Killers of the Sea

Killers of the Sea (1937)

*** (out of 4)

Pretty good documentary covering Captain Wallace Caswell, Jr., the man who became a legend known as "Killer of the Sea". Caswell became famous for killing various dangerous animals of the sea by hand. The documentary shows him killing a Tiger shark, an octopus and giant sea turtles. The closing of the documentary shows him trying to kill a saw fish but he nearly gets his leg cut off and nearly died from filming this scene. If you're offended by these animals being killed then you'll want to stay far away from this film but I found it pretty interesting watching this guy fight these huge creatures by hand. The underwater stuff with the Tiger shark was quite exciting.

"When human and animal predators threaten the game fish in the Gulf of Mexico, Captain Wallace Caswell Jr. is there to protect them. Captain Caswell is the Panama City, Florida Chief of Police and he has dedicated his efforts in stopping illegal fishing and harmful predators such as sharks, octopi and whales. Check out the action above and below the surface as Captain Caswell fights for the protection of the game fish and their environment," according to the DVD sleeve's synopsis.

Lowell Thomas is an excellent narrator, and this is a technically competent documentary; but, there are no excuses for the ideologies herein, not even when looked at in context. The title "Killers of the Sea" is meant to refer to the deadly sea life killed by the Captain and his crew, but it more accurately refers to the human predators. They do not get off to a good start by killing a whale that resembles a dolphin, but the octopus was ugly. The "darkie" humor is offensive. Embarrassing.

*** Killers of the Sea (5/8/37) Ray Friedgen ~ Lowell Thomas, Wallace Caswell Jr., 'Evolution' Henderson

A ship captain makes his living catching fish, but his livelihood is allegedly threatened when the "killers of the sea" move into the area, devouring his fish. Such killers include sharks and "whales" (actually dolphins, which are whales in a technical sense). What does the good captain do? He takes on the killers with his mighty wrestling skills.

This film was falsely marketed to me in a box set of classic horror films. I would have to make some amazing stretch to call this a horror film... it's not. Seemingly, this is a documentary... the captain appears to have been a real person, though my brief search was not able to turn up any evidence of this beyond the fact he is credited as himself.

Other than the misleading aspect, I actually enjoyed this film. Not as a horror film, and maybe not as a documentary, but as a time piece. Apparently at one point it was perfectly acceptable for a man to wrestle a dolphin to death for the sake of increasing his fish harvest. No "dolphin safe" nets here. And also, I guess you could get away with dubbing a clearly racist voice over the black shipmate to make him sound even more foolish and bumbling than he already came across.

Other reviewers have pointed out the obvious unintentional meaning of the title: killers of the sea. The fishermen are the ones indiscriminately clearing the sea of fish and personally killing the creatures who get in their way. I won't say any more for fear of sounding political, but it's an interesting time piece, as I said. Check it out if you have a spare hour.

Killers of the Sea is a documentary about a group of fishermen who go out to the ocean to kill and torture sea creatures.

The captain of the expedition is a man called Wallace Caswell Jr. He is a psychopath who likes nothing better than stripping down to his underpants and diving into the water to attack various sea animals. Dolphins, turtles, octopuses, tiger sharks - you name it – our man jumps into the sea to beat them up. The film itself seems to be a succession of scenes of violence against marine life. Without a shred of irony the film's title refers to the monstrous sea creatures featured in the film, when it's obvious to everybody that it's the blokes in the boat who are clearly the ones on a psychotic rampage. Some of the animal violence would not have looked too out of place in the infamous documentary Faces of Death – particularly the nasty death of the hammerhead. You could almost say that this bizarre little oddity was some kind of precursor to the Mondo films of the 60's and 70's. Similar to those films there is also a cheerful racism on display, at one point after the black crewman falls out of a boat when trying to catch a whale, the narrator says good-naturedly 'the darkie is having a whale of a time!'. The said black man is also dubbed in an unbelievably stupid accent by the narrator. Oh that's another thing; the whole movie is narrated by one guy who also chips in with the dubbing for the various crew members. It's just so ridiculous. He also comes away with some priceless lines like 'we all followed the boobys' and on another occasion has the audacity to tell us in detail how old an age the great turtles live to as we watch the crewmen dragging them on board to be killed.

I guess you could correctly describe this as a curiosity. A film certainly of its time. If you want to spend a couple of strange hours watching very weird sea-based oddities from the olden days, may I recommend you watch this followed by the equally bizarre Devil Monster from 1946. You may not thank me for this suggestion but it is an idea.