Night of the Sharks (1988)

Night of the Sharks (1988) sounds like it should be another Italian Jaws rip-off, but as the trailer indicates, it is more of a violent crime thriller that uses some moth-eaten looking sharks as window dressing.  Indeed, even by Italian exploitation standards, twelve years would be a heck of a long time after the release of the original to be releasing a cheap knock off.  (Although, to be fair, Universal kept on releasing its own sequels to Jaws which increasingly felt like cheap Italian knock offs).  Night of the Sharks is pretty typical direct-to-video fodder for its era: recognisable lead actors to give the impression that it is a bigger film than it actually is, (not to mention misleading audiences into thinking it was a US production), exotic locations and lots of action sequences involving cars racing past the camera and machine guns being fired.  To be fair, it makes the most of its limited budget to pack in a lot of incident.  But this is also its problem - it is far too plot heavy, with an overly complicated story fatally slowing down the film, as the main story deviates into various sub-plots.  This gives it a 'stop-start', which dissipates any tension built up in individual scenes and stops the action from unfolding smoothly.

The potentially most intriguing aspect of the plot - the main villain's incriminating phone calls with various high-ranking US politicians, which are recorded by the main protagonist's brother - is never developed, serving instead as a mere 'McGuffin' to set the story rolling.  Having effectively ditched this part of the story, the film settles first into a chase, as the brother and the diamonds he has received for not releasing his recordings, being pursued by the villain's henchmen, (the chief of which decides to go into business for himself), then into 'one man against the mob' scenario, as the hero takes on an army of heavies to protect the diamonds and the recordings.  Sub-plots proliferate, before the gun-hating hero demonstrates he has no qualms about burning and hacking people to death, or even setting that mangy shark on them.  It has to be said that while it is on, Night of the Sharks is actually quire enjoyable, but also instantly forgettable.  There's nothing here we haven't seen before and director Tonini Ricci, while moving things along reasonably efficiently, with some well staged action scenes, just can't summon up anything original or memorable.  It's quite slick for a low budget exploitation film, but not particularly distinguished in any department. 

It does benefit from some good locations in the Dominican Republic (pretending to be both Florida and Mexico), features quite a few shark attacks using a real, but toothless looking, shark and boasts an above average cast.  Treat Williams and Antonia Fargas re clearly enjoying their holiday in the Dominican Republic and aren't over-familiar from similar Italian productions, while Christopher Connelly, by 1988 something of a veteran of such productions, gives decent support as a priest.  John Steiner, a UK based actor who, like David Warbeck, became something of a star in Italian exploitation, spending most of his career in such films, makes for a restrained and almost sympathetic villain, Sal Borghese (without whom no Italian exploitation action film is complete), plays a heavy and Linda Agran, another exploitation favourite, graces the middle part of the film with her presence, playing Williams' ex-wife.  While Night of the Sharks isn't a particularly good film, it isn't a particularly bad one, either.  It makes for some enjoyable, but undemanding, late night entertainment.