It's one of the least well-known Jaws rip-offs that failed at the European and American boxoffice and with a good reason . The Shark's Cave, also known in English as Cave of the Sharks or simply Shark Cave, or original title : Bermude: la fossa maledetta deals with Andres Montoya (Andrés García) , he's a diver who disappeared at sea months ago and has been presumed dead when he unexpectedly washes up on a beach alive but not terribly well . Suffering insomnia and with no sign of his ship or the rest of his crew , he's confined to hospital only to later emerge to find that his own brother Ricardo (Máximo Valverde) has been putting moves on his woman (Janet Agren) . Andrés and his colleague are hired by Mr. Jackson (Arthur Kennedy) in agreeing to help salvage an aircraft and to recover some valuables from the airplane that went down in the Bermuda Triangle . Andres joins his brother Ricardo (Maximo Valverde) and their friend Enrique (Pino Colizzi) only to discover a cave full of immobile sharks , something that goes against nature itself. Furthermore , discovering a mysterious underwater civilisation that can psychically control sharks , perhaps by means of telepathy ... Explore one of the greatest mysteries of all time! .What strange forces are at work here ?. Over a thousand people and hundreds of ships and planes have vanished from the face of the earth ...
This disconcerting story turns out to be very muddled , the acting extremely flat and the dialogue barely even functional .This strange film has a lot of messy trappings : a vanishing aircraft , disappearing ships , cockfights , a bit of touristy larking about in boats, in markets and in casinos accompanied by maddeningly jaunty music and including a weird discovery a race of underwater beings that are controlling the sharks . Ricci and his co-writers Fernando Galiana and Mauricio Melchiorre , follow the enduring mystery of the Bermuda Triangle and the similar movie
: Devil's Triangle of Bermuda (1978) by René Cardona Jr with John Huston , Andrés García , Hugo Stiglitz , Gloria Guida , a really dismal film , but even adding other bizarre elements , along with Jaws (1975) knock offs . The end results to be a typically bleak late 70s denouement and brings the picture to a close with more questions raised than answered. Some of the ideas swirling around in this mess , particularly that of a cave full of motionless sharks that are controllated by a fantastic civilization aren't particularly bad ones ; however , being ridiculously developed . Stars the real-life scuba instructor turned macho actor , the Mexican Andrés García as the hero who has to face not only human treachery but also the mysterious powers of an underwater civilization , Janet Agren who Ricci also conned into being in his film Panic and the Spanish playboy Maximo Valverde . And special mention for Cinzia Monreale who played Joe D'amato Buio Omega , Fulci's Beyond, I guerrieri dell'anno 2072/Rome 2033 - The Fighter Centurions (1984) and Argento's La sindrome di Stendhal/The Stendhal Syndrome (1996) , here showing up as a mysterious girl, something she did so well in Fulci's The Beyond , as she appears in a group of people who sit around and listen to a guy play guitar and sing , then she takes her weird doll and throws it into the ocean, where she disappears and blood flows from the doll.
Stelvio Cipriani's soundtrack results to be anticlimatic and unappropriated by means of a series of annoying synthesized bleeps , whooshes and bloops . The motion picture was badly paced and lousily directed by Tonino Ricci , as the scale models effects are dreadful, as Ricci never able to conceal the fact that the ships and planes are mostly "performed" by miniatures . Spanish/Italian producers got a real flop at the boxoffice in this terrible production , in fact it was never legitimately released on DVD and blu-ray , that's why they needed a more skilled director than the ham-fisted Ricci to make them work . Tonino Ricci is one of the less lauded of Italian exploitation film directors and with a good cause . Frequently hiding behind the pseudonym Anthony Richmond his films were largely third-rate and that's being charitable , realizing additions to whatever genre was popular at the time , such as : Spaghetti Western , Euro-terror , Macaroni combat , among others . He worked as direction assistant to Lucio Fulci , bu the latter was a million times better than Ricci who was his assistant on the White Fang movies . His friendly work included the shoddy likes of Encounters in the Deep (1979), Bakterion/Panic (1982) , Thor il conquistatore/Thor the Conqueror (1983) and the Mad Max clones as Rush/Rush the Assassin (1983) and Rage - Fuoco incrociato (1984). Director Tonino Ricci must have loved the ocean, because he also made other films shot in maritime settings , such as Encounters in the Deep and Night of the Sharks. Rating : 3.5/10. Below average .
