Barracuda
Monsters HD telecast
Perhaps America's mayor,the honorable Larry Vaughan said it best: "you yell barracuda and everybody says "huh". Or something like that. Which for me is part of the problem with having a barracuda as your ocean menace. Sure they are toothy and pissed off looking but they fall in line after all sharks, killer whales, giant squid, devil rays and so on. They're right before bluefish. But to be fair, BARRACUDA as written and directed by Wayne Crawford and Harry Kerwin is actually more of a local Florida conspiracy flick. Yeah, it's got a few cuda attacks but they really are a red herring. So you can't really accuse it of being a JAWS rip off itself, but the marketing would lead you to believe otherwise.
Wayne Crawford is a scruffy post grad know it all, investigating pollution on the shore caused by local big wig Papa Jack of Jack Chemicals. Jack is in the vein of your Boss Hogg only less funny but he does have a halfwit son who is funny-ish. Some barracudas kill a diver, but no one has connected it to the chemical plant. The local sheriff played by former Herschell Gordon Lewis regular William Kerwin, arrests Mike for trespassing but takes a liking to the young, determined lad. The sheriff of course has the required fat, funny deputy. After another attack, Mike and the sheriff come together to try to figure out what the hell is going on. The sheriff's sexy daughter also likes our hero Mike and taggs along. The local doctor played by Jason Evers may or may not know something. It's worth noting that Jason Evers played the scientist who kept his girlfriend's head alive in THE BRAIN THAT WOULDN'T DIE. Also some very MIB-ish government agents seem to have a deal with Jack Chemicals. And Pompano Beach Florida's version of Carl Kolchak is also snooping around. He's an investigative reporter for the local paper who is convinced that's there's something fishy going on. There is one scene that is pretty close to JAWS involving a night swim to check out the waters but other than that and some underwater shots it avoids outright stealing. The barracuda puppets they use are pretty good in quick cuts and the water gets bloody quick to help with the effect. You never get the gruesome pay off shots that you generally want in an "when animals attack" type flick so some may feel cheated. Apparently the full title is BARRACUDA: THE LUCIFER PROJECT, named for the government's secret plan. The conspiracy itself doesn't make much sense to me but I suppose it came more from the time period the film was made in than anything. In it's own way it is influenced by a lot of the post-Watergate conspiracy films of the seventies. For a regional film, it popped up on late night network TV pretty quick and didn't really need any cutting for nudity or language. As the first effort of some young guys, it's pretty ambitous in scope with it's various plot lines. And like many seventies guys vs. the system flicks, it has that downbeat ending that seemed prevalent in those days. I don't know why exactly but I liked the electronic score by Klaus Schulze. I was surprised to see it in HD as I had pretty much forgotten it years ago and hadn't seen it on dvd anywhere. So if you have a hankering for a Pompano Beach community theater X-FILES with a twist of JAWS, check it out.