Every once in a while, a film comes along that is so brazenly awful, so shamelessly derivative, and so criminally cheap that it becomes a kind of cinematic crime scene. Enter Cruel Jaws (1995), a.k.a. Jaws 5: Cruel Jaws, a.k.a. The Beast, a.k.a. “that thing Bruno Mattei directed when he was drunk and trying to dodge copyright lawyers.” It’s not just a bad shark movie. It’s the bad shark movie.
This is a film that says, “Why build a shark when you can steal one?” and then raids Jaws, Jaws 2, Jaws 3-D, Jaws: The Revenge, The Last Shark, and even Deep Blood like a cinematic raccoon going through Spielberg’s garbage. It’s a patchwork quilt of plagiarism, stitched together with duct tape, stock music, and the kind of acting you’d expect from a high school anti-drug PSA.
Plot, Or Something Like It
The story, such as it is, starts with a military ship called the Cleveland crashing, because apparently even the U.S. Navy can’t read a GPS. Divers go down, meet a shark, and die in footage lifted from some other movie. Their captain, Ramone, also dies, which is tragic, mostly because it means he doesn’t get to sue the filmmakers for defamation.
Cut to Hampton Bay, Florida, where aquarium owner Dag Soerenson is struggling to keep his aquarium afloat because Big Bad Landlord Samuel Lewis wants the rent. His daughter is in a wheelchair, his sons are stock characters, and his whole personality is “generic hero with beard.”
Meanwhile, the shark is eating swimmers, surfers, and anyone dumb enough to go near water in Florida, which is basically everyone. Police chief Francis Berger tries to warn the mayor, who channels his inner Murray Hamilton and says: “Shut up, it’s Regatta season!” Cue recycled shark-attack footage.
Eventually, we learn that the shark was actually a top-secret Navy project, because nothing says “realism” like suggesting the Pentagon is training tiger sharks to replace the Marines. After about 87 more stolen scenes and a few Mafia subplots (yes, there’s also the Mafia, because why not?), our heroes blow up the wreck of the Cleveland with dynamite and kill the shark. Dag gets enough money to pay his rent, proving the real moral of the story: screw conservation, just blow up your problems until you can afford capitalism.
The Cast: Community Theater Rejects
The acting in Cruel Jaws makes Tommy Wiseau look like Daniel Day-Lewis.
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Richard Dew as Dag Soerensen: Imagine if your dad tried to cosplay as Quint from Jaws but gave up halfway through because it was too hot. That’s Dag. His delivery is so wooden you could build a pier out of it, which, coincidentally, would collapse the moment the stock-footage shark showed up.
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David Luther as Chief Berger: The man spends most of the movie looking constipated, which I suppose doubles as “serious cop face.”
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George Barnes, Jr. as Samuel Lewis: Plays the evil landlord as though he’s auditioning for a soap opera that doesn’t exist. His eyebrows act more than he does.
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Kristen Urso as Susy Soerensen: Dag’s wheelchair-bound daughter, whose big emotional scene involves falling into the ocean so the shark can menace her in stolen Jaws 2 footage. Representation matters, but maybe not like this.
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The Shark: The most consistent performer in the film, mostly because it’s stolen footage from better movies.
Production Values: Sharknado Looks Like Citizen Kane
This movie was made for roughly the cost of a used pontoon boat, and it shows. The editing is so jarring you half expect the DVD player to crash. One minute, the shark is a grainy rubber puppet. The next, it’s crisp Spielberg footage. Then it’s back to a stiff prop that looks like it was bought at Party City.
The soundtrack is a Frankenstein’s monster of stock music, one piece of which literally rips off the Star Wars theme. Yes, John Williams’ iconic music appears in this shark movie like it accidentally wandered onto the wrong set. If George Lucas had seen this, Bruno Mattei would’ve been buried under lawsuits instead of bad reviews.
And don’t forget the dialogue recording. Entire conversations sound like they were dubbed in a bathroom using a tin can and a string.
Shark Logic (Or Lack Thereof)
The shark in Cruel Jaws is part tiger shark, part Navy experiment, and part copyright infringement. It’s everywhere at once, eating helicopters, Mafia sons, surfers, and probably the movie’s budget. At one point it literally pulls a helicopter out of the sky, which is both hilarious and definitive proof that the writers stopped caring 40 minutes earlier.
Also, the shark’s size changes from scene to scene. Sometimes it’s small enough to fit in a swimming pool. Sometimes it’s Godzilla. Sometimes it’s just stock footage of an entirely different species. Calling it “inconsistent” is generous—it’s like watching a PowerPoint presentation of every shark ever filmed.
Memorable Scenes of Madness
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The Helicopter Attack: The shark leaps out of the water and eats a chopper, proving gravity and physics took the day off.
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The Regatta Massacre: Surfers get eaten in scenes shamelessly stolen from The Last Shark. It’s less a massacre and more a mashup reel of other films.
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The Mafia Subplot: Because every shark movie needs gangsters in Florida, right? Tony Soprano would’ve walked out of this mess after five minutes.
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The Final Explosion: Our heroes dynamite the wreck of the Cleveland. The explosion is clearly miniatures, so cheap it looks like someone set off firecrackers in a fish tank.
Why It Exists
Why does Cruel Jaws exist? Because Roger Corman and Bruno Mattei looked at Jaws and said, “We can remake this for $12 and a sandwich.” Because copyright laws are apparently optional in Italy. Because someone thought audiences wouldn’t notice that the climax is literally recycled from Deep Blood.
It exists because bad movies, like cockroaches, can survive anything.
Final Thoughts: The Shark Ate My Brain
Is Cruel Jaws the worst shark movie ever made? That’s a crowded pool, but it’s definitely in the deep end. It’s lazy, incoherent, and stitched together from footage it didn’t own. Watching it feels like eating a hot dog made of mystery meat: you know parts of it came from somewhere else, and you’re not sure it was legal.
And yet, in its brazen theft and sheer stupidity, it’s almost entertaining. Almost. It’s cinematic junk food—spoiled junk food, the kind that gives you food poisoning, but junk food all the same.
