Sharks' Treasure

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.

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.

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.

In his later years Cornel Wilde did a number of films on his own as his day as a box office draw had long gone. Stuff like Beach Red and The Naked Prey were interesting. Sharks' Treasure was quite a bit less in quality than those others were.

Wilde here is a charter boat captain no doubt giving three hour tours like the Skipper and Gilligan did on the USS Minow. Young surfer kid John Neilson brings an old Spanish gold doubloon and he knows where there might be more on the Mexican coast.

Wilde and Neilson take on Yaphett Kotto and David Canary as crew and the four set out for the spot that Neilson says the treasure was found. The four do some considerable diving and then have the misfortune to run across a group of escaped convicts led by Lobo as played by Cliff Osmond who certainly justified his name.

One of the convicts is David Gilliam who looks a lot like Neilson, blond and pretty and Osmond's personal boy toy from prison. Osmond's weakness is Gilliam and Neilson is no doubt grateful Gilliam's around otherwise these guys who haven't seen any female companionship would zero in on him. It all proves their undoing.

The underwater sequences are nice and the sharks as a dangerous as those in the various Jaws films. And the guys are all walking around in various states of undress which no doubt titillated the women and gay men in the audience. Cornel Wilde certainly looked in good shape for a guy in his sixties.

Sharks' Treasure is your routine action film, other than the underwater sequences and the well put together men, nothing more.

Since this movie will inevitably be associated with "Jaws" contrasts are inevitable, so here's one for you: In Spielberg's classic the shark is mechanical while the characters are real. In Cornel Wilde's film it's the opposite. Fortunately, as the title suggests, Wilde spends quality time with the sharks. Give it a C plus.

PS...You haven't lived until you've heard the Slovakian born star of this film channel his inner Randolph Scott.