Sharks' Treasure

There's some really impressive underwater action and ocean photography, but the rest of the movie is pretty tedious and unless you really want to watch old men in speedos yelling at each other or innocent sharks getting killed on camera, I can't recommend sitting through this forgotten slog.

Sharks' Treasure is an excellent sea adventure. The film centers around four men hunting for lost treasure. The men are plagued with problems from bandits, greed, and dangerous sharks. The underwater photography is superb. Cornel Wilde produced, wrote, directed, and stared in this film; which he states was a "team effort". I give this film a 9/10.

Shipowner Cornell Wilde and some youngsters go in search of sunken Spanish treasure. Along the way they encounter sharks and pirates.

Cornell Wilde wrote, directed and starred in this loosely plotted modern adventure story, along with Yaphet Koto and a couple of youngsters. There's as much underwater photography -- a bit faded in the print I saw -- as story, and as much character exposition as gold.

Wilde had spent the 1950s as a dashing but minor action hero. Born in Hungary in 1912, he came to the US four years later. After a few uncredited bits in the 1930s, his break came in HIGH SIERRA, and he spent the next 20 years playing in a mix of costume dramas and more modern fare; he was one of the movies' better swordsmen, and was reputed to have turned down a slot in the American fencing team at the 1936 Olympics. His career slowed down in the 1960s, but some television guest shots and a few kept him reasonably active until shortly before his death in 1989.

The story of SHARKS' TREASURE is simple enough: four guys look for sunken treasure in the Caribbean sea. They have fun and the occasional quarrels while looking for the treasure. Midway into the movie, a bunch of escape cons (or pirates) hijack the boat and its crew and forces the foursome to continue on with the search while they eat their food and hide on the boat. Eventually, the original crew makes a pack with one of the ex-cons and they escape and a cat & mouse chase occurs on a nearby island.

SHARKS' TREASURE is not a great film by any means. But it's not a bad film too. It's hopelessly average. The direction, by Cornel Wilde, is competent, with some nice camera-work here and there but it's really uninspired and looks like a TV movie of sorts for most of the film, until the climax at the beach which was well made: we see the men trying to escape the gang of ex-cons with just the sound and image of the roaring waves crashing on the beach. No music. Nice.

The big problem with the film is the limited space of the boat and the really corny acting by Cornel Wilde. The acting by everyone else was good, with Yaphet being the stand-out here but Cornel's acting belongs in the 1950s, not a film made in the gritty 1970s. He stood out more often than not as a sore thumb. To make things more annoying, Cornel (the director/actor) filmed himself prominently, really wanting to impress god knows who that he was still in great shape at his then old age. Fortunately, the film never becomes a total vanity project for Cornel but it sure comes close to it. And the other annoying thing about the film was the song. It's probably the worst song I've ever heard in any film. Extremely corny. The ending is also corny: after everything they went through, you'd think they wouldn't go back looking for the treasure. Aside for those weak points, the film was OK.

I watched SHARKS' TREASURE on a specialty satellite channel from beginning to end without changing channels, which should tell you that it held my attention for 90 minutes, which is more than I can say with majority of movies I watch.

Let's start with a round of applause for Cornel Wilde; - that's the least of recognition he deserves for all the work and effort he put into his one-man-show "Shark's Treasure". Wilde wrote, produced and directed the film, and he also plays the lead role of boat captain/treasure hunter Jim Carnahan. And he did all this just to prove that he still looks fit and mighty hunky in his naked torso at the age of 65!

Seriously, at several moments throughout the movie, I had the impression that "Shark's Treasure" secretively was a film for gay men that hadn't outed themselves yet. There's one woman in the cast and she appears only briefly, while most of the film's padding footage exists of the four lead stars parading around the deck bare-chested and in their tight Speedos. Ideally for married men still in the closet. "What are you watching, honey? Oh, just a macho flick about treasure hunting at sea, dear". Unfortunately, the adventure-part of "Shark's Treasure" is quite disappointing. Captain Jim and his crew are peacefully diving up ancient valuable coins off the coast of Honduras, but then become hijacked by a group of escaped convicts that naturally want to confiscate their loot. Admittedly the underwater footage is beautiful, but the pacing is incredibly slow, the film is far too long and it's a little too obvious that the shark footage is either shot at a different location or borrowed from other movies/documentaries.