She Gods of Shark Reef

Two men escape from police, only to be stranded on a corporate owned native island (?) where superstitious women worship a shark god. Mayhem and Hawaiian clothing ensue.

As with many Roger Corman movies, I found this movie to be entertaining despite bottom of the barrel production values. He also paces the film reasonably, not wasting any time on unnecessary material. A very short running time results.

However, I can only recommend it to Corman fans, or to fans of low budget tropical island movies. Those looking for horror or sci-fi won't find it here.

A simple, one-lined description of this movie would sound a little like: two guys wash ashore a tropical island exclusively inhabited by women that dive for pearls all day and worship ocean Gods… Terrific! Sounds like a movie many (male) exploitation fans would want to see. Or better yet, where can we go to book our very own holiday to this island? In reality, however, "She Gods of Shark Reef" is nothing but a good-looking package with absolutely no content. Roger Corman is one of the greatest and most important directors in (B-) movie history, but many of his obscure mini-budget productions of the late 50's really aren't worth bothering for. Movies like "Creature from the Haunted Sea", "Attack of the Crab Monsters" or this "She Gods of Shark Reef" were shot in a period of only a few days and without a real script, merely because Corman had a handful of extra dollars to spend and/or wanted to make more out of a certain filming location. The events take place in Hawaii and the beautiful images of this wonderful place are the ONLY reason to give this movie a glimpse. It's one of Corman's first movies shot in color and the place does look enchanting even though nothing really is happening there. The two male leads are supposed to be running from the law and the female leader of the island doesn't want them there, especially not since one of them is after her slave girls. The other guy is more interested in the shiny pearls, so needless to say he's not going to make it out alive. Or is he? You better not be expecting any vicious shark-attacks or virgin sacrifices, because you WILL feel cheated. The closest we come to an action sequence is when a native girl encourages the handsome blond guy to dance with her. Despite the gorgeous setting and promising (but misleading) title, this is one of the most boring films I ever watched. 63 minutes never lasted this long. Sorry, Roger

Aside from having Roger Corman's name on the cover of this film there is a picture of a wet blond just wearing only a strategically placed lei.

No blonds.

No She Gods.

And the lei is broken.

Looks like Roger was distracted by the other movie he was making at the same time "Thunder Over Hawaii."

The basic story is a bad guy (who gets into killing and gunrunning) flees authorities with his brother's help. A storm arises and they get shipwrecked on a mysterious island with native girls, sharks, pearls, and a nasty old woman.

So, who gets the native girls, sharks, pearls, or worse yet the nasty old woman?

Since the early 1950s, Roger Corman has been directing and releasing films at a break-neck pace. Typically, he tosses four or five into the arena per year. This explosive productivity, of course, limits the range of quality (and budgets) for his productions. However, Corman has only occasionally released really truly bad films. This is an example.

Corman used the lovely islands of the Hawaiian Archipelago as a setting for this early color flatliner. If you have seen a few of his films, you know how important setting is to Corman. First - he never seems to have an adequate budget for his most ambitious projects, so he makes sure he films in visually interesting settings. Second - Corman often uses over-long and somewhat tedious pans ("Corman pans"). With nice scenery in the background, or a well designed set, the tedium factor for these shots is reduced. Corman's films are loaded with people moving from place to place, and "She Gods" is no exception.

The film is about a pair of vaguely likable brothers. Chris (Bill Cord) is a fairly normal, if not particularly bright, young man. Lee (Don Durant) is his evil, and only slightly less intelligent, brother. Lee is a fugitive from the law. They find themselves shipwrecked on an island inhabited by a tribe of Polynesian Amazons lead by the not-very-creepy but still rather annoying Queen Pua (Jeanne Gerson). Lisa Montell plays Mahia (Lisa Montell), who fairly quickly becomes romantically entangled with Chris, but the gods of the shark reef have apparently made it clear that both men are taboo. Chris and Lee plot to escape, and decide to take Mahia along with them, but the shark gods have other plans.

The acting is OK (with mediocre camera-work occasionally making the actors appear to be over-acting), the pace is as good as some of Corman's better works, the script is thankfully spartan, and the plot is as thin as a fish scale. The Hawaiian dancing and singing, underwater swimming scenes, shark-fight action and lovely costumes don't really succeed in making up for the virtually nonexistent story-line, middling cinematography and weakly developed main characters. Plus, some of the shark scenes (I believe one is repeated twice in the film) are laughable.

Can't really recommend this.

I personally found this movie to be quite watchable compared to many others, especially useful as a late night movie, and I really do not see it as a bad movie at all with regard to either the acting or the way it was filmed, even regardless of some of the ludicrous concepts.

You probably are familiar with the plot; two men, one "good", one "bad", end up on an island with exotic women and try to both kill each other and save one another at least once each.

I don't understand the title, though, as there are NO "she gods" (whatever happened to "goddess", anyway?), only unseen "shark gods" (represented by an ugly idol) and an island full of women who collect (and protect) pearls for "The Company" (which we never learn much about or actually see, even though it is implied we will see them).

One important thing that I learned from this movie is that it is okay to throw young girls into the ocean for the sharks to eat, as long as you report any suspicious strangers to the local police on the next island over! Weird! We are also supposed to believe that this "queen" (who oversees the sacrifices made to the shark gods) somehow is able to tell if anyone is correctly reading her maritime signal flag messages just by glancing into the horizon when you can't even see any other island!

I'm also wondering how both Lee and Pua easily swam all the way back to the island with no trouble at all in those shark-infested waters!

Anyway, the parts just prior to the ending were somewhat confusing and there ARE a couple of other incredibly dumb scenes. For example, the part where Queen Pua brags about having saved and taken care of Mahia, when she was the one who had thrown her to the sharks! She even cries about her sailing off away from her! Weird!

The color on my DVD copy was fairly bad; the ocean kept changing between purples, greens, pinks, and blues, but the overall style and filming is somewhat attractive.

5/10. Not bad, not great. Again, it's fine for a late night watch before finally falling asleep.