She Gods of Shark Reef

Since the early 1950s, Roger Corman has been directing and releasing films at a break-neck pace. Typically, he tosses four or five into the arena per year. This explosive productivity, of course, limits the range of quality (and budgets) for his productions. However, Corman has only occasionally released really truly bad films. This is an example.

Corman used the lovely islands of the Hawaiian Archipelago as a setting for this early color flatliner. If you have seen a few of his films, you know how important setting is to Corman. First - he never seems to have an adequate budget for his most ambitious projects, so he makes sure he films in visually interesting settings. Second - Corman often uses over-long and somewhat tedious pans ("Corman pans"). With nice scenery in the background, or a well designed set, the tedium factor for these shots is reduced. Corman's films are loaded with people moving from place to place, and "She Gods" is no exception.

The film is about a pair of vaguely likable brothers. Chris (Bill Cord) is a fairly normal, if not particularly bright, young man. Lee (Don Durant) is his evil, and only slightly less intelligent, brother. Lee is a fugitive from the law. They find themselves shipwrecked on an island inhabited by a tribe of Polynesian Amazons lead by the not-very-creepy but still rather annoying Queen Pua (Jeanne Gerson). Lisa Montell plays Mahia (Lisa Montell), who fairly quickly becomes romantically entangled with Chris, but the gods of the shark reef have apparently made it clear that both men are taboo. Chris and Lee plot to escape, and decide to take Mahia along with them, but the shark gods have other plans.

The acting is OK (with mediocre camera-work occasionally making the actors appear to be over-acting), the pace is as good as some of Corman's better works, the script is thankfully spartan, and the plot is as thin as a fish scale. The Hawaiian dancing and singing, underwater swimming scenes, shark-fight action and lovely costumes don't really succeed in making up for the virtually nonexistent story-line, middling cinematography and weakly developed main characters. Plus, some of the shark scenes (I believe one is repeated twice in the film) are laughable.

Can't really recommend this.

When Durant kills a guard during a failed arms theft, he convinces his friend (Cord) to sail to a remote island where friends will shelter him to avoid capture by authorities. Alas, the boat on which they sail capsizes in a storm and the two survivors are saved by the inhabitants of an island of women, governed by maternal den mother Gerson. The women work for an unidentified corporation, harvesting pearls, hula dancing and fishing. Sounds idyllic, except that Gerson has summoned the police to recover the fugitives, spurring them to engineer an escape - along with local girl Montell with whom Cord has become romantically involved.

It's cheap, uninspired Roger Corman nonsense; picturesque with amiable performances by Montell, Cord and Durant in particular, but little excitement or suspense. The shark reef itself doesn't appear especially threatening, the largest specimen six feet at best and looking more like a lemon shark than a fearsome tiger. Durant and Cord have obviously spent time preparing for their roles in the gymnasium, while Montell has ensured no evident tan lines blur the imagination. Gerson is a matron-like mother superior, disapproving of the boys and their ambitions for her young, impressionable charges.

The climax surpassed the meagre expectations, and generally the narrative is pretty coherent albeit very compact. If you worship the Corman factory, then "She Gods" will take pride of place on your shelf. If however you're only a casual viewer, even at barely a tick over the hour mark, this might be a bit too fast and loose to keep you entertained.

Two men escape from police, only to be stranded on a corporate owned native island (?) where superstitious women worship a shark god. Mayhem and Hawaiian clothing ensue.

As with many Roger Corman movies, I found this movie to be entertaining despite bottom of the barrel production values. He also paces the film reasonably, not wasting any time on unnecessary material. A very short running time results.

However, I can only recommend it to Corman fans, or to fans of low budget tropical island movies. Those looking for horror or sci-fi won't find it here.

It seemed (I thought) to be such a noble goal. To review all the movies on the Treeline Films DVD compilation '50 SciFi Classics'. And after 'The Incredible Petrified World', 'Queen of the Amazons' and 'Robot Monster'; to this bad film aficionado, it would also be most enjoyable.

But then came 'She Gods of Shark Reef'.

One can only imagine the good people at Treeline discovered the day before it released '50 SciFi Classics' that their collection only contained 49 films. So, in their need to find a filler fast, we end up with this non-SciFi film that was seemingly videotaped off a TV station whose reception you can only get by plugging the aerial into the toaster. Except, such a movie would never be played by one of those TV stations, due to its fear of losing an audience.

Even the Treeline plot summary on the DVD sleeve gives you the tell tale sign that your in for a painful experience, as the best thing they can say at the beginning is 'Filmed in Hawaii'; which to my surprise, turned out to be a colour production process that seemingly gives this film a maximum of only 3 colour tones at any one time.

I will not give you a plot synopsis as I strongly recommend you don't watch this film. It manages to find that special 'woeful' niche, where it's not bad enough to be enjoyable, yet hardly good enough to be watchable.

However, I know that no matter how appalling it is, lessons can be drawn from a movie. The three lessons I learned from this film were:

(1) its OK to hit a woman, provided she is fat and ugly

(2) no matter how you film it, a dead shark looks very obviously like a dead shark, even if you push it to the intended shark attack victim, or drag it in the water to give the impression that its swimming

(3) if there was an award for 'Smallest Killer Shark in Film', the poor little dead creature used here would win (and by more than a fin). In fact, if it were any smaller, it could easily be mistaken for krill.

I have sacrificed myself to the She Gods so that you may forego the pain. I recommend that you take the opportunity instead to turn off the TV and go outside for a pleasant 70 minute walk and talk with a friend or loved one. The type of thing people probably did before the invention of film.

She Gods Of Shark Reef is a Roger Corman film where two fleeing Americans are washed up on the shore of an uncharted desert island with nothing but females inhabiting it. Bill Cord and Don Durant are the lucky guys and the main industry of the island is pearl diving. Despite the fact that one of them is a fugitive from the law these two think they've got it made.

But as the old adage goes if something looks too good to be true, chances are it is. These women worship the shark as a deity and that's a deity that forever needs feeding. And somehow in their religion as in many others they've divined that the shark likes virginal women.

Other than they don't like outsiders in general Queen Jeanne Gerson of this Amazon culture also feels that with these two healthy American men the virgin supply might start shrinking. Though you have to wonder how without men did these Amazon cultures start and keep going.

All I can say is that Roger Corman did Happy Days one better by having a whole film devoted to shark worship. And the Happy Days folks thought just the Fonz jumping a shark tank was the be all end all.