Somebody saw “Jaws” and said “a mechanical shark? Spielberg you are a fucking coward” and decided to use real sharks and what seems to be minimal safety… yeah, it is that kind of movie.
I watched “Mako: The Jaws of Death” on Prime Video and I need to get this out of the way immediately: This movie looks and sounds absolutely terrible. The sound is flat and dull, the music is tinny and grating on the ears, and the picture quality is sub-VHS. I have tapped out to flicks with better quality but I stuck it out because the Halloween season needs a shark flick, dammit! Luckily, I was rewarded because this movie is fish-shit insane. The story is about Sonny (Richard Jaekel), a man who worked salvaging from the ocean floor. One day his team found a safe in a wreck that was full of valuables. Of course, word gets out to the shadier element and they want the booty for themselves. This leads to Sonny being chased through the jungle until he reaches an inlet. He faces a difficult choice: turn back and go directly into gunfire or wade into the shark-infested waters. Sonny decides that sharks trump bullets and gets wet. The sharks bump him about but don’t bite him, but they do feast on those ne’er do wells in a hurry. As he escapes, Sonny comes across a shaman at a shark-shrine. The old man offers him a shark-tooth medallion that gives him the power to talk to sharks and he decides to go back to Florida and use that power to become the defender of the sharks and seeker of vengeance for his finned friends. He becomes the SHARK VIGILANTE!
Yes, this movie is, in fact, some weird mash-up of “Aquaman” and “The Punisher” and it is absolutely delightful. Sonny goes ham on shark fishermen and poachers and fully murder-death-kills the ever-loving shit out of them with their own gear and often by telling the sharks to chow down. Shark Vigilante at one point saves a woman, who is a mermaid dancer, from being raped and takes her back to his place. He tries to convince her he can talk with sharks leading to what may be the most ridiculous part of the film. As she is talking he roughly grabs her while yelling “Come on, I’ll show you!” and drags her to a trap door in his floor that opens over water where he has makos. He calls, and they come but that isn’t enough. No, “The Jaws of Death” features a man slow-water-dancing with a fucking shark. It is just about the nuttiest thing you’ll see. There is a whole lot going on in this movie that people should see for themselves but here are some high and low lights (literally!) The night scenes are so dark and seem to just use ambient light from far away, you can hardly see anything. Shark Vigilante’s facial expressions are ridiculous. The subtitles are possibly the worst I have seen as most do not match the words that are being said. A particular favorite is that instead of “shark god” the captions read “shock dad,” seriously, what the fuck? The entire film is like that. And finally…. Dead…. Baby…. Shark doo doo doo doo doo dead baby shark doo doo doo doo doo. “Mako: The Jaws of Death” is kind of a mess. It is ugly, hard on the ears, the acting is all over hell, the characters suck but it is so damn fluffernutters that I couldn’t help but love it despite, and because of, its flaws. It also casts the sharks as good, humans as bad, and Shark Vigilante as chaos. That said, I am about 90% sure they also killed sharks and FUCK THAT if it is true. “Mako” is a movie so bizarre you really need to see it to believe it. Hell, I saw it and I am still not sure I believe it, it is a real ”you’ve got to see it to believe it” or more simply a “wutch it.”
This was previously posted on the FFSF blog by S. Kess
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