Tintorera: Killer Shark (1977)

Without a doubt the most BORING JAWS rip-off you're ever likely to see, I had the misfortune to catch the extended two-hour-plus cut of this film – and did I regret it! A silly sexploitation film masquerading as a monster flick, TINTORERA is utterly inoffensive throughout, aside from one key area which I'll come to later. Now, I'm a great fan of trash movies, and I also love Mexican flicks: horror films, masked wrestlers, you name it. Knowing that Rene Cardona Jr. delivered such cheese as TREASURE OF THE AMAZON and NIGHT OF A THOUSAND CATS, I was pretty excited about watching this flick. Heck, his DAD made the cult B-movie NIGHT OF THE BLOODY APES, so how could his son go wrong? Well he did, with this misfiring, yawn-inducing effort at a sex film.The main problem with TINTORERA as a sex film is that it's boring. The sexy is silly rather than sleazy, and even when a couple of women avoid rape by openly giving themselves to the rapists you can't find offence. No, the focus of this film is on the nudity, and there's a ton of it, although some male viewers might find it a bit dubious when I say that MOST of the nudity in the film is from the two guys...do I REALLY want to see near-constant butt shots from these chaps? Of course, there's a fair share of topless and full nudity from the women too, but it really does get boring after a while. Amusingly, two British actresses, Susan George and Fiona Lewis, turn up for the sole purpose of getting naked. Lewis appears for the first twenty minutes and wanders around topless before getting eaten by a shark (nobody notices – not even the viewer) while the awful George shows up for forty minutes in the middle of the flick and appears (very briefly) naked. We're stuck with her absolutely diabolical acting for a good long time, though.What about the sharks? Well, truth be told, this film DOES have some of the bloodiest death-by-shark scenes in any movie. When somebody bites it (or rather gets bitten) here, the sea around them turns blood red for about a mile and body parts are everywhere. The problem is that there are only two such scenes in a two-hour-plus flick. So what does the rest of the film entail? Two guys sitting around chatting, sailing, drinking, and screwing. That sums it up nicely. Sometimes they speak in English, sometimes in Spanish, but it doesn't matter because they never say anything of merit. Now, I liked Hugo Stiglitz when I saw him in NIGHTMARE CITY, but this must be his worst role. He's just creepy and dull, if those two traits are possible in one character. Andres Garcia is mildly amusing I guess, but he doesn't have anything to work with other than his face-value attractive womaniser role.I tried to like this film, and I looked out for 'fun' stuff. There is a little. The underwater photography is top-notch, and there are some hilarious Darth Vader-style breathing effects dubbed over the shark. But it's all so routine – so routine that I can't remember how the shark actually dies at the end, although I only finished watching this film two days ago. So all that's left to write about is the offensive bit, and that's the real-life animal killing. If you thought those Italian cannibal flicks had too much of it, wait until you see what's in store here: guys harpooning fish over and over again, for minutes on end. At least a few dozen real creatures died so this movie could get shot. Watching a fish – sometimes sharks – writhing in their death throes and bleeding all over the place is NOT my idea of a good time. It's cheap and it's utterly reprehensible. The worst bit is probably when they shoot a fish and we get a close up of the poor creature bleeding through its gills. Not nice! This sort of stuff normally doesn't bother me but it's so graphic and in-your-face here that it's impossible to ignore. This is why TINTORERA ranks as one of the worst films I've seen, an utter waste of time with no redeeming values whatsoever. I guess this is one of those movies where the shorter US cut is actually BETTER; at least there's less of this mess to sit through.

Okay, the film is terrible and this attempt at ripping off "Jaws" was very obvious. They even make sure to limit the shark's screen time but take it a little too far as the story very, VERY often forgets there's even an existence of the shark.The editing, the acting, the unnecessary nudity...all these factors work against the film and it actual has no redeeming qualities that I could find. Normally, I'm a big fan of bad shark movies because they are some of the best accidental comedies you can find but this one felt so poorly produced and put together that I felt sorry for it and couldn't laugh at it as it stumbled its way through a story that already felt like it had no idea what it was doing. The only thing I found interesting was the film seemed loaded with accidental subtext and hints that the two male leads, despite constantly chasing tale, may have been in love with each other the entire time. If that was the intention, the film could have been ground-breaking and interesting but it wasn't and just the fault of odd acting choices from the two leads and a director who really loved close ups of these two actors staring at each other with a lustful passion that burns hotter than a million suns.Hi! My name is Rev. Ron and I love movies. So much so that I write a blog where I review whatever film I am watching at the time. You can read a more in-depth review of this film (and others) as well as an interesting theory about accidental subtext in this film at my blog at revronmovies.blogspot.com.

Not with me. What a bad movie! This has virtually nothing to do with sharks but more with the director's voyeuristic desires to be involved with a woman and a man at the same time in a sexual relationship. More on that in a moment. The first killing by the shark happens at the film's 20-23 minute mark. No one even knows the woman dies by the shark. The next death comes at the hour mark. There are two more deaths maybe three by the film's end. We maybe see the shark with all its unimpressive glory about five or 6 times. So what do we get in Tintorera - lots of sexual situations, lots of guys in bikini shorts sipping drinks or sitting on a couch or lounging in a hammock. We get lots of girls bare-chested. We get a bizarre(and sleazy) love triangle with Hugo Stiglitz, Andres Garcia, and Susan George. Garcia is the only one with ANY acting ability. George is pretty if nothing else(and that is all we have here with her). Stiglitz. I have seen this guy in other things and BAD is the first word that comes to my mind. He looks off into to space like he is suppose to have some life-changing angst to deal with. Instead it looks like he is having a bowel movement. He is creepy in every fiber of that word. The film ends abruptly and ridiculously. This is a clumsy attempt to make money on the Jaws craze. It is not poorly done in terms of directorial ability, etc...but in terms of what is done with the resources at hand. I didn't see the point at all. The script is the major problem here with all its inane dialog, and sleaze. Is this the worst movie I have ever seen? by no means. It is just quirky enough to hold your attention, but after awhile you will be scratching your head saying why?, why?. Fiona Lewis is the first girl that dies. She is gorgeous. In fact all the girls are gorgeous which is definitely a nod in favor of this sleazy yet primordially entertaining piece of whatever. It is not a horror film by any definition of mine. By the way, what is with the two female leads both being British? Hmmm.

Silly me! Here I was under the impression of owning a Tiger Shark horror movie, but instead there's just a copy of the X-rated Love Boat Chronicles in my DVD-collection! What the hell was this? I absolutely love low budget Jaws rip-off's – the trashier they are, the more I love them – but this has got to be one of the most incoherent and insufferably tedious exploitation movies ever made! "Tintorera" could be described as sex, tequila and sunny beaches. Oh, and a little bit of shark-action too, maybe. Now this may sound like crazy fun but NOT when you have to endure lousy acting performances and lamentable dialogs for 127 damn long minutes. Who the hell is interested in an extra long version of a crap film anyway, especially when the additional footage only serves more crap? This movie has no redeeming elements whatsoever, since even the sleazy scenes are uninspired and boring as hell. Hugo Stiglitz, who oddly resembles Daniel Stern from "Home Alone", plays a millionaire who parked his yacht in front of a tourist beach resort and stares at the girls in their colorful bikinis. He falls in love with a brunette, loses her again because their summer-love relationship is getting too serious and catches her cheating on him with playboy Miguel. The two guys become best friends and the girl gets devoured by a tiger shark without anybody realizing she's gone. Good riddance, I guess. Together, Steven and Miguel seduce a handful of other girls before the both fall for English beauty Gabriella. They then start the most implausible and retarded tree-way relationship ever filmed. Since Gabriella cannot or does not want to choose between her two lovers, "Tintorera" suddenly turns – for nearly 45 minutes! – into a romantic melodrama with few nudity (only male nudity, actually) and really pointless images of three uninteresting people talking. You honestly pray for the shark to pop up again and bring closure to this painfully soporific relationship. He/she does eventually, when the macho boys try to impress Gabrielle with their nasty shark-hunting games, and after killing Miguel this chapter ends suddenly, like it was just a tiny little sub plot. Steven returns to partying on the beach and taking random beauty-queens back to his boat for sex. When that annoying tiger shark kills yet another one of his girlfriends, Steven gets really upset goes after his nemesis. "Tintorera" stands for total boredom and irritation. The underwater footage of the titular animal scouting the bottom of the sea is nifty and professional, but I suspect most of these scenes were 'borrowed' from documentaries or something. It's rather infuriating how this movie contains truckloads of sequences in which fish and harmless smaller shark species are tortured and killed for no reason other than 'sport' and 'amusement'. I'm pretty sure it's real, as I don't see how you can fake impaling innocent little sea creatures. Perhaps it all was archive footage as well, but I don't think so judging by the diving suits the hunters wore, and even if it's all fake it still remains poor padding. I'm normally a great admirer of the gorgeous starlets Susan George, Fiona Lewis and Priscilla Barnes but honestly no one was capable of saving this disastrous production. My advise is to skip it, but if for some reason you do feel the urge of tracking it down, make sure it isn't the long version.