The Shark Hunter

I saw this movie almost a thousand times when I was a kid. I had it on VHS. And I loved it every time. But now the tape has been lost for years, and I miss this great movie, especially the music score. Is there anyone out there who can tell me how to get this film? On DVD would be perfect, but I don't think that is possible. Even on DivX or SVCD is just fine. I would be VERY grateful...

I'm a lifelong 'judge a B-Movie by its bodacious-looking cover' guy, and I'm big enough to admit, this foolishness has oft led me astray, but any genre film created by Enzo Castellari & Franco Nero is a guarantee of excellence! While, perhaps, more than a little inspired by Peter Yates's The Deep, The Shark Hunter is a boisterously entertaining Euro-Snapper in its own right! The blue-eyed Monsignor of macho, Franco Nero, replete with a bountiful blonde coif, armed only with his depthless testosterone and a humble spear, goes mano a Squalo with unrivalled manliness in Castellari's thrilling deep sea treasure hunt.

Let's be honest, if you are about to experience an unwanted intimacy with man scoffing sharks, who better to call than Django, dude? If celluloid hadn't been thus far invented, The Shark Hunter's righteously entertaining premise would strongly demand it! Highpoints: phooken everything, dude, for real, but The Shark Hunter gets bonus points for Guido & Maurizio De Angelis's uncommonly sweet score, and Werner Pochath's sleazy reptilian hood makes the sharks look like tadpoles! Interestingly, Franco Nero's bluff Shark Hunter returned much later for more maritime mayhem in 'Killer Mermaids'.

Franco Nero is a shark hunter and treasure seeker who has a handful of allies, and also antagonists at every corner.

The film has fistfights, car chases, foot chases, seaplane vs. speedboat chases and some nicely incorporated shark attacks, but no genuine urgency. The music score is very cool, but at times you get the sense that it's expected to carry along long stretches of the film by itself. And the underwater scenes slow down the pace (inevitably).

All in all, pretty forgettable stuff, but not bad. (**)

Actor Franco Nero and director Enzo G. Castellari made it again with this film.

After some very interesting films like "High Crime", "Cry,Onion" and "Keoma", Castellari and Nero worked together in this great, brilliant adventure or action film, as you like. The beautiful photography, the wonderful music and fine acting make this film most enjoyable.

Franco Nero does a great performance as usual... Eduardo Fajardo performs a very bad and cruel villain as usual too... This film has many great underwater scenes, car chasing, fights, and a solid plot, oh... and a quite surprising ending.

Who can ask for anything more??...

It´s absolutely worthwhile watching it!!.

So-so adventure/thriller movie filled with underwater scenes , astonishing fights, well handled sharks scenes and violence. Mike (Franco Nero) is a shark hunter, he's crusty recluse on a Caribbean island who is dedicated to destroying sharks using any means, even jumping from a parachute. Later on, Mike gets involved in a hunt for buried treasure. But he's a mysterious man whose past nobody knows anything about, not even his girlfriend , Juanita (Patricia Rivera). Then comes Acapulco, a sympathetic and expert diver (Jorge Luke), who immediately befriends him to carry out a dangerous mission. But the situation worsens when Donovan (Michael Forest) appears -accompanied by Rosy (Mirta Miller)- who in the past worked with Captain Gomez for the Organization. Mike is actually the only one who knows the position of a plane that sank with a hundred million dollars . And certainly a hundred million dollars are tempting to many, willing to do anything to get them. A threatening Mafioso (Eduardo Fajardo) threatens Mike to reveal the whereabouts of the treasure. There's a local thug (Werner Pochath), who works for local crime lord Gomez and goes after Mike and his woman. Along the way, all of them attempting to retrieve gold bullion that lies deep in shark-infested waters . See the most sensational shark fight ever filmed!. The hunt is open, but this time not to sharks !.

This is an unexceptional, old-fashioned sunken-treasure tale with routine scenes and action enough. The ordinary garden-variety B-grade adventure in which a lot of adventurers and mobsters keep running across an underwater sunken loot. The pulse of any trash addict must pound over some ideas behind this mediocre but entertaining film. This is a violent adventure movie that earned notoriety because of on locatio , a sea pleny of hungry sharks (although there is a lot of stock-footage), as stunt divers were really injured by sharks. It stars the tireless Franco Nero, still acting here and there today, playing an adventurer gets ensnared in the mob's net off the mexican coast as they race for a cache of sunken milions. There are some botcher set pieces and one great totally unexplained scene. It is a typical Enzo G. Castelari film with action-infested dumbness and plenty of thrills , brawls , as well as strong 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 a loot. The film was made in the wake of ¨Steven Spielberg's Jaws¨ (1975, nowadays a classic) , but it seems more like a remake of the unknown and obscure film ¨Sharks' Treasure¨ (1975) about a sunken-treasure adventure with Cornel Wilde as one man show by writing/producing/directing and acting, while the same director Enzo G. Castellari made the infamous ¨The Last Shark¨ two years later. Being an Italy/Spain/Mexico co-production, actors of these countries show up, such as: Italian as Franco Nero; Spaniard as Eduardo Fajardo, Mirta Miller; Mexico as Jorge Luke, Jorge Reynoso, Patricia Rivera; all of them give functional interpretations.

The film benefits from a colorful photography by Raúl Pérez Cubero, shot on location in Cozumel, Quintana Roo, Mexico . Adding a messy script full of some silly and ridiculous incidents from Tito Carpi, Jaime Comas Gil and Jesús R. Folgar (who produced as well). De Angelis brothers' (Guido and Mauricio) soundtrack is downright bombastic and dreamy but excessive, with synthesizer's cheerful sounds from the beginning to the end of the film. This molto cheapo movie was averagely directed by Enzo G. Castellari. Enzo is considered to be one of the best Italian artisans, who has made a nice career, shooting all kinds of genres such as Wartime : Counterfeit Commandos , Eagles over London. Adventures : Scaramouche, Shark hunter, Tuareg , Shark 3 . Sci-fi : Bronx warriors, Escape Bronx, Warriors of wasteland. Thrillers : Light blast, Il grand racket ,The day of Cobra, La via della droga , Forajidos 77. Terror : Diabla. Westerns : Keoma, Tedeum, 7 Winchester for a massacre, Matalos y vuelve, Johnny Hamlet, Any gun can play . Rating Il cacciatore di squali(1979): 5/10. Only for Franco Nero fans, fans of the Italian action genre of the seventies and completists of the attractive career of Enzo G. Castel.