Requins

There's some really impressive underwater action and ocean photography, but the rest of the movie is pretty tedious and unless you really want to watch old men in speedos yelling at each other or innocent sharks getting killed on camera, I can't recommend sitting through this forgotten slog.

Let's start with a round of applause for Cornel Wilde; - that's the least of recognition he deserves for all the work and effort he put into his one-man-show "Shark's Treasure". Wilde wrote, produced and directed the film, and he also plays the lead role of boat captain/treasure hunter Jim Carnahan. And he did all this just to prove that he still looks fit and mighty hunky in his naked torso at the age of 65!

Seriously, at several moments throughout the movie, I had the impression that "Shark's Treasure" secretively was a film for gay men that hadn't outed themselves yet. There's one woman in the cast and she appears only briefly, while most of the film's padding footage exists of the four lead stars parading around the deck bare-chested and in their tight Speedos. Ideally for married men still in the closet. "What are you watching, honey? Oh, just a macho flick about treasure hunting at sea, dear". Unfortunately, the adventure-part of "Shark's Treasure" is quite disappointing. Captain Jim and his crew are peacefully diving up ancient valuable coins off the coast of Honduras, but then become hijacked by a group of escaped convicts that naturally want to confiscate their loot. Admittedly the underwater footage is beautiful, but the pacing is incredibly slow, the film is far too long and it's a little too obvious that the shark footage is either shot at a different location or borrowed from other movies/documentaries.

Below average Cornel Wilde adventure/thriller movie filled with underwater scenes , astonishing fights , well handled sharks scenes and violence . This is a violent adventure movie that earned notoriety because of on location , a sea pleny of hungry sharks , as stunt divers were really injured by sharks . It deals with a band of hustlers and escaped convicts (all-male support cast) led by Jim Carnahan (60-year-old Cornel Wilde who demonstratre his fitness by doing one-handed press-up on deck) commander a boat filled with gold . He's stuck there when a buch of risible pirates assaul the boat . As these desperadoes are also attempting to retrieve gold bullion that lies deep in shark-infested waters . See the most sensational shark fight ever filmed!

Very failed and unexceptional adventure/thriller except as a virtual one man show by Cornel Wilde . It is a typical Cornel Wilde film with action-infested dumbness with plenty of thrills , brawls and violent confrontations . The naivite and oddity of the screenplay can scarcely cope with the diverse strands of script queueing up and waiting to be dealt with : underwater searches for treasures , confrontation themselves and with some nasty pirates . In making this underwater adventure yarn , in freak weather conditions , were hired some stuntmen , and experimenter divers to shot the dangerous Shark Sequences on exotic locations in Coral Sea, South Pacific, Pacific Ocean . Notorious underwater explorer Jacques Costeau commented that despite its cruelty , he had never before known a white killer shark attack a man in so vicious a manner . Rather unified is Wilde's homespun philosophising : the perils of nicotine and drink and the virtues of keeping fit . Two-fisted and tough acting by Cornel Wilde as a drifter who carries out a risked raid on a sunken ship in the shark-infested waters . He played several adventure movies , such as : ¨The greatests show on the earth¨,¨Treasure of Golden condor¨, ¨Passion¨, ¨Sword of Lancelot¨, ¨Omar Khayyam , ¨At sword's point¨ , ¨A thousand and one nights¨ , ¨Norseman¨, ¨The fifth musketeer¨ and directed/acted the classic ¨The naked prey¨ and other successes in all kinds of genres as ¨Leave her to heaven¨, ¨Forever amber¨, ¨Road house¨, ¨Big combo¨, ¨Wintertime¨ , ¨A song to remember¨, ¨High Sierra¨.The film benefits itself from a nice support cast , such as Yaphet Kotto , Cliff Osmond , David Canary , David Gilliam , John Neilson and brief appearance by recently deceased Carmen Argenziano .

It contains an anti-climatic and inappropriate musical score . The movie displays an evocative cinematography , being extremely necesary a perfect remasting . Shot on location in Bonaire, Dutch West Indies , Coral Sea, South Pacific, Pacific Ocean . The motion picture was regularly made by Cornel Wilde . Here he starred , wrote , produced and directed . Always primitive , Wilde's movies seem to operate increasingly in a strange limbo with no points of reference outside his own simple view of the world . In Shark's treasure Wilde does a little effective job both as actor and filmmaker . He is especially credited as a good actor but also known for directing some acceptable flicks . His later films were of varying quality, and he ended his career in near-cameos in minor adventure films . As he directed adventures as¨Maracaibo¨ ,¨Lancelot and Guinevere¨, ¨Sharks' Treasure¨ but also Noir Cinema as ¨The Devil's Hairpin¨, ¨Storm Fear¨ and Sci Fi : ¨Blade of Grass¨. And a real oddity : ¨The naked prey ¨ , it Is an amazingly well done movie , being Cornel Wilde's best movie as a filmmaker .

Shipowner Cornell Wilde and some youngsters go in search of sunken Spanish treasure. Along the way they encounter sharks and pirates.

Cornell Wilde wrote, directed and starred in this loosely plotted modern adventure story, along with Yaphet Koto and a couple of youngsters. There's as much underwater photography -- a bit faded in the print I saw -- as story, and as much character exposition as gold.

Wilde had spent the 1950s as a dashing but minor action hero. Born in Hungary in 1912, he came to the US four years later. After a few uncredited bits in the 1930s, his break came in HIGH SIERRA, and he spent the next 20 years playing in a mix of costume dramas and more modern fare; he was one of the movies' better swordsmen, and was reputed to have turned down a slot in the American fencing team at the 1936 Olympics. His career slowed down in the 1960s, but some television guest shots and a few kept him reasonably active until shortly before his death in 1989.

Okay, a few things. First, the biggest problem with the movie seems to be its editing. Like a freshman essay, there are clearly parts that drag because they're nothing but obvious padding. Who knows how much footage Cornel Wilde -- who wrote, directed, and stars in this movie -- shot that ended up being badly assembled later. This is obvious because on a shot for shot level, the film is not incompetent. It's the patchwork assembly that makes it struggle.

Beneath that baroque mess is a fairly conventional plot. A ragtag group of treasure hunters goes looking for gold in open waters while a group of escaped convicts stand in essentially for pirates. There's the usual tough captain and tense grousing among the crew until the male bonding kicks in. This is also a movie where old fashioned masculinity is on display. Despite what a lot of seemingly young viewers might think about a gay subtext, it was pretty common among tough guys (or the ones playing them onscreen) to exhibit themselves, one part of out narcissism and one part out of intimidation. Sure, it's comical by today's standards, but it was taken more seriously in the 50s, 60s, and even parts of the 70s depending on generation.

That leads to the violence, too. We get to see not just the human stuff, tedious as it is, but more than a few sharks and other fish killed in sometimes brutal ways. It may happen in real life, but it just seems gratuitous here to demonstrate another silly masculine trope that killing something minding its own business somehow makes someone a man. The characterizations follow suit. Wilde's captain comes across as an overbearing nut, but if you know anything about his generation and pay attention to the script, it's mostly an act. For instance, his seemingly psychopathic need to control cigarettes aboard his ship is supposed to -- wink, wink -- show he really cares about his crew, as one of them, indeed, quits without initially realizing it.

In the end, the movie is a mess but not merely as much as some might think. It's competently if not imaginatively acted and directed, and while the recycled music makes for a patchwork score, there are a few moments where everything actually works. For the mid-1970s, that alone is remarkable given that Hollywood couldn't figure out if it wanted to make traditional movies or imitations of the low budget films the French, Italians, and Japanese had made in the 50s and 60s.