Shark le mangeur d'homme

The majority of this Fuller film takes place in a little Sudanese village where Burt Reynolds can't seem to leave because of a little arms smuggling incident. He plays his usual tough guy role which is amplified ten times because this IS a Sam Fuller film. It all concerns a rather ridiculous plot involving sunken treasure in shark infested waters. What actually hat makes up 90% of this film is just a lot of macho, stupid and funny moments revolving around theft, fighting, drinking and romancing in a foreign land. Man Eater a.k.a. Shark! is an entertainingly mindless piece of celluloid that will probably go down better with a few drinks and some friends who can appreciate the trashier things in life.

Contrary to the previous critic's statements, the end result of this film is not a reflection on Burt, the crew or the late great Samuel Fuller. This was a doomed project from the beginning. Fuller, recently returning from France, was all but blacklisted by American producers. His two previous films: Shock Corridor and Naked Kiss were too hard hitting and edgy for Hollywood producers. Almost completely broke, Fuller accepted an offer from two Mexican producers to adapt Victor Canning's 'Twist of the Knife'. Thus began "Caine", AKA "Maneater" AKA "Shark!", etc al. At the time, Burt Reynolds was only a television actor, with few if any real film credits. Silvia Pinal, who was great in Luis Bunuel's masterful, 'Viridiana' was terrific in Shark, as was Barry Sullivan as Mallare(who was also great in Fuller's, 'Forty Guns'). Ultimately, the Mexican producers/studio heads completely recut this film behind Fuller's back. Fuller denounced it, and with good reason. This film is bad, make no mistake. However, it was not Sam Fuller's fault, or Burt's, or Pinal, or Raul Martinez Solares, who provided the gritty, spooky cinematography for Shark. Shark is still enjoyable enough though. I would recommend Vodka or some aged Kentucky Bourbon as an accompaniment. Maybe some Bulleit on ice. Water-logged? I think not. This lil' stinker just requires a bit of booze and some willing cohorts.

Based on a novel (which I've read) by Victor Canning. Mexico stands in for a squalid town in the Sudan where a group of seedy characters are stranded. Barry Sullivan is the grumpy honcho with the shady moves. A fortune in submerged gold in a shipwreck in shark-infested waters is the prize. Burt Reynolds, channeling the Wages of Fear, has reason to sweat: he has to carry a long and boring sub-plot concerning his "relationship" with a scroungy little street kid until the main plot kicks in. Arthur Kennedy(I think he was supposed to be an Arab. He's wearing a fez, anyway) shamelessly hams it up as the town drunk.Sure, Burt Reynolds is trapped in the dead-end of the Sudan, yet shirtless in some tight white pants he comes across as cocky as his chest is hairy.

Sam Fuller's hard-boiled sensibilities surface in the existential dialog: "Just getting up in the morning is a risk." The main trouble with the film, aside from the horrendous post-production hack-job performed upon it by the clueless producers, is the dull and draggy pace. With a few judicious trims and without the wholesale chop chop this could be a much better film. Also the old source print is so dark at times it is impossible to tell what is happening. As it stands it is a curiosity, worth watching at least once, but nothing more.

Samuel Fuller was an acclaimed and highly respected director, so obviously when he himself thought one of his movies was pure rubbish; the public opinion got heavily influenced by that. Fuller completely disowned "Shark!", allegedly because the producers edited the finished product too heavily and used a tragic accident on the set as sensational promotion material, and hence it's widely regarded as a cinematic failure. Maybe if Fuller had stated that this was the personal favorite of his own repertoire, "Shark!" could have been a classic? In spite of its many, many shortcomings, this still remains an interesting film in my humble opinion. Fuller was right about one thing, though … "Shark!" is really badly promoted. The film falsely raises the impression this is an adventurous underwater thriller with non-stop man vs. shark battles and treasure hunting, but it really isn't. This is merely a story about typical human greed, double-crossing and swindling, imaginatively set in the noticeably hot and dusty North-Eastern hell of Sudan. Burt Reynolds, cool as always even though not performing at his best, plays a cynical gun smuggler gone astray after he lost a shipment of merchandise in a truck crash. He becomes involved with an acclaimed doctor and his blond muse in a little seaside town. The doc supposedly researches a groundbreaking medical breakthrough and dives for specific substance. In reality, however, they're diving for sunken treasures and literally everybody in the little town attempts to bamboozle each other. The titular shark – with exclamation mark – attacks exactly two times; in the very beginning, even long before the opening credits, and once more near the climax. It's a ridiculously small animal (the monster from Spielberg's "Jaws" would devour it in one single bite) and the shark footage is completely irrelevant to the plot, in fact. There's a nearly unforgivably large amount of boring sequences to struggle through and many of the sub plots are thoroughly uninteresting; like Reynolds' character Caine developing a supposedly touching friendship with a local Sudan street kid who smoke cigarillos like a pro. The photography and editing are effectively raunchy and the script contains some unexpectedly hilarious one-liners, for example "We'll be like one happy family… Happy sugar daddy, happy daughter and happy son-of-a-bitch!". The film is worth seeing for the downbeat character drawings and particularly to see how Fuller – undeniably a gifted director – conveys a very plausible atmosphere of greed, unbearable heat, selfishness and forlornness.

Burt Reynolds (who never looked more homoerotic macho) plays an American criminal/gundealer in the middle east. After losing all his guns and money in a bust, he starts helping a beautiful blonde and her elderly sugardaddy dive for gold in the shark-filled waters of Sudan. What saves this pretty routine story is the "Fuller edge" put on the charcters: once again he is dealing with cynical, greedy anti-heroes, actually more complex than the lightweight story requires. Imagine a b-movie version of (the overrated) John Huston movie "Treasure of Sierra Madre" set in Sudan and with a bunch of hungry sharks thrown in for good measure, and you got a pretty good idea of what to expect. Also, it's interesting to see a pre-Jaws (pre-Jaws clone, pre-lousy italian Jaws clone, pre-computer animated Jaws clone...) shark-movie. It makes you realise just how groundbreaking Spielberg's movie actually was.

Conclusion: Director Samuel Fuller has made both worse and far better movies than this. If you're a fan of his, or simply want a REAL film in these days of plastic moviemaking, by all means check this out. You probably won't end up loving it, but you'll probably agree it's a perfectly acceptable way to spend 90 minutes of your life. Give it a try.

6.5/10