She Gods of Shark Reef

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.

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.

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?

It seemed (I thought) to be such a noble goal. To review all the movies on the Treeline Films DVD compilation '50 SciFi Classics'. And after 'The Incredible Petrified World', 'Queen of the Amazons' and 'Robot Monster'; to this bad film aficionado, it would also be most enjoyable.

But then came 'She Gods of Shark Reef'.

One can only imagine the good people at Treeline discovered the day before it released '50 SciFi Classics' that their collection only contained 49 films. So, in their need to find a filler fast, we end up with this non-SciFi film that was seemingly videotaped off a TV station whose reception you can only get by plugging the aerial into the toaster. Except, such a movie would never be played by one of those TV stations, due to its fear of losing an audience.

Even the Treeline plot summary on the DVD sleeve gives you the tell tale sign that your in for a painful experience, as the best thing they can say at the beginning is 'Filmed in Hawaii'; which to my surprise, turned out to be a colour production process that seemingly gives this film a maximum of only 3 colour tones at any one time.

I will not give you a plot synopsis as I strongly recommend you don't watch this film. It manages to find that special 'woeful' niche, where it's not bad enough to be enjoyable, yet hardly good enough to be watchable.

However, I know that no matter how appalling it is, lessons can be drawn from a movie. The three lessons I learned from this film were:

(1) its OK to hit a woman, provided she is fat and ugly

(2) no matter how you film it, a dead shark looks very obviously like a dead shark, even if you push it to the intended shark attack victim, or drag it in the water to give the impression that its swimming

(3) if there was an award for 'Smallest Killer Shark in Film', the poor little dead creature used here would win (and by more than a fin). In fact, if it were any smaller, it could easily be mistaken for krill.

I have sacrificed myself to the She Gods so that you may forego the pain. I recommend that you take the opportunity instead to turn off the TV and go outside for a pleasant 70 minute walk and talk with a friend or loved one. The type of thing people probably did before the invention of film.

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