Original title: Bermude: la fossa maledetta

Tonino Ricci is one of the less lauded of Italian exploitation film directors and with good cause. Frequently hiding behind the pseudonym Anthony Richmond his films were largely third-rate (and that’s being charitable) additions to whatever genre was popular at the time. His EOFFTV friendly work included the shoddy likes of Encuentro en el abismo/Encounters in the Deep (1979), Bakterion/Panic (1982), Thor il conquistatore/Thor the Conqueror (1983) and the Mad Max clones Rush/Rush the Assassin (1983) and Rage – Fuoco incrociato (1984).

The Shark’s Cave, also known in English as Cave of the Sharks or simply Shark Cave, might on paper look like another Jaws (1975) knock off but it’s a lot stranger than that. For Ricci and his co-writers Fernando Galiana and Mauricio Melchiorre, the enduring mystery of the Bermuda Triangle – explored that same year by René Cardona Jr in his dismal film of the same name – wasn’t enough. Vanishing aircraft? Disappearing Ships? All too mundane for Ricci and co who wanted more – enter a mysterious underwater civilisation that can psychically control sharks…

Diver Andres Montoya (Andrés García) 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 girlfriend Angelica (Janet Agren), just one of the many plot strands that seem terribly important for a few minutes only to disappear into a Bermuda Triangle of their own, never to be raised again.

The first thing Andres does on being discharged is to visit a cock fight – the second is to join Angelica for a bit of touristy larking about in boats, in markets and in casinos accompanied by maddeningly jaunty music. Having wasted a good chunk of running time on this nonsense, Ricci finally gives in and has a go at an actual plot. Andres joins Ricardo and their friend Enrique (Pino Colizzi) in agreeing to help salvage an aircraft for Mr Jackson (Arthur Kennedy) only to discover a cave full of immobile sharks, something that goes against nature itself (some species of shark, including the Great White, famously have to keep moving to force aerated water through their gills.) Investigating further, they discover a race of underwater beings that are controlling the sharks, perhaps by telepathy, but if Stelvio Cipriani’s soundtrack is to believed, by a series of annoying synthesized bleeps, whooshes and bloops.

Out of nowhere, a bunch of hippies turn up on a boat, among them Cinzia Monreale who went on to Joe D’Amato’s Buio Omega/Beyond the Darkness (1979), a brace of Lucio Fulci’s, …E tu vivrai nel terrore! L’aldilà/The Beyond (1981) (in which she’s credited as Sarah Keller), and I guerrieri dell’anno 2072/Rome 2033 – The Fighter Centurions (1984) and Argento’s La sindrome di Stendhal/The Stendhal Syndrome (1996). Said hippies commit mass suicide by throwing themselves overboard into shark infested waters while a very creepy doll they’ve brought with them spews blood. What this has to do with the rest of the film is anyone’s guess.

Elsewhere, Ricci has a go at recreating the severed head scene from Jaws (very badly), Andres proves to be virtually impervious to bullets and it all ends in the most bewildering fashion – what on Earth is going on there? The final, blessed, end is a typically bleak late 70s denouement and brings the film 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 – aren’t particularly bad ones. Out there, certainly, but serviceable enough. But they needed a more skilled director than the ham-fisted Ricci to make them work. The plot is virtually incomprehensible – who are these underwater dwellers? In their review of the film, Time Out seemed to think that they were Toltecs for some reason. Where do they come from and what do they want? And just what is going on with Andres and the sharks in the last few minutes?

The Shark’s Cave positively reeks of amateur hour desperation. The miniature effects are dreadful, Ricci never able to conceal the fact that the ships and planes are mostly “played” by models, the plot is muddled, the acting flat and the dialogue barely even functional. It’s one of the least well-known Jaws rip-offs and with good reason – indeed it seems likely that the film was never legitimately released on DVD and blu-ray. It would be inadvisable to hold your breath waiting for that to change.