La notte degli squali

I gave it a 2 instead of a 1 because I think "The Wild Women of Wongo" is worse. This is an exercise in patience. It's like having your teeth cleaned by a bad dental hygienist. There's no plot. There's no logic. There is certainly no acting (although the shark has some quality dialogue). We don't wonder about anything. We don't know how people got where they got. It's always amazing to me how things like this even get released. I agree with the previous writer that it isn't even funny bad. I know. It's about 90 minutes long and that will fill up about that much space on a DVD collection. It's like a paperweight. Or a bad painting you bought at a starving artists' sale. It covers the crack in the wall.

Until near the end, this movie cannot seem to decide what it is. Is it an action film, a horror movie, or a crime movie? It won't take you long to figure out what kind of movie it is, it's a boring movie! Good cast is completely wasted in one of the most contrive and lazily produced Italian films I've seen. Good fight scenes and some gore, but that is basically it. Nothing else worth mentioning, besides the cheesy soundtrack. Treat Williams... I don't believe I've ever seen him in a movie that didn't have lots and lots of water in it. Sheesh. Avoid this flick, not worth the trouble.

Extremely low-budget Italian-import-exploitation involving one of the most familiar plot-lines: a flaky sibling and their inevitable, semi-deserved death from being involved with the seedy crime world to begin with...

Leading to vengeful, tropical-shark-hunting older brother Treat Williams (with sidekick Antonio Fargas and priest Christopher Connelly), whose balmy paradise gets encroached by killers... either the dorsal-finned kind or those wearing cheap suits, providing danger from the blood-soaked ocean to a machine-gunned jungle...

Throwback to the previous decade's pulpy third-world body-count action programmers, combined with what, at the time, was technologically modern: the blackmailing brother had damning information not on the usual spy-genre microfilm, but something called a CD...

Making NIGHT OF THE SHARKS more a would-be thriller than what the adventurous title attempts in a rushed third act, and, with a techno track by iconic composer Stelvio Cipriani under a similar MIAMI VICE-influence of director Tonino Ricci, this SHARK -- on land or sea or foam -- is decent way to either fill or waste ninety-minutes.

A couple of Mexican-based anglers are inadvertently caught up in a messy corporate extortion plot when Williams' brother scams two million in diamonds from a corrupt businessman (Steiner). Steiner deploys his right hand man to clean things up, and Williams' sultry ex-wife (Agren) tries to convince him to quit while he's ahead. Meanwhile, a deadly ocean predator nicknamed "The Cyclops" is stalking Williams, taking bites out of tourists and showing up whenever there's action in the water.

I've read the reviews and while I agree it's no Oscar contender, it's still not that bad in my opinion. Ramon Bravo's underwater tiger shark tussling and the subsequent attacks are reasonably well orchestrated and realistic.

The cast is solid including Swedish bombshell Agren, Italian beauty Soldano as Williams' current squeeze, Huggy Bear (Fargas) and former "Peyton Place" soap star Christopher Connelly in his last film before his untimely death (his trademark raspy voice is very feint, perhaps suggesting he was unwell). Throw in the ubiquitous Brit of Italo-slasher John Steiner, and you've got a well-appointed cast.

A general undercurrent humour doesn't really elevate the tone, but it at least doesn't take itself too seriously, and the momentum is reasonably brisk. So for your approximate one $$ investment you've got a B-grade Italian crime flick, including two goddesses, a certified Silver-standard international cast, AND a tiger shark tearing up the stragglers - me no complain.

Night of the Sharks is an odd creature, based on it's name and cover you'd amost think *Drumroll* that it was a shark themed movie right? Wrong.

Instead we have a generic action film where a shark just happens to pop up a couple of times but is a side character and none of the plot has anything to do with it.

Starring the underappreciated Treat Williams and Antonio "Huggy Bear" Fargas this Italian made film has a lousy rating on IMDB and truth be told it doesn't even deserve that.

With a plodding pace that didn't keep my attention in the slightest Night of the Sharks is neither what its advertised to be nor in this guys opinion anything that resembles entertainment.

I'm not even addressing the plot in this review as it's so generic it hurts.

Give this movie seven shades of avoidance.

The Good:

Treat Williams & Antonio Fargas

The Bad:

The rest of the cast

No originality

Boring as hell

Things I Learnt From This Movie:

Shark movies don't need to about sharks

People are willing to gamble losing a hand for $100