Sangue negli abissi

Just when you finally, absolutely, positively thought it was safe to go back into the water, up pops yet another Italian Jaws rip off—and slap me with a dorsal fin and chew my legs off if this isn't one of the most tedious of them all.

Directed by Raffaele Donato (with more than a bit of uncredited help from the king of Italian sleaze Joe D'amato), Deep Blood is a virtually joyless experience from start to finish, with a dreary plot, umpteen characters that are indistinguishable from one another, terrible acting (nearly all the performers fumble their lines at least once), and unconvincing shark attack scenes comprising of various odds and ends of stock footage badly inter-cut with the frenzied thrashing of the supposed victims.

The dreadful script offers a few unintentionally hilarious scenes, such as the sight of the film's heroes nipping to the local dynamite depot to stock up with enough high explosives to sink a battleship, or the hasty construction of a special shark attracting device that consists of a metal box with a flashing light on top, and further giggles might be had from the witnesses to the shark attacks, who run the gamut of emotions from 'mildy concerned' to 'slightly perturbed'; to be honest though, these brief moments of levity do little to compensate viewers for suffering through the rest of this bloody awful film.

Deep Blood (1989)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

Joe D'Amato's next to last horror film is yet another Italian rip off of Jaws. After a group of friends take a blood pack, their friendship is put to the test when one of them is eaten by a shark. This is without question the worst of the Italian rips I've seen but I do have two more coming to me. The film has one suspenseful moment, the first attack, but after that everything is pretty dull. There's not a fake shark used throughout the film. Instead we get stock footage of a real shark that naturally never matches up to watch we're seeing in the other footage. Since no fake shark is being used, all of the attacks are rather silly.

This is the worst italian movie ever, quite possibly the worst movie of all time! Joe D'Amato is of course no cinematic genius but many of his movies are interesting and watchable. Unfortunatly this is not one of them. Its cheesy and boring....waaaaay boring. If you want a movie to MST3k, get Troll 2, if you want a movie to put someone into a coma, get deep blood!

The Jaws rip off is the trashiest of the all the Italian 'genres', and director Joe D'Amato is second only to the great Jess Franco in the trash film production stakes. Put the two together and what do you get? A gigantic piece of trash, of course. Unfortunately it's not trash in the good sense of the word either, as Deep Blood delivers more in boredom than it does in hilarity. To the film's credit, it does actually attempt something bordering on a plot; but to take said credit away from the film - the plot is rubbish. It has something to do with a group of friends taking of an oath (of friendship) and then some Indian curse that manifests itself into a shark. Or at least I think that's what was going on. Anyway, the majority of the film is padded out with boring dialogue and 'drama', and the shark itself - which lets not forget, is the only thing we really want to see - finds itself in merely a cameo role. Or not even that since most the shark is actually stock footage! Despite being a trash genre, there are actually a lot of fun Jaws rip-offs; but with this one, Joe D'Amato makes it clear that he couldn't be bothered to even try, and the result is what must be the worst Italian shark movie of all time. Avoid this dross.

There was a time, not even all that long ago if I remember correctly, that the notorious "Jaws: The Revenge" – the fourth installment in the world's most famous shark franchise, was listed here in the IMDb bottom 100. Admittedly this film isn't the elite of shark-movies but, trust me, it's a bona fide masterpiece in comparison to this shameless Italian piece of junk from the dirty hands of Joe d'Amato. "Deep Blood" – even the title is ridiculous – is a "Jaws" imitation that is at least 8-10 years overdue. The Italian shark movies from the early 80's are (for example "Great White" and "Devilfish") are also of questionable quality, but at least they're amusing and over-the-top cheesy! "Deep Blood" on that other hand is utterly boring and even too cheap to feature cheesy special effects. The only sharks that we get to see previously featured in National Graphic documentaries of which Joe d'Amato bought the stock footage! The wraparound story is also completely retarded. A bunch of young idiots living in a small and insignificant beach community take an oath to remain best friends for life and look after each other. Aw, how cute. Their buddy pact is immediately put to a severe test when one of them gets eaten by a shark. At least that's what you have to assume happened, because the actor simply vanishes in the water and the next shot just shows a puddle of red liquid instead. Either way, the rest of the losers decide to go shark hunting themselves, obviously against the will of local authorities. "Deep Blood" is a dreadfully tedious and overlong snoozer without any sort of memorable highlight… Except maybe if you count the boys' inability to estimate what quantity of dynamite is required to blow up a shark. There isn't even any gratuitous nudity or sleaze in this garbage. I'm really disappointed, Mr. d'Amato!