Look out! Tintorera!
So I "watched" TINTORERA last night ... More like "scanned through its interminable blandness," really. TINTORERA is a movie I'd heard about recently while masochistically seeking out JAWS ripoffs in old video shops. I'd managed to keep down GRIZZLY, TENTACLES, and even GREAT WHITE, but from what I had read, TINTORERA was gonna be difficult to stomach ... IF I could find it. It was the "IF" that I took as a challenge, and yesterday I came across a Mexican DVD of the "25th Anniversary Edition!!!" The verdict?
Its lousy. I mean, I didn't expect anything BUT lousy, but I at least expected a movie subtitled "Killer Shark" to have a bit more sharks killing in it. But mostly it was a lot of vacation resort footage and some (OK, a LOT of) naked underwater swimming. A LOT. Susan "Dirty Mary" George gets top billing but doesn't show up until 1 hour and 5 minutes in. At precisely 1 hour 35 minutes, she exits. And there's still about an hour left to go. Also we never find out why everyone keeps saying she's "English" as she very clearly is not. At least she gets to show a little fan appreciation in her scant screentime. Thank you, Susan.
The rest of the movie seems to be about gigolos at a Mexican resort. Either that or a paid advertisement for Speedo briefs. "Speedo: Day, Night, Whenever!" (Although to be fair to my lady readers, it should be noted that the Speedos get doffed about as much as the bikinis, if you are into that 70s tan line/white butt kinda thing.) A friend of mine recommended a drinking game where you take a swig every time someone says, "Let's swim naked to the boat!" Unless you can really hold your liquor, I recommend against this game. If you plan to make it through the entire interminable 126 minutes, I suggest you drink every time you see a shark instead. That way you can still drive home sober.
To be fair, the location photography is just lovely. If this were a promotional video for a hotel, I'd want to go there. Everyone manages to share drinks right around dawn, or sunset, when the light is JUST RIGHT. People go swimmming in crystal clear waters. A LOT. And the whole joint is jumping with loose women willing to shed their clothes at the slightest provocation. Aside from the TINTORERA, it looks like a really nice place to go on holiday. And boy do we get an eyeful.
I suspect the movie was funded and cast in much the same way as SHOWGIRLS. With that movie, it seemed rather obvious that the entire production was just as excuse to go to Vegas and do tons of coke and screw everything in sight. Oh yeah and shoot a movie when there is time. Story? We'll think of something. Actors? Are they good looking and naked? Fine, good enough. TINTORERA feels very similar in it's, ahem ... "verite" approach. "Everyone drink and dance! Don't look at the camera! And LOSE THAT BATHING SUIT, YOU!"
Utterly devoid of pacing or tension of any kind, the movie does have a couple of things in its favor (accidentally, no doubt, but hey, they're on film and the producers were wise enough to include them, so let's give a little credit). A couple of the rare shark attacks are quite grisly, and the water is so damn clear and/or the lighting so bright that one really sees what's happening, viscera and entrails and all. Cool! One guy gets his legs bitten off and the shark eats his head. Later on a shark attacks a group of drunken revelers in the night surf and I swear they used a real shark to simulate the action (not that they ever went to the trouble of making a fake shark for the movie, opting for stock footage and shitty associative editing instead). Although I bet this real shark was also real dead and being dragged through the water on a rope by an offscreen boat. But whatever, it looks convincing enough, and out-of-place enough in this otherwise unremarkable "Cinemax After Dark: Latin Edition" movie to stand out in my memory.
Susan "Three's Company" Barnes and both of her naked breasts make brief appearances. Basil "Robocop" Poledouris surprisingly provides the music. (I guess we all have to start somewhere.) Both have their names misspelled in the credits.
Hoping to avoid that empty feeling of having wasted an entire night on crap, I washed TINTORERA down with a belt of the old JURASSIC PARK 3. (And when JP3 starts to seem "really kick ass," you know the previous feature left a bit to be desired.) But in all honesty, I like JP3 because it doesn't pretend to be anything its not. This is a movie about people being chased screaming through the jungle by dinosaurs intent on eating them. THAT'S IT. Pure and simple. Its 90 minutes of running around frantically. Its like the Indy 500 except the other racers don't pass you they just swallow you. A lovely film. Take the grandparents.
Oh yeah one last thing. I saw HITCH HIKE this weekend. Great little 1978 thriller. It deserves more space than I'm gonna give it. Let's just say that its the only movie I have ever seen where the villain gets shotgunned by a buck naked former Bond girl. Naked shotgunning! Why can't this be its own genre?
Its lousy. I mean, I didn't expect anything BUT lousy, but I at least expected a movie subtitled "Killer Shark" to have a bit more sharks killing in it. But mostly it was a lot of vacation resort footage and some (OK, a LOT of) naked underwater swimming. A LOT. Susan "Dirty Mary" George gets top billing but doesn't show up until 1 hour and 5 minutes in. At precisely 1 hour 35 minutes, she exits. And there's still about an hour left to go. Also we never find out why everyone keeps saying she's "English" as she very clearly is not. At least she gets to show a little fan appreciation in her scant screentime. Thank you, Susan.
The rest of the movie seems to be about gigolos at a Mexican resort. Either that or a paid advertisement for Speedo briefs. "Speedo: Day, Night, Whenever!" (Although to be fair to my lady readers, it should be noted that the Speedos get doffed about as much as the bikinis, if you are into that 70s tan line/white butt kinda thing.) A friend of mine recommended a drinking game where you take a swig every time someone says, "Let's swim naked to the boat!" Unless you can really hold your liquor, I recommend against this game. If you plan to make it through the entire interminable 126 minutes, I suggest you drink every time you see a shark instead. That way you can still drive home sober.
To be fair, the location photography is just lovely. If this were a promotional video for a hotel, I'd want to go there. Everyone manages to share drinks right around dawn, or sunset, when the light is JUST RIGHT. People go swimmming in crystal clear waters. A LOT. And the whole joint is jumping with loose women willing to shed their clothes at the slightest provocation. Aside from the TINTORERA, it looks like a really nice place to go on holiday. And boy do we get an eyeful.
I suspect the movie was funded and cast in much the same way as SHOWGIRLS. With that movie, it seemed rather obvious that the entire production was just as excuse to go to Vegas and do tons of coke and screw everything in sight. Oh yeah and shoot a movie when there is time. Story? We'll think of something. Actors? Are they good looking and naked? Fine, good enough. TINTORERA feels very similar in it's, ahem ... "verite" approach. "Everyone drink and dance! Don't look at the camera! And LOSE THAT BATHING SUIT, YOU!"
Utterly devoid of pacing or tension of any kind, the movie does have a couple of things in its favor (accidentally, no doubt, but hey, they're on film and the producers were wise enough to include them, so let's give a little credit). A couple of the rare shark attacks are quite grisly, and the water is so damn clear and/or the lighting so bright that one really sees what's happening, viscera and entrails and all. Cool! One guy gets his legs bitten off and the shark eats his head. Later on a shark attacks a group of drunken revelers in the night surf and I swear they used a real shark to simulate the action (not that they ever went to the trouble of making a fake shark for the movie, opting for stock footage and shitty associative editing instead). Although I bet this real shark was also real dead and being dragged through the water on a rope by an offscreen boat. But whatever, it looks convincing enough, and out-of-place enough in this otherwise unremarkable "Cinemax After Dark: Latin Edition" movie to stand out in my memory.
Susan "Three's Company" Barnes and both of her naked breasts make brief appearances. Basil "Robocop" Poledouris surprisingly provides the music. (I guess we all have to start somewhere.) Both have their names misspelled in the credits.
Hoping to avoid that empty feeling of having wasted an entire night on crap, I washed TINTORERA down with a belt of the old JURASSIC PARK 3. (And when JP3 starts to seem "really kick ass," you know the previous feature left a bit to be desired.) But in all honesty, I like JP3 because it doesn't pretend to be anything its not. This is a movie about people being chased screaming through the jungle by dinosaurs intent on eating them. THAT'S IT. Pure and simple. Its 90 minutes of running around frantically. Its like the Indy 500 except the other racers don't pass you they just swallow you. A lovely film. Take the grandparents.
Oh yeah one last thing. I saw HITCH HIKE this weekend. Great little 1978 thriller. It deserves more space than I'm gonna give it. Let's just say that its the only movie I have ever seen where the villain gets shotgunned by a buck naked former Bond girl. Naked shotgunning! Why can't this be its own genre?
posted by figurebuilder at 11:31 AM
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