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.

Devil Fish (1984) 1/2 (out of 4) A group of people with varying occupations try to destroy a half-shark, half-octopus in this incredibly awful Italian rip-off of JAWS.DEVIL FISH is also known under the title MONSTER SHARK but no matter what you call it you need to know it's one of the worst films the sub-genre ever delivered. What's most shocking about this awful movie is how many familiar names in Italian cinema are connected to it. You've got Lamberto Bava directing. You've got Luigi Cozzi and Sergio Martino doing the story. Then you've got Bruno Mattei doing some second unit stuff. It really does feel like these many folks were involved because there's so much stuff crammed into this 97 minute movie that it rarely makes any sense.The biggest problem with the movie is how poorly made it is. I mean, with so much talent you'd think that they could have at least delivered a so-bad-it's-good type of film. The monster shark is kept hidden until the final moments, which is too bad since it's got a campy 1950s drive-in feel to it. The performances are all rather bad and that includes William Berger in his role. The editing is beyond horrible. The cinematography looks like a couple kids running with a camera. The music score is annoying. The death scenes are all rather weak. Worst of all is the fact that there are so many subplots going on that it seems like the editor accidentally put scenes in from other movies!

boring, horrible piece of Italian euro-trash about a scientist who seems to spend most of his time guzzling beer(this is what makes him American, right? Our scientists spend most of their academic life soused out of their minds, sure. That's where all the really great theories come from), who's studying something(dolphin calls, fish migration patterns, who knows). He hears a weird sound through his headphones, proving that his radio is picking up a station in Jamaica. At the same time, a Jack Skellington girl with one of the worst, most bleached manes of bad 80's hair that it has ever been my pleasure to witness is trying to calm down the dolphins in the Seaquarium she works at, as they're apparently upset about the amount of fish she's been doling out lately. The beginning of the film was a really badly colored storyline about two annoying, very Italian people who's boat is attacked by something unseen under the water. The whiny woman is never seen again(best part of the story), and the guys' corpse is found with no legs. The dim, alcoholic scientist(who has an inexplicable, English- American- Italian accent) and the stick girl with the hay hair begin to theorize that there's some kind of giant monster lurking under the seas off the coast of Italy...err..Florida.They enlist the help of an electrician to set up an underwater mike, so that the monster can sing karaoke. This guy has a beautiful girlfriend, who's only drawback is that she pronounces Peter "Pey-tah", but for some reason he's sexually drawn to the anatomical skeleton with the frizzly hair, a situation that leaves one blinking.The dubbing is awful, the editor a spaz, and the storyline generally a yawn. There's a bit about how this weird scientific corporation genetically engineered this monster giant shark-squid-barracuda thing for some reason that makes no sense, and a really unpleasant greasy haired guy goes around killing women, again for no apparent reason. A stupid sheriff and his bulked up deputy are along for the ride, along with a female scientist(who we know is smart because she wears huge glasses). At one time the woman scientist takes on the huge, terrible monster(yeah, right, Ed Wood's giant octopus was more believable) with only a small handaxe, and she wins the contest. Hooray for skinny little women, who obviously make the best monster hunters!The solution to the problem of the giant thing is to blow up half of the Everglades, leaving a dead zone for several miles in every direction. To Hell with ecology and the environment, right? We have to kill this giant monster! At the end, the electrician and his broomstick love ride off into the sunset on her Vespa, which is o.k. since she's gotten over her colleagues' death and he's not very upset that his girlfriend got whacked by the crazy guy with the greasy hair. Hooray for true love! Wait a minute, isn't there something fishy about all this...

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.