Mermaids of Tiburon

"Mermaids of Tiburon" has a wonderful, otherworldly quality about it, thanks to the efforts of writer / director John Lamb, who's best known as a top notch underwater photographer. It has a sedate pace, not much of a story, and not a whole lot of action, so it won't be for all tastes, but cult movie lovers who love the surreal are sure to find it quite engaging. Given Lambs' background, it's not surprising that the visuals are so strong. The underwater scenes in this thing are just gorgeous - and, naturally, the women are all gorgeous too. It may take a viewer out of the story to some degree seeing that not all of the mermaids have fins, but the film remains a interesting and erotic experience.

George Rowe, in his only acting gig, plays Samuel Jamison, a marine biologist with Marineland who accepts a gig offered to him by elderly gentleman Ernst Steinhauer (John Mylong of "Robot Monster"): travel to the waters around Tiburon, an island off the coast of Mexico, in search of pearls. Well, George finds something else entirely: a grouping of exquisite mermaids who fascinate him. The real world also intrudes harshly, as a greedy fellow pearl hunter, Milo Sangster (played by the legendary screen psycho Timothy Carey) shows up using unscrupulous methods in the search for treasure.

Not a lot may happen in "Mermaids of Tiburon", yet it just pulls a viewer right in with its ambiance, enhanced by a beautiful music score courtesy of Richard LaSalle. Rowe never speaks on camera; instead his dialogue is entirely expressed in voice over narration. He does a decent job, and Carey is great malevolent fun as one could expect. The physical charms of the mermaid performers are impossible to resist, with Playboy Playmate Diane Webber (who would again play a mermaid on an episode of the series 'Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea') and Gaby Martone placed front and centre.

This has an agreeable midnight movie feel to it at all times, and it's sure to appeal to lovers of obscure B pictures. Clocking in at a mere 77 minutes, it's always watchable.

Seven out of 10.

The visuals were beautiful. Having different mermaids other than the mermaid queen, made the movie exciting. They were au naturel too, not that I'm trying to be nasty, but that's how one would imagine mermaids to be in their natural habitats. Not wearing silly flower or clam shells. It is really the only real mermaid movie I've seen besides Splash. That movie was very disappointing because there were only couple seconds where she was really a mermaid. I don't know why they call it Aqua Sex, because it says "Mermaids of Tiburon" in the beginning, I have a color version but I cannot enjoy the movie because it has big white letters in the middle of the screen that it is not for public distribution.

As soon as I saw the thank-you's to Marineland & Mexico in the opening credits, I had a feeling I'd be in for some road show Jacques Cousteau sure to bore the pants off me and I was right. Filmed by a noted underwater photographer, it's certainly nice-looking but still, it's an hour-and-a-half of watching lead mermaid (the aptly named Diane Webber, a former Playboy Playmate) swim around and around -and around- as a marine biologist and a slimy villain search for giant pearls off the coast of Tiburon, an uninhabited Mexican island. On the plus side, it was in color, the three mermaids weren't cheesy, and the bad guy was played by the great Tim Carey but even he couldn't keep me from occasionally nodding off. This was the original version -actually a "DVD extra"- since the film was butchered and re-released with topless mermaids inserted and the waterlogged plot changed ...to what, I don't know because I have no intention of sitting through it again.

With just a shade more imagination, this could have been a truly beautiful piece of work. It is very effective and thought provoking despite its surface appearance of cheapo trash. Its details have been very carefully worked out to the point where you can almost believe in the existence of the mermaids. The story is a simple but believable conflict of good and evil set against a gorgeous background. It's also a story of nature threatened by greed. If the mermaids had been just a little more mysterious and less obviously girls in mermaid costumes, it would have been perfect.

This is one of those films that gets passed off as a silly fantasy or sci-fi flick. It isn't either of those things. It is a bittersweet story of man's desire for something beyond the ordinary.

Like the film on which the mermaid costumes in this film are modeled (namely, MR. PEABODY & THE MERMAID), the story is about a man who meets a mermaid (in fact, a whole pod of mermaids) and thus learns that there is something in life that is invisible but valuable beyond sunken treasure. He learns that there really is a touch of magic and beauty in the world which science and technology have too often harmed.

If you see this one, make sure you see the original and not the silly sexed up version which is called AQUA SEX and totally loses the point.