Simply Perfect

Admirable film.

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Annoyingly dreadful horror film and another relentless "Jaws" rip-off that is arguably the worst one yet. In fact, they seem to borrow characterizations off each "Jaws" film made at that point! Set in Miami, a marine biologist, a dolphin trainer, a research scientist and a local sheriff who attempt to hunt down a giant sea monster that is described as a hybrid of a shark and octopus, which makes me wonder if "Sharktapous" is a remake of this turd. We never actually see the giant fish, just a lot of awful close-ups of an open mouth that growls a lot. The cast is largely made up of Italians and Latin Americans so watching them attempt to play Floridians is equal parts hilarious and excruciating. The dialogue is groan inducing and the direction and cinematography is done as though no one knew what they were doing. This isn't even so bad it's worth watching. It's just plain awful.

This is pretty much just your standard sea monster movie of the 80's, you have a monster attacking and killing random people that have seemingly been put there for that very purpose. You have the local sheriff concerned with the safety of the towns residents and the evil corporation who want to capture the monster and sell it to the navy as a weapon; there is the marine biologist who helps the sheriff locate the fish, and the bikini babe who just sort bikinis around. Strangely enough it is not the sheriff who is the hero, but instead it is marine biologists engineering type friend who pulls off his shirt and goes into battle with the monster shark.Naturally the monster was released by the evil corporation and they want to recapture it, the odd thing is, a disproportionately large part of the movie is spent on the cover up involving a couple of goons killing people who know too much. Other than that, it is pretty much the same as every other shark movie out there. That is to say, it is not actually a good movie, but a pleasantly predictable, rather silly, bad one.

Sometimes it's hard to judge how bad a film made in Italy or Spain really is, because they all seem to use the same stable of 9-10 ESL trained voice actors to supply the English voices for release in the US. And things are always lost in translation anyway -dialog, character shtick and plot elements written for the expectations of European audiences may not go too well with our American ideas of what is funny, hip, or dramatic. I imagine that the team responsible for making the translation for the sound track of this movie to English had about 3 days to do it from start to finish, and they probably each earned the equivalent of an installment payment on their used Fiat to do it. In other words, pure hackwork, tossed off in one or two takes and never reviewed or redone by someone with a real ear for the American language.Watching "Devil Fish", I can imagine that if you were an Italian watching this presented in your native language, you might find it a mildly amusing little piece of fluff. You'd laugh at the 'in jokes' and the amusing drunk, you'd gasp at the monster and the villainy of the bad guys, and you'd ogle at the attractive pair of Peter and not-quite-Daryll Hannah as they couple on the beach for no apparent reason in the middle of a search for clues about a man-eating monster who has already killed one of their friends.But since the jarring voice acting and tin-eared dialog keep yanking we Americans out of the film experience, we can't help but notice that the editors had serious Attention Deficit Disorder, that no one on screen can really act so much as project an Attitude, that the stated reason for the creation of the monster makes absolutely no sense, that the action sequences have all the impact of a cereal bowl full of cooked oatmeal and that the director, screenwriters and producers really hate women.Don't even THINK about buying or renting this movie - watch only on cable TV on Saturday afternoon with one of several beers in your fist, or with the help and protection of Mike and the Bots on MST3K.

This movie is horrible. There is no other way to describe it. The effect it has on a person is unbearable. So many bad things. Were to begin?Let's start with the acting, or lake there off. Not one of the characters is brought across convincingly. The story is really bad. We get something about a giant fish being created by scientists. Or something like that. You really just want the movie to end, instead of figuring out what is going on. the character interaction is just -- well -- a joke. Every time there are two, or more actors in one scene, they don't seem to be talking to one another at all. They just look to be delivering their dialogue without knowing there is another actor in the scene. the characters are lame and amateur at best. There is a drunk boat captain who stops every minute to have a beer, a poor man's Lorenzo Lamas, a very skinny girl who looks like Darryl Hanna, a steroid drivin sheriff who makes you laugh when he enters the scene. But some of the characters enter the movie, then leave quickly. Never to return. the soundtrack is strange, digressing into a soft core porn soundtrack at times. At other times playing the "devilfish song" as I call it. You will know it when you hear it, as it is playing every time the devilfish is swimming. The directing is very bad. Almost makes you wonder if the director was off doing other things while the movie was being filmed. The footage of the devilfish swimming is rarely visible, and at times there seems to be nothing swimming at all. I think the budget ran out so they glossed over the camera so nothing would be visible. I would not recommend this movie to anyone. Unless you want to see the MST3K version which provides Mike, Crow, and Servo with some good moments to riff.