She Gods of Shark Reef

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.

One way of looking at this movie is that it's one of the worst to come from its time and place. In this context, we see two young, good-looking hunks, both outlaws, who end up stranded on a tropical island inhabited by primitive hot white women who all speak broken English and cling to weird taboos and traditions, such as believing the sharks are gods, or some such nonsense.

Another way of looking at this movie is that clever editing could have turned it into a touching story about two men who, while vacationing in Hawaii near the Hospital for Brain Damaged Women, discover just how attracted they are to each other soon after one of them tries to stop being gay by dating one of the native women. In this sense, one could consider this movie a well done piece of cinema history, especially since it was ahead of its time on the topic of civil rights.

It is by imagining the latter scenario that this movie can be made entertaining enough to sit though. If you watch this by taking everything at face value, this flick is way too boring to finish. I'd say the only major motivation anyone would have to watch this movie is if they'd purchased some sort of boxed set that includes this, which is, incidentally, the only reason I watched it.

The full synopsis goes like this: Two young, well-built dudes end up stranded on a Hawaiian beach and decide to never wear shirts again. They encounter a civilization of aforementioned broken English-speaking women led by a psychotic mother matron character who is obsessed with local tradition, which involves human sacrifice to appease the shark god. This means feeding a few of the young hotties to a mid-sized shark that may or may not be alive.

One of the guys, Chris (Bill Cord) eventually falls in love with one of the native babes, Mahia (Lisa Montell), much to the irritation of Chris's ambiguously gay partner, Jim (Don Durant). Since the mother matron (Jeanne Gerson) is a nasty old woman who hates men, she decides to have Mahia sacrificed to the shark god to make herself feel better about neither Chris nor Jim finding her attractive.

SHE GODS OF SHARK REEF: it's not the worst thing I've ever seen, but it's far from the best. The good news is that this sucker is, I do believe, public domain. Those who might search for it could possibly locate it online for free.

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.

Aside from having Roger Corman's name on the cover of this film there is a picture of a wet blond just wearing only a strategically placed lei.

No blonds.

No She Gods.

And the lei is broken.

Looks like Roger was distracted by the other movie he was making at the same time "Thunder Over Hawaii."

The basic story is a bad guy (who gets into killing and gunrunning) flees authorities with his brother's help. A storm arises and they get shipwrecked on a mysterious island with native girls, sharks, pearls, and a nasty old woman.

So, who gets the native girls, sharks, pearls, or worse yet the nasty old woman?

I personally found this movie to be quite watchable compared to many others, especially useful as a late night movie, and I really do not see it as a bad movie at all with regard to either the acting or the way it was filmed, even regardless of some of the ludicrous concepts.

You probably are familiar with the plot; two men, one "good", one "bad", end up on an island with exotic women and try to both kill each other and save one another at least once each.

I don't understand the title, though, as there are NO "she gods" (whatever happened to "goddess", anyway?), only unseen "shark gods" (represented by an ugly idol) and an island full of women who collect (and protect) pearls for "The Company" (which we never learn much about or actually see, even though it is implied we will see them).

One important thing that I learned from this movie is that it is okay to throw young girls into the ocean for the sharks to eat, as long as you report any suspicious strangers to the local police on the next island over! Weird! We are also supposed to believe that this "queen" (who oversees the sacrifices made to the shark gods) somehow is able to tell if anyone is correctly reading her maritime signal flag messages just by glancing into the horizon when you can't even see any other island!

I'm also wondering how both Lee and Pua easily swam all the way back to the island with no trouble at all in those shark-infested waters!

Anyway, the parts just prior to the ending were somewhat confusing and there ARE a couple of other incredibly dumb scenes. For example, the part where Queen Pua brags about having saved and taken care of Mahia, when she was the one who had thrown her to the sharks! She even cries about her sailing off away from her! Weird!

The color on my DVD copy was fairly bad; the ocean kept changing between purples, greens, pinks, and blues, but the overall style and filming is somewhat attractive.

5/10. Not bad, not great. Again, it's fine for a late night watch before finally falling asleep.