The ultimate deep dive into the world of shark cinema: filmmakers, critics, scholars and conservationists explore the weird, wild cinematic legacy of sharks on film and audiences' undying fascination with these misunderstood creatures.
Gérardmer Film Festival 
Colombia 
UK 
USA Colombia UK USA
Very fun documentary on the Sharksploitation craze made with love by true movie lovers.
Great selection of clips and interviewees with plenty a sound bite.
If you don’t want to watch at least one of these rip offs after this blast of a doc you may be sunburned.
I could watch 4 more hours of this stuff.
I came here expecting to burst my watchlist with bad CGI sharks and italian rip-offs...
ON THE OTHER HAND, I did NOT come here expecting to get all emotional because I'll never have the chance to hug a Nurse Shark and now I'm dying from an insatiable hunger for nature documentaries 🦈
"Knowing what I know now, I could never write that book today."
- Peter Benchley
How do I become a “professor and monster expert”?
A few days ago, this new documentary dropped on Shudder and as I've seen enough shark movies to have my own Letterboxd list, this was enough to intrigue me. To be totally judgmental and speak blindly, this had to be more informative (not to mention, more truthful) than anything on Shark Week this or any year, but I’ll say more about that later.
The documentary was more than just mentioning Jaws then showing the literally hundreds of films-whether or not they feature sharks-that it inspired. There’s also folklore explained and various aquatic monster movies from before ’75 until they mention how Jaws was such an unprecedented smash, everyone wanted a piece…
Wonderful stuff. Great mix of experts- from film friends to marine biologists and while I know the movies, I learned a ton of how the trends impacted each other and how cyclical big screen shark carnage is. Chase it with Tintorera and thank me later.
Delightful doc about shark movies and sharks themselves (a bunch of marine biologist types are interviewed along with many folks who were involved with making the movies from JAWS on up). A nice overview with lots of very memorable clips from the best and even most outlandish shark films ever (which the director has been obsessed with for years). Watch it!
(On Shudder)
Kept my interest throughout and I learned a lot about how Jaws influenced pretty much everything creating a domino effect in Hollywood. The hosts are all movie lovers and directors of shark movies which felt like a conversation with movie friends. They talked about some movie titles I didn't expect like Ghost Shark or Shark Attack 3: Megalodon which was funny. Could have done without the spoilers for a bunch of movies though. Of course they also went with a shark conversationist message which is appropriate with the negative impact these movies had on those poor real life sharks.
A delightful plunge into the dark depths of shark cinema, and one that rightfully puts some respect on Mark Polonia’s name (despite just missing the chance to include the brilliant Cocaine Shark). Was especially pleased that there was a whole bit dedicated to John Barrowman’s improvised line from Shark Attack 3 because it convinced my wife that she now needs to check out one of my favorite good-bad movies from back in the day. Let’s make it a Blockbuster night, then.
Shark week is coming up so I wanted to check this doc out as I enjoy shark based horror films. Even the stupid ones have a certain charm to them. I didnt expect to learn much here but I did learn that sharks get cancer and have incredible healing abilities. I also managed to add a few shark flicks to my list and even a couple non horror movies featuring sharks or characters with shark like features(007 The Spy Who Loved Me).
This Shudder shark doc served its purpose and definitely got me in the mood to watch a few shark 🦈 horror films.
My favorite movie sub-genre gets its own full-length documentary (and eye-catching poster art, too). Shark-movie vets like Mario Van Peebles, horror academics like Rebekah McKendry, purveyors like Roger Corman and Johannes Roberts, and even marine biologists and Peter Benchley's surviving family weigh in on the psychological appeal and long curvy history of watching these gliding monsters on screen.
From 18th century paintings of shark attacks to public fascination after the 1916 Jersey incident to rises in attacks after Australia popularized surfing to "Tabu" in 1931 (the first movie with a model shark in it), and then the Indianapolis of course, the increasing association of them with villainy through the Bond franchise (in at least 4 different films by my…
Solid introductory overview of the history of sharks in movies with a nice mix of talking heads. However, despite a large number of films being referenced overall, it is fairly surface level, mainly focusing on more popular titles (Jaws, Deep Blue Sea, Sharknado, 47 Meters Down, Open Water, The Shallows). I suppose that's to be expected and I realize they can only cover so much but I would have rather seen some lesser known shark movies highlighted instead of the time spent on other things such as an unmade Jaws sequel or shark appearances in Moana and The Suicide Squad. There's a great timeline graphic frequently shown throughout that I found myself pausing to get a better look at (which led to me making a list of films referenced in this). Maybe we'll get a sequel that digs further into some of the deep cuts only glimpsed on the timeline.
Sharksploitation is a pretty great deep (ahem) dive into the killer shark movie genre. You want to know about the earliest shark movies? They go back to at least the 1930s. You want to know the shark movies that immediately preceded the atomic bomb that was Jaws? You get that too.
I appreciated how seriously this doc treated every era and every type of shark film. It was just as serious about Jaws as it was about Ghost Shark, Sharktopus, or 6-Headed Shark Attack. They left it to interviews with the directors to acknowledge how silly their films are. So, yes, Sharknado is ridiculous but the doc itself doesn't treat it so.
The interviews are the best part of the…
Entertaining doc, though I did enjoy The Bad Movie Bible's Jawsploitation video more than this one.
