Written by Sandor Stern (PIN), produced by Philip D’Antoni (THE FRENCH CONNECTION), and directed by William A. Graham (GET CHRISTIE LOVE!), SHARK KILL concerns an oil rig that’s plagued by piping problems which necessitate a scuba-diving crew to search for a “pig in the line” (industry parlance for a clog or an obstruction) and remove it.  Unfortunately for this crew, it happens to be right in the territory of a Great White Shark.  Oh, shit.  To make matters worse The Company, that great nebulous and insouciant organization where the crew seems to be expendable, is only concerned with producing oil and making money.  Therefore, the pig has got to be found pronto.  A very young Richard Foronjy (SERPICO, MIDNIGHT RUN) is in charge of the men sent into the dangerous waters for this purpose and just happens to come under the watchful eye of on-board safety expert Rick Dayner (Phillip Clark) whose admonitions about sharks feeding on humans are largely pooh-poohed and fall on deaf ears until, of course, it finally happens.  Immediately, a bounty is announced and all the oil riggers, none of whom has any experience, set out to hunt down the shark that ate one of their own.  One of them is Mendoza (Richard Yniguez) who enlists Dayner’s help in capturing the shark.  The rest of the film plays out like OPEN WATER and the ending is nearly identical to Spielberg’s classic, complete with the bombastic music. 

If this movie proves anything at all it’s this: it shows just how great a film JAWS really is.  JAWS was the first blockbuster of its kind, and those of us who were too young to have seen it theatrically will no doubt remember the slew of inferior imitators that flooded theaters in the months and years after the film’s success (not even counting the JAWS sequels!): Oliver Hellman’s TENTACLES, Joe Dante’s PIRANHA, Enzo G. Catellari’s GREAT WHITE, the TV-movie MAKO: THE JAWS OF DEATH, Michael Anderson’s ORCA, Charles B. Griffith’s UP FROM THE DEPTHS, Tonino Ricci’s CAVE OF THE SHARKS and NIGHT OF THE SHARKS, to name a few. 

The film is nothing to write home about, but its release is wonderful news for those of us who long to see the nearly impossible-to-find TV-movies made over 30 years ago.  As such, do not expect to see a pristine print of this film.  On the contrary, the transfer seems to be made from a faded 16mm print that was then transferred to video tape as there is skewing or hooking at the top of the screen during the first few opening moments.  But this clears up quickly.  There are instances where the image goes to black a few times for about a second or two, although the sound is still there.  I couldn’t tell if this was a problem with the DVD authoring or if it was caused by something else. 

This DVD is a great start to what I hope are more titles from this decade that I love so much.  At $10 for this title, you can’t go wrong.  Thank you, Wild Eye Releasing!