking to capitalize on its massive success as soon as possible: William Grefé’s Mako: Jaws of Death (1976), for example, hit theaters during the following year. The production of rip-offs spread to other countries, such as Italy – Enzo G. Castellari’s Great White (L’ultimo squalo, 1981) couldn’t be released in the US as it was considered a blatant copy –, India (Aatank, 1996) and Mexico. René Cardona Jr.’s notorious Tintorera: Killer Shark (¡Tintorera!, 1977) is mentioned briefly in the documentary, though when I interviewed Scarlata via Zoom, it was impossible not to notice his poster with the other American title: Tintorera… Tiger Shark.
Tintorera is one of the films from the 1970s that showed real sharks being killed. In this regard, Scarlata commented that “the Tintorera thing is tough, it’s a good movie but it’s a tough one. Now I have a hard time watching it because I’m really sensitive. As a kid, I don’t think it really affected me as much, but as I got older, those scenes really affected me. It’s that era, the 1960s and mostly the 1970s, a dark time for a lot of animals in cinema.”
Curiously, several Jaws rip-offs didn’t include antagonistic sharks, as is the case with Grizzly (1976), Orca (1977), Piranha and Alligator (1980). Scarlata confirmed that he loves “that animal attack genre,” and added that “Alligator and Piranha are two of my favorites, because it’s the same writer, John Sayles, who’s such a good writer. Joe Dante killed Piranha in a good way, he did such a great work. And I think Alligator is just such a solid movie because of the lead character (Robert Forster). I do like Tentacles (Tentacoli, 1977) a little bit too, it’s a very strange movie where it kills not only a little baby in the beginning but then it kills another young boy, so it was just crazy.”
Universal Pictures, the studio behind Jaws, also exploited their own classic with three sequels that were no longer directed by Spielberg. Scarlata, as a great sharksploitation expert, has appreciation for each of the sequels: “Jaws 2 (1978) is a solid sequel, it was supposed to be much darker and if you get the novelization you can get a better idea of what the original Jaws 2 was like. The third one started off as a comedy, Jaws 3, People 0, and then they moved away from that. Then eventually it got to Joe Alves, who is the incredible production designer, the guy who built the original shark, and that’s when he stepped in to do Jaws 3-D (1983), which just looks so different and strange.
“Jaws: The Revenge (1987) is an interesting thing, that was a rushed movie, like literally the script is written right before Christmas, by the time January rolled around they immediately had to start production, and the movie came out that July. The whole Bahamas atmosphere of it adds something different. The novelization famously chooses that the shark is there because of a voodoo curse that someone in the island is trying to put on the Brody son that’s working in the ocean. I think Michael Caine’s character is a drug runner, this was during the time of Miami Vice. I kind of wish the novelization was the movie, that would have been awesome, but there’s a charm to it still, it’s a different vibe. That’s something I admire about those four films: the aesthetics of each one.”
In the documentary it’s mentioned that the failure of Jaws: The Revenge at the box office basically “killed the sharksploitation genre for a while,” until Deep Blue Sea (1999) revived the formula. Then in the 21st century, shark movies have appeared in massive numbers. Sharksploitation dedicates time to productions that are more grounded in reality – like Open Water (2003) and The Reef (2010) –, but certainly the emphasis is on exploitation cinema that has become more and more insane, ridiculous and funny. The SYFY channel and the production company The Asylum are largely responsible for this, with the Sharknado franchise (2013-2018) as their most popular work.
Scarlata recalled that “when Jaws comes out, people are scared of sharks, they’re hunting sharks, this awful impact happens. Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus (2009) comes out and that’s the first movie to really make sharks silly. That’s when we start seeing 2-Headed Shark Attack (2012), Mega Piranha (2009), Sharktopus (2010), and then Sharknado (2013) comes out and it just explodes. Sharks were silly, not scary anymore, and I kind of dig that, this shift that it took with the SYFY channel and The Asylum. Then when you watch the guys of The Asylum in the documentary, they know what they’re doing, they just want you to shut off your brain and have a good time with it. They understand what they’re doing, that’s why I love those guys and those movies.”
This shark movie madness has also returned to Hollywood blockbusters – see The Meg (2018) and its new sequel Meg 2: The Trench (2023) – and it doesn’t seem to end. Scarlata commented that a record was broken just a couple of years ago: “There are more of these movies now, more than ever, that’s the crazy thing, we’re getting tons of them. After Sharknado, we got like 9 to 12 shark movies a year, but in 2021 we had a record, we had like 17 shark movies! That’s a lot.”
Scalarta recommended several recent movies that didn’t get much attention: “I like Shark Bait (2022), 47 Meters Down: Uncaged (2019) and Deep Blue Sea 3 (2020). The Asylum made a movie about people that go to the moon and there are shark men there: Shark Side of the Moon (2022). I thought that was pretty rad, it’s a WTF movie, I’m shocked that it didn’t really sparkle a lot on Twitter.”
Additionally, the documentarian referred to a new trend that emerged after the success of Elizabeth Banks’ studio movie Cocaine Bear (2023): “I guess that’s the new subgenre: feeding drugs to animals. Cocaine Shark (2023) started off as a different movie, then they shifted it. I enjoyed it for what it is and I like that filmmaker, Mark Polonia, he made a lot of shark films (including Sharkula and Shark Encounters of the Third Kind). It’s interesting, there’s Attack of the Meth Gator (2023) and now I think there’s going to be a crack raccoon movie (Crackcoon). It’s a funny trend, I’ll watch them, I’m into it. I like the silly and I like the serious.”
Sharksploitation doesn’t forget the real world and how today there’s undoubtedly greater awareness, research and conservation of sharks than back when Benchley first wrote Jaws. However, the killing of sharks for profit or “sport” keeps on going, just look at director Eli Roth’s constant denunciations. Scarlata concluded the interview saying that the media continues to have responsibility: “Whenever an encounter happens, the media puts it out there. I see it all the time, I saw it this past week: ‘a dangerous shark is coming by the beach,’ it’s like, it’s their home, they are going to be swimming in the ocean. I don’t go in the ocean really and that’s why, because I’m scared but I respect them and that’s what we need to do: just respect them.”
Sharksploitation is now streaming on Shudder.