All language subtitles for Sharksploitation [2023] [1080p] EN

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- I think people are
fascinated by shark movies

for two reasons.

One, the shark is
a natural monster.

But it's also the fact
that it's in the water

and in the ocean.

And I think the ocean has
great psychological effects.

- When you go in diving,

that moment into the ocean,

and then you put your head down

and you see the world
underneath you,

and then you go down,

and that moment of a dive
is this kind of

going into this whole crazy,

like, "what the fuck is down
there" other world.

- The seafloor is
8,000 feet down.

And we're thousands of miles
from anywhere.

And you get in the water.

And you look around you,
and it's dark everywhere.

And your mind starts
to make up things.

What's just out of sight
over there?

And what's gonna get you?

♪

- That's the appeal
of horror movies in the water.

That was the appeal of

"The Creature
From the Black Lagoon,"

the famous scene
where she's swimming,

and the creature's swimming
under her,

and she doesn't know it.

And then it touches her leg,

and she doesn't know
what it is.

- It's one of the great kind
of fears and dramatic things,

is being in the water
and something grabs you.

I mean, the beginning
of "Jaws" just says it all.

[woman gasping]

[soft music]

♪

- I would define
sharksploitation

as a genre of film

or frankly any kind
of media portrayal

that's about this idea
of the meta shark,

which is constructing
a horrific, monstrous image

of the shark
that is very loosely based

in actual reality.

It's that idea that we can
sort of stretch the truth

and merge fact and fiction.

- The classic
exploitation movies

are T&A movies or gore movies,

but there's many other kinds
of exploitation.

Sharksploitation is a subgenre

that capitalizes on
the popularity of shark mania.

- It's rare
for the world to go,

"We like this.

We're interested in this."

And because of that,
it's gotta be exploited.

- And I think
what sharksploitation

is really exploiting is "Jaws."

And that's never died.

People are still
doing that today,

no matter how crazy
the premises get.

[gunshot]

- For these, like,
sharksploitation movies,

whenever I see a title,
then I'm like,

what the fuck is this gonna be?

[laughs]

You know you're gonna see

something you've never seen.

Like, "Sharktopus,"

I've gotta see
what the sharktopus look like.

I've gotta see what
its magical abilities are.

I've gotta see
how it's gonna kill people.

- It is not
a sharksploitation movie

unless someone screams,
"Get out of the water."

- Get out of the water!

Everybody,
get out of the water!

- Get out of the water
right now!

- When I think of
sharksploitation,

I think of sharks that defy
the laws of physics.

And then the other thing
sharksploitation is doing,

what it's exploiting,
is people's fear

of being eaten by something
that they can't see.

- I think there's just this
in-built fascination for us

with, like,
this is a highly-evolved,

deadly predator

that we probably can't beat
in a fight.

We can't outswim it.

- We're frail.

We don't have fins.

We can't stay underwater
very long.

We're fucked. [chuckles]

We're shit out of luck, man.

With all our stuff, we know
that naked in the water

with that shark, man,
we're in trouble.

So there's something
about that that reminds us

of how frail we are,
vulnerable we are.

And yet it ignites
something in us

on the adrenaline level
that makes us feel alive.

- Come on in the water!

- When I first saw "Jaws,"
it completely blew my mind

that, oh, my God, wait,
that could be in the water?

- I was in that sweet spot age
when it came out

where my parents
wouldn't let me see it.

So one night with the cousins,
we snuck and saw it.

And it terrified me.

And my parents were right.

- If I went into the bathtub

and I couldn't see
below the bubbles,

there was likely
a shark under there.

And I couldn't take a bath
that night.

- I mean, in the theater,
I felt like

the shark was gonna come
under my theater seat

and get me.

I almost wanted to put
my feet up on the seat.

That's how terrified I was.

- That shot
from the bottom of the ocean

of her just floating there,

we immediately feel that

that camera is something
watching her.

And the idea that it has
all of this distance

between her and it,

that is pure thalassophobia.

- A lot of fear of any
kind of oceanic monster

comes from this idea
of thalassophobia,

which is a real phobia
that exists

where people are threatened
or scared

of large bodies of water.

So when you have something
like the shark come in,

it contributes even more
to this fear.

[woman screaming]

- It really did make people
afraid to go in the water.

And that's, I think,
another reason

"Jaws" became so big.

It's this elemental fear

that people have had
for centuries, I guess.

And this was the first movie

to really make it
the central theme of the movie

and really kind of exploit
that fear.

Because everybody goes
swimming at some point.

And it's taking an activity
everyone does

and showing, you know,
the potential dark side

and the horrible thing
that can happen to you.

- Suddenly, society developed
this massive fear of sharks.

And this idea that
the psychology becomes infused

in an entire generation
and is still persisting

that when we think about
why we are scared

when we're standing in
3 feet of water at the shore,

it's because of "Jaws."

What are you scared of? Sharks.

And that's where we always go
first and foremost.

And it did not exist
to quite the degree

that we see it prior to "Jaws."

- This is the first year
that I've come to the beach.

And people have really
been upset.

And they're really concerned
about the waters.

A lot of people,
you talk to them.

You say,
"Well, you been in the water?"

And they say, "No."

Just the water is beautiful,
it looks nice.

But, you know, hey,
there's sharks out there.

- I knew that as a child
I had dreamed

about a maniac
that would attack me

and cut off my head--

an unreasonable thing
that you couldn't discuss with,

you couldn't argue with.

And I sort of thought
that people might

react to sharks that way.

- In the shark craze
which has gripped America,

which Peter Benchley began
and others have added to,

the search for objectivity
about sharks

is a pretty discouraging
enterprise.

- When you compare it to, like,
other subgenres of movies,

like killer dog,
like "Cujo," for example,

that didn't stop people
from buying dogs.

But "Jaws" stopped people
from getting in boats,

going in the water,
going in their pool,

going in the bathtub.

People who lived in Iowa
didn't want

to get in the lake
near their house.

It was just like
this phenomenon.

- And it became the movies
that changed the movies.

- We had been making
low-budget

science-fiction pictures,

very often
underwater pictures.

And when "Jaws" came out,

"The New York Times" wrote,

"What is 'Jaws'

but a big-budget
Roger Corman film?"

He was right
in half of what he said.

It was a big-budget
Roger Corman film.

But it was also better.

It was bigger and better.

And I thought--and I talked
to a few of my friends--

the major studios have caught
on to what we've been doing,

and we are in trouble.

But I was not the only one.

There was a whole genre
of these

underwater monster films.

But they were all
low-budget films.

- Many of the adventure movies

of the 1920s and the 1930s

took place at sea.

A good example is
"The Sea Bat" from 1930,

in which a giant manta ray
attacks sponge fishers

near the West Indies.

But for some reason, sharks
were considered less dangerous.

- Back in the days,

way, way back
from the start of humanity,

people thought of sharks like
a "mysterical" creature,

especially on
the small island

and the Pacific Ocean.

- Anyone who lived
in a coastal area

who saw these creatures
in real life,

we'd tell stories
about those things.

So in mythology and folklore
in different places

in the Caribbean,
in the Pacific,

and in Africa have stories
of sharks.

And oftentimes,
these sharks are neither

malevolent or benevolent.

They're somewhere in between.

There are cases
where sharks actually

are seen as ancestral spirits

that might actually be helpful.

And there are some folklore
stories where the sharks

themselves actually
help people in the ocean

rather than attack them.

- In Greece, they actually
worshipped sharks

and made it a shark god.

But then, most of the shark
god wasn't an evil god.

They didn't punish people.

Very, very first shark movie,

"Tabu" from 1931,

the shark was godlike.

It was a shark

who protected an area
in the water.

They actually made
the first rubber shark.

But also, movies like
"She Gods of the Shark Reef"

or "Omoo-Omoo, The Shark God"

actually portrayed the shark
as a god.

- And their belief in
the power of the shark god.

- You would see
a statue of a shark.

You would see movies
like "Tiger Shark"

where you'd see the everyday
life of the fishermen.

You'd see how hard it was
and how the shark was

a big part of their lives--

but not as a villain,

but as an animal
they had to deal with.

And they actually respected
the animal.

- Now, these are all movies
with sharks in them,

but they're not
"movies about sharks."

- It was mainly just some
individual scenes with sharks.

- Cause you're looking at me
like I'm--

- There are even more
specific examples today,

or in the modern period.

- Shark head.

This mission is cursed.

- It's not cursed.

- Shark head.

- With DC and Suicide Squad,

this idea of the half-human,
half-shark

is becoming more popular.

But it really has roots
in a mythology

that is still very important
to people.

There's this really,
I think, profound

and deeply saddening scene
for a CGI character

where he's standing
in an aquarium

forlornly looking at these
other ocean creatures.

And initially you're thinking,
of course, obvious metaphor,

right, that he doesn't feel
like part of the human world.

He misses part
of the ocean world.

And then the tank breaks,

and some of those
sea creatures

start attacking him.

It becomes this really quick,
but really interesting

metaphor about not fitting in
in either world.

- A king shark.

- Bullshit.

- What the fuck?

- Some people claim that
Nanaue is a descendant

of an ancient shark god.

Whatever the case,
he's strong and deadly.

- An interesting example
of sharks in mythology

is the story of Nanaue,

which comes from
the Hawaiian Islands.

So there there's a king
of the sharks.

And the king is a shark
who can shapeshift and sees

a beautiful woman and decides
to shapeshift into a human man

to sort of pursue her.

They have an affair.

And they have a child,
a boy who is a demigod.

And he's born with the mouth
of a shark on his back.

And Nanaue is eventually
killed because of the threat

that he poses
to the other people.

But Nanaue is a very
important figure

in Hawaiian indigenous lore

because of this association
with the king of sharks.

And that seems like a really
interesting story to me.

I think it's fascinating
that when Europeans and even

cinematographers
in the 20th and 21st century

started thinking
of shark monsters,

instead of going
into the folklore,

we looked at the real shark
again.

And James Bond did contribute

to this idea of sharks
as monstrous

by associating them
with the villains

of James Bond films.

- Gently, my friend. Gently.

- I got interested in shark
movies when I was a young kid.

It was actually "Jaws,"
but not "Jaws," the movie.

It was Jaws, the character
from "The Spy Who Loved Me."

You know, the big guy
with the steel teeth.

- And Jaws would kill people
not with his gigantic body

and hands or a gun or a knife.

He would go up to you
and bite you on the neck.

And then he bites the shark
at the end.

- In stuff like
"Live and Let Die"

and "Thunderball,"

we have James encountering,
you know,

a shark in the ocean
that goes directly after him,

and you know,
he has to fight it off.

But more commonly, and I think
more interestingly,

is sharks being used
as a form of execution,

which to my knowledge
is something

that never really occurred.

But you have
these pits of sharks

and you have these villains
who are cruelly

throwing people into
these shark pits.

And they're
instantly devoured.

And there's plumes of blood
everywhere.

- The villain in "Thunderball"
kept sharks in a pool

on his island compound...

- With sharks, no less.

- Both as a way
to dispose of enemies

and as a security measure
and just

a signifier of being evil.

In the first
"Despicable Me" movie,

they had sharks in a pool too,
sort of as an homage to that.

- Quiet down, fish.

- And you know,
in "Austin Powers,"

Dr. Evil wants sharks that have

frickin' laser beams
on their heads.

- Sharks with laser beams
attached to their heads.

- The villain has sharks
in "The Phantom."

- "Batman,"
the movie from the '60s,

there's a very famous scene
where we see Batman

struggling with a shark.

He's hanging
beneath a helicopter,

and a shark attacks him.

It's very obviously
a rubber shark.

And the only reason
it's moving

is because Batman
is moving his leg.

And he's reaching up
to the helicopter.

And Robin's sitting there

and he's asking for this
shark repellent bat spray.

And he starts spraying
the shark

and then it's releasing
its rubber teeth.

And it's dropping down.

That's an awesome scene.

- An exploding shark
was pulling my leg.

- The Joker!

- It all adds up
to a sinister riddle.

Riddle-er.

Riddler?

- Oh, a thought strikes me.

- So sharks become associated
with being kept as pets

by being controlled by humans,
and more specifically

being controlled by villains.

So it's really doubling down
on this idea

that sharks themselves
are inherently bad

or evil because they're being
used in an evil way

by humans, which,
of course, begs the question

of who are the real monsters
in that situation?

- Pre-"Jaws," there was no
sharksploitation genre.

But there was
a treasure-hunting genre.

And a lot of them involved
a shark,

because the treasure was in
a sunken ship or some sort

of underwater area
that they needed to somehow

get down to retrieve
the treasure.

- If you take one
of the more interesting

treasure hunt movies,
shark movies,

it was a movie called "Shark!"

with a big name actor,
Burt Reynolds.

But the most interesting story
about that movie

was actually the unfortunate
death of one of the stuntmen,

because when they made
the movie,

they made it with real sharks.

And unfortunately,
one of the stuntmen

got too close
to one of the sharks,

and he actually died.

- They had been shooting in
an area that was netted off,

but the shark broke through
the netting right into the shot

and killed the stuntman
right on camera.

So that was bad enough.

But the producers actually
included the footage

of Jose's death in the film.

They immediately started
publicizing that a stuntman

was killed during the making of
this film to garner publicity.

They sold the story
to "Life Magazine."

They eventually changed
the name of the movie

from "Caine" to "Shark!"

Then when "Jaws" came out,
they re-released the movie

to capitalize on it again

and changed the title of it
to "Man-Eater."

And so that is the dark side
of the term exploitation.

- When you think about a movie
like "Blue Water White Death,"

you can really villainize
a lot of what they did.

But at the same time,
I think of it more like

they were us, but at that time.

And there was a lot
of real thought

that these were very, very
dangerous, villainous animals.

- We're looking for the animal
that I think is considered

to be the most
dangerous predator

still living in the world,

the great white shark,
which attacks the...

- "Blue Water, White Death,"
you know,

I missed that
when it first came out.

But it became a--almost like

the Dead Sea Scroll
or something.

Those of us that knew the ocean
and knew sharks,

when we saw it, we went, wow.

That's really good.

- Before this film,
there's only been one shot

of a great white underwater.

And that Ron Taylor had taken.

And that was all there was.

I was 24 years old
and I was just totally enamored

of the idea of doing this.

And then I met Peter Gimbel,
Stan Waterman.

Jim Lipscomb I knew well.

He was a great friend of ours.

And then
Ron and Valerie Taylor.

And these guys had
great delight in what

they were doing and yet
were afraid in the sense

it was unknown.

Didn't know
what was gonna happen.

Peter Gimbel invented
the cages.

And that allowed them
to film underwater.

And that was radical
at that time.

And then they filmed
at night underwater,

which was the scariest thing
in the world.

It was a real, real danger
there, you know.

And when they decided
to swim with the sharks,

one of the things
they decided was

they'd have these bang sticks.

And so one person was filming,

and then the other person
would be behind

just looking for sharks
and trying to--

but when you have goggles
like this,

you've got no
peripheral vision.

What's happening back there?

What's happening over there?

And the sharks would come up.

And what they would do
a lot of times

is the ocean tip, white tips,
would come up

and bang it like this,
you know,

luckily, instead of biting,
you know.

- In the filming
of "Blue Water, White Death,"

the filmmakers themselves kill
a shark in it

because they get scared of it

and they have their boom stick,
and they use it.

And so I mention the movie

not to make light of some
of those darker parts,

but just to show people
all of these things

are like dominoes.

- The 18th century,
we start to see

more negative illustrations
and paintings

of sharks attacking people.

At first, this is
usually sharks following

alongside slave ships.

And then in the 19th century,
when we see an increase

in print culture, we start
seeing more shark attack

encounters being
reported as well,

one of which was a cabin boy
fell off the side of a ship

in Cuba and his leg
was bitten off by a shark,

which, of course,
newspapers latched on to.

And that inspired
an American painter

to make a very famous painting
called "Watson and the Shark"

that depicts an exaggerated
account of that.

And "Watson and the Shark,"
I do think,

started some of these
negative depictions

that have continued
throughout history.

- In the real world,
there was two

major events
which actually transformed

the public's view of sharks.

You had an event in 1916
in New Jersey

where actually some
bull sharks swam up a river

and attacked a few who I guess
was in the water swimming.

And at that time in 1916,

you didn't have
very much television.

You have some radio and you
have some of the newspapers,

so that story
about the shark attack

traveled slowly but steadily
through all of America.

And people was totally afraid
of sharks.

You can see that the tourists
was running away

from the beaches
because of when they saw

the stories in the newspapers.

- So we start seeing
front page newspapers

with photos of sharks
and, like, "man-eater."

So we have man-eater
associated with the shark

for the first time.

That's on one side
of the world.

On the other side of the globe,

Australia was getting
more into surfing.

So of course, people
were also being attacked

or bitten by sharks
in Australia.

So as that circulated
through the globe,

this idea of the man-eater
plus real shark attacks,

the demonization
and the creation

of the monster shark
really started becoming

more and more prevalent.

- And then throughout
the Second World War,

you had the warship,
the USS "Indianapolis."

The ship was carrying some
part of the atomic bomb

that went down on Japan
in the ending

of the Second World War.

And on the way back,
a Japanese submarine

sank the big warship.

- Here you have Captain McVay
bringing the secret cargo.

Intercepted by a Japanese sub,
sunk.

So 1,200 men go into the water
and 300 and something survive.

And many of them--
most of them, in fact--

die from shark attacks.

- Woody James was one
of the survivors

of the "Indianapolis."

And I got to ask him.

I said, how did you feel
the first time you saw "Jaws"?

Because that was
the first time anybody

had ever heard about that.

And he one of the survivors.

And he said
he was just stunned,

because these guys--
this was a generation

that didn't talk about
these things.

No one, none of their families,
none of the kids,

no one really knew
what they went through.

They just kept quiet
and buried that trauma.

- Peter had many ideas
for novels.

But the one he liked the best

came from reading
about an article

about a giant
great white shark.

- In 1964, long before all
of this drama had happened,

I read a story
in the "New York Daily News"

about a fisherman
who had caught

a 4,550-pound great white shark

off the beaches of Long Island.

And I thought, my God,
what would happen

if one of those things came
into a resort community

and wouldn't go away?

- Peter wrote "Jaws."

It was fiction based on fact,
I remember he used to say.

So everything in it
could have happened

or did happen, except this idea

that the shark had
some idea to do it.

- At that time, when Peter was
doing research for the book,

there was not a lot
of research.

But there was a theory called
the "rogue shark theory."

And that was that once
a shark tasted human flesh,

it would then hang around
and wanted more human flesh.

Peter did not believe
in that theory.

- Now, this shark
that swims alone.

- Rogue.
- What's it called?

- Rogue, rogue.
- Yeah.

Now, this guy,
he keeps swimming around

in a place
where the feeding is good

until the food supply is gone,
right?

- It's called territoriality.

It's just a theory
that I happen to agree with.

- The rogue shark theory
is nonsense.

The idea that
one shark develops

a taste for human blood
and then becomes evil

and the only way
to save the beach

is to track down that one
specific individual shark

and kill it,
that theory has inspired

a lot of what we call
shark control measures

around the world,
and it doesn't work,

because even if you could
identify what specific

individual shark was
responsible for a given bite,

which you almost certainly
cannot,

you couldn't find it.

And in the efforts to find it,

you would kill
a bunch of other sharks

that you're even saying
were not the ones involved.

- Stephen really went with
the rogue shark theory.

And it sure did make
for a really powerful movie.

- The book's singular gimmick,

which was to give you
the shark's point of view,

that was, you know,
that was a first,

to have the monster, you know,
as a character.

- This is the shark
that was built for "Jaws 1."

And it was built by a guy
named Joe Alves.

He was one of Universal's
resident visual effect--

special effects guys.

Because there is a difference.

Special effects are practical,

visual effects are post.

"Jaws," we did not have
visual effects to the scale

where they could have done
this kind of shark things.

Computers didn't exist
for doing CG.

So they built this shark.

Joe Alves and his crew
physically built this shark.

And famously,
it did not work very well.

So that is the reason "Jaws"
is such a powerful film.

- It's actually those moments
in the movie that really

separate it and make it
as good as it is,

because it's such clever
filmmaking.

- It's probably from where I
grew up in the '70s, watching,

you know, movies
where the limitations

from budget and maybe even
mechanical issues

have limited the amount
of times

you actually see the creature.

And to me, that's much scarier.

- Stephen King once said,
once you see

the zipper down
the monster's back,

the game's over.

So the more real you can make
the situation,

I think the more--
the easier it is

for people to get
invested in it.

- Our focus was creating
this creature

as close as we could
to a shark.

We weren't thinking about what

he was gonna do to the future.

- Summer wasn't for
blockbusters back then.

It was just for
escapist fare, you know,

drive-in movies,
that kind of stuff.

That's the movie
that made $100 million.

And everybody wanted
some of that.

- When the movie came out,
everything went crazy.

Everything totally changed--
not only for the shark movies,

but also for
the cinema history.

- Movies didn't open
in as many theaters

then as they open in now.

So I remember waiting
in line for five hours

the first time we saw "Jaws,"
because we had to wait

for two showings to come
and go before we got in.

- At that time in 1975,

the idea of running
your trailer

as a TV commercial
was relatively new.

And "Jaws" did it a lot.

And that meant that
everybody was seeing it.

It wasn't just
point-of-contact ads

at the movie theater,
it was in your living room.

- I saw those ads
all over the place.

And it really stoked
my enthusiasm for it.

The book was in every
bookstore you went into

and supermarket.

It was inescapable
during that summer.

I think it was "TIME" magazine
had it on the cover.

The cool thing was, even if
you couldn't see the movie,

there was tons and tons
of merchandise.

You know, that was one
of the first movies

that got seriously marketed
with lots of tie-in stuff.

So I had the "Jaws" game.

- You're out.

"Jaws."

It's you against
the great white shark

and each other.

From Ideal.

- Everybody wore
"Jaws" T-shirts.

Everybody had "Jaws" posters
and toys.

There was a parody song
released

on top 40 radio
called "Mr. Jaws."

And I just--
pardon the expression--

ate that stuff up.

To this day, the scene
that still scares me

is when the fisherman's boat
gets capsized

and there's
that overhead shot.

And he's hanging on the boat
and you kind of see

the shark come up
underneath him and grab him.

- And the scene when you see
the shark for the first time

in "Jaws,"
when he pop out of the water

and we see Sheriff Brody
just floating, stalled.

That was one of
the defining moments

for shark movies for me.

- Run down and chum
some of this shit.

- That's another one
that still gets me

every time I watch it.

It's those classic moments
that just still work,

no matter how many times
you've seen the film.

- I remember seeing "Jaws"
and thinking how cool it was

and how phony the shark was.
[laughing]

You know,
after seeing the real things,

but how great the cast was
and what a great film it was.

And then I got worried,

as a lot of people
who know sharks went, uh-oh.

So if you make this
the great villains,

then A,
they're gonna kill them.

And B, people are gonna be
scared of them, and so--

which is exactly what happened.

- We were absolutely thrilled
with the success

of the book and the movie
"Jaws."

But we were just horrified
that people somehow

felt that this was
a license to go out

and kill every shark
they could.

There were more shark
tournaments that were started

to go out and kill sharks.

- Around the time when
the movie "Jaws" came out,

you can see
that shark landings

really, really skyrocketed,

specifically around that time.

So specifically shark landings
around the United States.

And that was because of
this very effective idea

that people had, unfortunately,
that sharks were so dangerous

that it was a safety issue
and that they were

actually helping
by removing large amounts

of sharks at one time.

- Some species still
haven't recovered

from that summer's
exploitation.

- One of the very first
sharksploitation films

that we see out of the gates
right after "Jaws" is

"Mako, Jaws of Death,"

which is
a William Grefé feature.

It's an interesting film in
that it does use real sharks.

And the actors
in the film are actually

swimming with real sharks.

- I found out later that,
I think,

some of the sharks had
had their teeth removed,

which is kind of dubious.

And I don't know
how I feel about that.

But it is
a very entertaining movie.

I'm also amused by the fact
that it's referred to

sometimes as
"Mako, The Jaws of Death,"

though I've never seen
a print of the movie

or an ad or a poster for it

saying,
"Mako, The Jaws of Death."

And the sharks aren't makos.

There are no mako sharks
anywhere in that film.

- Unfortunately, some
of the tales coming out

of "Mako, Jaws of Death"
is that the sharks

were not treated very well
during the filming at all.

Some of them were killed,
actually, for the filming.

But what's unusual about it

is one of the very few films

that come out post-"Jaws"

that is actually about
showing compassion to sharks.

The movie itself
is about this man

who is trying
to preserve sharks

and is telepathically
connected to them.

But at the same time,
you find out

that some of
the filming procedures

they were doing
to get these shots

are really damn horrific.

- Another shark movie
that is not afraid

of killing any real sharks

is "Sharks' Treasure"
from 1975,

in which men go on
an underwater treasure hunt

and they have to kill sharks
in order to stay alive.

- And most of the trailer
is sharks getting killed,

and really getting killed,

like getting hit
with spears and bang sticks.

And even at the time,
I'm like,

they're killing sharks
on camera for this movie.

"Tintorera" was another one

that I caught up with
later on.

That's like combining sharks
and sexploitation.

You know, it's lots
of naked people, you know,

and shark attacks.

And that's a great example

of exploitation at its finest.

[woman screaming]

[dramatic music]

- I remember "Shark Kill,"
which is a TV movie.

I think that was the first
kind of "Jaws" knockoff

that made it to market.

- They played it up
like it was "Jaws,"

but it's about these two guys
that go out to hunt a shark.

As a kid, it made me wonder,
is this what "Jaws" was?

But it clearly wasn't.

- And I remember
all the other TV spin-offs.

Like Sheriff Lobo encountered
the shark.

Like, all the Universal
TV series

would have their characters

encounter the shark
from "Jaws."

- "The Hardy Boys" had
a shark episode.

"The Bionic Woman" had
a shark episode.

There's a show called
"Matt Houston"

that had a shark episode.

Sharks were everywhere.

- There was Jabberjaw,
you know,

the Scooby-Doo rip-off
of the talking shark.

There was Misterjaw

that was on
"The Pink Panther."

And then I'll always remember,
they had the episode where

the Six Million Dollar Man
fights a killer shark.

- When he's holding
the shark and shaking it,

it's the nurse shark,

which is not
a dangerous shark.

But when they're showing
the shark swimming away,

that's a sand tiger.

Now, a sand tiger,
doing that too?

I think you'd be pretty stupid
to grab it

and do the same thing
as you do with a nurse shark.

- And then, of course,
you know,

the most infamous example
is the jump the shark episode

of "Happy Days."

It has coined the idiom
jumping the shark,

which is a term which means
that something has become

so successful that there's
an inevitable point

where that success
begins to sour.

That moment is the moment
that it jumps the shark.

- There he goes!

- I mean,
Fonzie jumping the shark

was the world going,

"Yeah, it's just infecting
everything."

Even Land Shark on "SNL,"

you know, you hear the...

♪ Dun-dun, dun-dun

[woman screams]

[laughter]

It's like, already it's a bit.

It's a joke.

We know what's going on.

There was--every comedy

had a shark spoof

where they would do the...

♪ Bum-bum, bum-bum

♪

- "Caddyshack"
with the Baby Ruth bar.

One of the "Police Academy"
movies.

One of the "Clerks" movies.

- ♪ Dun-nun, dun-nun
Salsa shark!

We're gonna need a bigger boat.

- And not only that,
it rippled into, like,

movies like "Tremors"
and so many others.

- It also changed
and actually introduced,

like, a recipe for shark movies
and for disaster animal movies,

animal attack movies.

- One of the kind of
most unassuming

sharksploitation movies didn't
even take place in the water.

And that is "Grizzly."

- Grizzly uses almost the exact
same script of "Jaws."

- It uses a lot of the same
filming style,

where it's POVs of it watching
people from a distance.

It has a very similar tone
to it.

And they actually used it
in the marketing campaign

as well,
where it was something like,

"Jaws" but on land.

Like, it literally states
that it is taken from "Jaws."

- Another one that was kind of

a "Jaws" on land thing
was "The Car."

You know, it's basically
a predator of sorts,

you know, terrorizing a town,
from Universal.

- And this car
just starts riding around,

picking people off.

And somehow the car feels
just like "Jaws."

- In "Jaws,"

"Jaws" kills a kid,
the little Kintner boy.

In "Tentacles,"
they're gonna outdo "Jaws."

They kill a baby
in a baby carriage.

The tentacle pulls the baby
underwater, kills the baby.

- Billy!

- Two years after "Jaws"
comes out, we get "Orca."

This is Dino De Laurentiis

making a ridiculously
elegantly well-done

exploitation film.

- "Orca" was another one
that was kind of omnipresent.

The poster, I think,
was on the back

of every single
Marvel comic book

that came out
in the summer of '77.

So it's a big event film,
you know,

even though it's obviously
just ripping off "Jaws."

- So the way
that "Orca" is set up,

it does this interesting thing

where it puts the audience
on the side of the orca

from the very get-go,

because we start
with the killer shark

kind of going
through the water,

and we get the feeling
that that killer shark

is about to eat somebody.

And we think, okay,
it's like "Jaws."

We're gonna be looking
at these killer sharks.

- You think sharks are scary?

What's bigger and faster?

A killer whale.

Orca shoots like a missile
and hits the shark,

and the shark goes, wham,
out of the air.

And Orca just kills the shark
because it wants to.

- Jesus, what did that?

- I think, out of all
the "Jaws" rip-offs,

it is probably
the best crafted.

[suspenseful music]

- Roger Corman really had
an eye for trends.

And he knew, in the '70s,
that it was a good idea

to make "Jaws" rip-offs.

- "Piranha" was
a reaction to "Jaws."

We felt, all right,
they've gone up above us.

We've got to raise our level
a little bit.

- How could you not be aware

you were making
a "Jaws" rip-off?

I mean, it's a "Jaws" rip-off.

I mean, obviously nobody
would be making this movie

if it wasn't for the fact
that there had been

a big hit movie
that took place

underwater with a monster.

And so it was--we were so
alert to the fact that it was

a "Jaws" rip-off that the
opening titles of the movie

have the heroine playing
a "Jaws" video game,

as if to say, we get it.

Just forget it. We know it.

We know it's a rip-off.
You know.

We know that you know.

So just forget about it
and have a good time.

- We shot the "Piranha" in
the USC swimming pool.

And we had some fake blood
and one thing and another.

And it sort of spread
throughout the swimming pool.

And SC was not happy
with what we had done.

- Whatever it is
that we did caused

a fungus to grow
that ate away at the pool

and started to eat--

literally eat--
the paint off the pool.

And so no one could figure out
what it was.

We had to fly scientists
down from Sacramento

to figure out what this
creature that we created was.

And they didn't know.

They just said,
we have to just kill it

because we can't let it get
out of the swimming pool.

I mean, it was
almost a better story

than the movie we were making.

- They brought "Piranha"
up to a level

where we did rather well.

We still couldn't and never
will compete with "Jaws,"

but we got up a little bit.

- And that basically
led to me--

as Roger often said,
you know, if you make

two good pictures for me,

you'll never have to work
for me again.

And it led to me being offered
other aquatic adventures,

such as "Orca 2," "Barracuda."

I can't even remember all these
aquatic movies that came out

in the wake of "Jaws,"
because there was

a tremendous need to imitate
the big blockbuster.

- "Alligator" is definitely
part of the sharksploitation

subgenre as well, because it's
straight up like them saying,

well what else is in the water
that can chase people?

Well, alligators.

Basically any time you had
a resort owner, politician,

mayor claiming he could
not close down the beaches

because it's spring break,

4th of July, Labor Day weekend,

it's a "Jaws" rip-off.

The idea of having the moment
where we're all gonna stop

and talk to a scientist
about all sharks do

is swim and eat
and make baby sharks.

- And make baby sharks.

- Usually they always have
the same setup,

where the shark begins
hunting.

And then somebody
is gonna be like,

"There's nothing out there."

And then one person
will be like,

"Oh, no, there's totally
something out there,"

until there's a whole bunch
of deaths.

And then suddenly everyone
has to pay attention to it.

- You have to close the beach.

- And then one
very heroic male

is gonna go kill the shark.

♪

- "Great White"
or "The Last Shark,"

it was one of the most
notorious rip-offs of "Jaws."

- If some of these
sharksploitation films

had kind of been winking
and nodding at "Jaws,"

this one gives it,
like, an outright hug.

- The issue of "Variety"
had a three-page spread

for "Great White."

And they had the poster
and I'm like, well,

obviously
this is a "Jaws" rip-off.

And it's from Italy.

And even then,
I knew Italy was like

the province of movie rip-offs.

- Italians were really ripping
off anything back then--

"Mad Max," "The Exorcist,"
"Rambo," "Dawn of the Dead,"

and, of course, "Jaws."

- Universal decided
that "Great White"

was a copy of "Jaws"
and "Jaws 2."

So there were
so many similarities

that they felt they had
a pretty good case,

so they took legal action.

And we got cease and desist.

And we couldn't do anything
with it anymore.

And they--I think they
even confiscated the prints.

So we were dead in the water.

- And I read about that
and I'm like,

now I'm never gonna get
to see this thing.

And little did I know,
I wouldn't even

get to see it on video
for years and years and years.

And then
I finally got to see it.

And I was like, yeah,
they have a case.

This movie is just
ridiculously derivative.

It's like,
how do they even get away

with this in the first place?

You have James Franciscus
as Peter Benton.

And Vic Morrow is a guy,
like, trying

to do a Robert Shaw accent.

I'm not sure what it is
he's doing there.

- Especially once he's had
his taste of human flesh.

- And just scene after scene
ripped off

from both "Jaws" and "Jaws 2."

They went at it from
every conceivable angle.

- Bruno Mattei was just like,
"You know what?"

Let's just do this
with "Cruel Jaws."

And he just blatantly rips
entire scenes,

no fucks given.

- "Cruel Jaws" steals footage

from "Jaws 1," "Jaws 2,"

"Jaws 3-D,"
and "The Last Shark."

♪

And then we have "Aatank."

"Aatank" is the Bollywood
version of "Jaws."

Actors are singing nearly
all the time in the film,

even while they are being
eaten by the shark.

When the shark
finally does appear,

we only get to see its jaws--

its gigantic "Jaws."

And they are definitely not
coming from a real shark.

♪

- If you've seen the movie
"Back to the Future Part II,"

you see a scene in the future.

We see the main character,
played by Michael J. Fox.

He's standing outside a cinema
and you see an advertisement

for "Jaws" Part 19.

I even think it's called,

"This time it's really
personal," I think.

It also has a stupid tagline.

- So many people
have done sequels

to all types of movies.

But you want to make sure
the audience knows

that a sequel is gonna be
something different,

something more.

The sequel's gotta just
step it up a bit.

Or else, why watch
more of the same?

And sometimes it's the title
that signals to the viewer,

this is gonna be different--
more, bigger, better.

- "Jaws 2" comes out
and tries to make it

a little bit different,
but not much.

Somewhere along the lines,
it feels like

they got the studio note
of, well, it's a sequel,

so we need more shark.

And it's not as effective
as you would want it

to be in a lot of the shots.

- We didn't have the luxury,
in the second film,

of hiding the shark.

Everybody knew
what the shark looked like.

But we wanted him to be
a fearsome creature.

And in the opening sequence
where we see

the shark for the first time,

where he's chasing
the water skier

and the panicky boater throws
a can of gasoline,

it explodes, and the shark's
face is burned,

that was kind of
a calculated move to say,

yes, you think you've
seen the shark.

But this is not just the shark,
it's like Scarface shark.

You know,
this time he's really angry.

- That, of course, sparked,
you know,

"just when you thought
it was safe to go

back in the water,"
which is probably

the most famous tagline.

And it's been, you know,
parodied

and spun off on ever since.

But it's just become
so associated

with the whole franchise.

And it may be one
of the things people

most remember about that film.

- The second "Jaws" movie
had come out right

around the time of "Piranha."

And for whatever reason,
Universal

was very concerned and annoyed
that Roger was putting out

his rip-off of "Jaws"
the same year

that "Jaws 2" was coming out.

And so they apparently
threatened an injunction.

And I discovered much later
that Spielberg had stepped in

to Universal and apparently
had seen "Piranha"

and said, no, you don't get it.

This is a spoof.

This isn't really a rip-off,
although it is a rip-off.

And we basically got away with
it, I guess is the phrase.

And because of that, I was
offered "Jaws 3, People 0,"

which was
a combination production

between The National Lampoon
and Universal Pictures.

- I was over at Universal.

My next-door neighbors
were Zanuck and Brown,

Dick Zanuck and David Brown.

And he, first thing he said
to me, is Dick and I

would love to make
a movie with you guys.

So out of the blue, I just
started kidding around.

And I said,
"Jaws 3, People Nothing."

I said,
Peter Benchley walks out

of his house
in a bathing suit,

jumps into his pool,
and disappears.

And the next thing,
we see a fin

floating around in the pool.

I said, I know it's ridiculous.

He's, "No, no, go on."

So I had no idea
where I was going, but I went.

And he said,
"I love it. I love it.

I'll call you tomorrow.
We're gonna make this movie."

As soon as I got the call
from David Brown telling me

that the studio is doing
the movie, I left my office

and I walked into
the editorial office.

I knew who I was looking for.

And I walked over
to the two of them.

I said, Tod, you,
and I turned to the other,

the first--the guy
I was really looking for,

John Hughes.

I said, John, you and Tod
are writing this script.

And I handed him
the short story.

And then I hired Joe Dante
to direct the picture.

- The National Lampoon people
wanted to make an R-rated

comedy like "Animal House."

And the more conservative
Zanuck and Brown team

wanted to make it PG
and have it be a wide release,

family picture.

- First of all,
Bo Derek was nude

from the waist up
through much of--

a good deal of the picture.

And secondly, that's what
we made, was R-rated movies.

The National Lampoon
did not make PG movies.

- I guess
wiser heads prevailed.

And I think it was, you know,
Sid Sheinberg

and maybe Lew Wasserman
and certainly Spielberg.

They said, why do you
want to take, you know,

a great franchise and mock it?

- I think the project died
because they just

couldn't agree on what movie
they were making.

And you can't go into a movie
with two entities

as powerful as The Lampoon was
at that time

and Zanuck and Brown

and have them fighting
constantly

through the entire movie.

It's just a bad idea.

And I think
they just pulled the plug.

- So they had to choose
between me and Spielberg.

And I suspect
they made the right choice.

- They were gonna do
"Jaws 3, People 0."

So Verna said,
"Go talk to Landsburg."

They came back.

I got the directing job.

And they got all excited about
doing this 3D "Jaws" movie.

And so that was it.

Then, that's--
my problem started.

- Because it was 3D,
there was an awful--

an awful lot of complicated
technical requirements

for the filming.

There wasn't much I could do

to write new props
or new scenery

or new action,
because it had all

been storyboarded
very carefully for 3D,

which has its own requirements.

- Let me tell you something
about 3D.

Here's our screen proportion.

We're taking 35 millimeter.

So this is your
screen proportion.

Now, if it was a snake,
you could slide that out

right out into the audience.

But they have a thing
called the dorsal fin.

And as soon as the dorsal fin
hits the pickup,

it stops.

So that damn dorsal fin
kills you on 3D.

I could get the head out
a little bit,

but I couldn't get it
into the audience.

Oh, I had kids.

There were things in the park.

I had an octopus thing goes
out and other things go out.

And of course, the studio,
they just throw stuff out.

Wasn't my concept.

My concept for 3D
was the depth.

But no, no, no,
you gotta throw stuff out.

- I remember
from the beginning, like,

you expect it's a 3D "Jaws,"

they're gonna open
with something really great.

And the first big 3D effect

is a fish head floating
into your face.

- For me, "Jaws 3" is where

"Jaws" becomes
an exploitation movie.

It's where "Jaws" literally
jumps the shark.

Because it really is trying
to do something different

to set itself apart
from itself.

- I saw "Jaws 3" too late.

Like I was--you know,
"Independence Day"

had been made and all
these great VFX movies.

And I think I just saw through
all of, like,

the weird shark floating
towards the glass,

like, then the glass, like,

mysteriously breaks
towards the screen.

And I mean, fuck,
it's good, actually,

the more you think about it.

- The shark is moving
with the speed

and ferocity
of the Goodyear blimp.

And it's the climax
of the movie.

It's supposed to go
bang, crash,

boom, collapse, broken glass,

water flooding in, everything.

But the shark's approach
just takes forever.

You go, "One, one thousand,
two, one thousand..."

He's gonna hit the screen
any minute.

And it's 3D, so he's--he's--

the shark is coming
at the screen.

So the climactic shot
of the movie is dog shit.

- When people talk to me about
1, 2, or 3 for various scenes.

But nobody ever mentions 4.

- I mean, the problem
with "Jaws, The Revenge"

was it was a joke
before it even opened.

Because that tagline,
"This time it's personal,"

I don't know
who came up with that one.

But again, it made the film
kind of a punchline

before it even opened.

- "Jaws, The Revenge"
comes out in 1987.

And though I'm sure adults
and critics at the time

fucking hated that movie,
I loved "Jaws, The Revenge."

Like, it knows
what it's doing.

It is the shark
that has telepathically

chased the family.

So it functions
as a straight-up slasher,

because it is
specifically targeting

members of this family
and trying

to find ways to get them.

Now, at that point,
logic might say,

like, well,
just don't go in the water.

Like, if Jason can only
kill you in the water,

you just don't go in the water.

- And I remember
at a certain point

I was reading the script.

And there was a part
where Lorraine Gary

realizes that it's personal,

the shark is coming after
her children.

And she's so infuriated
that she gets in the ship

and she goes out
after the shark.

Now, I said,
that's some white people stuff.

Now, I said, what is the plan?

Now, we've seen
this big-ass shark

the size of a school bus,

you know, kill up
a whole lot of people.

Why is she going in this...
[laughing]

What is she doing?

What's the plan?
She's gonna poke it?

She's gonna hit it with her--

she's gonna punch it out
like Rocky?

What is--does she have
a bazooka?

Does she have an army?

What does she got?

- It's a very strange,
strange sequel.

I think the TV version,
where of course,

I had to pause it where
there's this very fake-looking

shark with, like,
a toy boat stuck through it

that explodes,
that is insanely ridiculous.

I remember the shark roaring
like a Godzilla monster a lot.

[shark roaring]

- Everyone blames
the end of "Jaws, The Revenge"

for the introduction
of the shark roar.

But it happens in "Jaws 3."

There's a scene where the shark
is starting to surface.

Its giant jaws--its lips
curl back and its mouth opens.

It just belches out
this deep, guttural roar.

And it's like, wait, what?

Why is it roaring?

- If you're gonna have a shark,
you know,

coming to bite
somebody's head clean off

as they're flying
through the air,

there has to be a growl.

There has to be.

[shark growling]

- I always put shark roars

in the movies

whenever the shark's
out of the water,

because
I feel like it adds a lot.

It feels--watching it
without any shark sounds

feels really wrong, I think.

[laughs] But I know--

I know sharks don't roar.

But maybe they do.
I don't know.

You know, who knows?

- Yeah, sharks growl
in movies a lot.

Sharks can't make noises,

so that's not happening
in real life.

Sharks can hear pretty well,
but they hear

sort of low frequency sounds.

They can hear something
splashing over here

or something's thrashing
over here.

But sharks do not communicate
audibly.

So there's a--Hollywood has
a rich tradition

of substituting
one animal noise for another.

- When we get to about
the mid-'90s,

shark movies weren't
in big supply.

- I think once
"Jaws, The Revenge" tanked

at the box office,
it sort of killed

the sharksploitation genre
for a while.

- People was not
interested in shark.

They didn't want nature movie.

They want
big blockbuster movie.

They wanted sci-fi movies.

If they wanted
an animal on screen,

it had to be a dinosaur.

They wanted big,
bigger, biggest.

- And then "Deep Blue Sea"
came in,

and things just exploded.

- When Renny Harlin
made "Deep Blue Sea,"

he had only one aim in mind:

to make the shark movie
fun again.

- That was a return
to true shark form.

- I believe that came out
a little bit after "Anaconda."

So there is this cool thing

of animals
from the actual Earth

scary again.

And then the other thing
that I liked about it is,

like, it started with this idea
of science.

- And it was a cool plot,
because it was

legitimizing it.

It was suddenly back
what "Jaws" did,

where it was feeding you
science and using it

to make the movie seem legit.

"Wait, sharks can't
get Alzheimer's?

"Sharks don't get cancer?

"Well, that's kind of crazy.

Cool premise for a movie."

- Sharks never get cancer
or go blind

or show any loss
of brain activity as they age,

unlike some people I know.

- Sharks
absolutely get cancer.

The first documented case
of shark cancer

was in the 1860s,

so it's not a new thing.

Sharks are the subject of some
actual biomedical research.

Their healing abilities,
in particular,

are really remarkable,

and the Department of Defense
is interested in that

to help wounded soldiers.

And there are some diseases
that shark physiology

or immune systems are
more resistant to,

but sharks
absolutely do get cancer.

- These killer sharks
were man-made.

So there is this whole point
that this is not

how actual sharks would act.

These were like
super killer sharks.

- They recognize that gun.

- It's impossible.

Sharks do not swim backwards.
They can't.

- So it also made the storyline
a lot more digestible.

It kind of put the blame back
on humans, which I liked.

- It was funny,
because it seemed

like a very B-movie idea.

You know, genetically enhanced
sharks attacking people.

And at the time, not
many major studio movies

were being made on these
kind of B-horror subjects.

They do properly the scene
that "Jaws 3-D" did not,

the shattering of
the undersea viewing window.

Because there's
a scene where the shark throws

Stellan Skarsgard
against the glass,

and it cracks.

And while I was watching that,
I'm like,

someone on here
must have decided,

you know, "We wanted to see

"that scene
in 'Jaws 3-D' done right,

so let's do it here."

- The practical effects

in "Deep Blue Sea"
are phenomenal.

And the CG effects--
I love it.

I think in the commentary,
Renny is like,

"I challenge you
to tell the difference."

I'm like, "Renny,
that one, that one,

that one, that one, that one."

The CG is absolute bullshit
in that.

You know, sorry, Renny.

- I don't know if anybody had

big expectation
for the movies,

but when the movie came out,
it totally exploded again.

And actually, the movie
was quite fun also.

Because the ending
of the movie

was quite different from
normal American movie,

because we have
the Black guy surviving,

we have the white girl dying.

So it was quite different
from the normal recipe

from Hollywood.

And in the movie,
you had a big name.

You had Samuel L. Jackson.

And he was seen
as one of the big parts,

and making this
very inspirational speech,

the big speech,
talking about how

they've got to get together
and save the day.

And in the middle
of the scene--spoiler alert--

a shark jumps up
and just eat him

right in front of the camera.

And everybody who watched
the movie for the first time

was just, "What?
What's happening?"

- So shocking
and so surprising.

And I think that also
kicked off a competition

among the makers
of sharksploitation movies

to have
the most outlandish deaths.

It wasn't just about timing.

It was about, how stupid
and crazy can these deaths be?

[man yelling]

[crunching]

I mean, really,
you could almost trace it

all the way back to "Jaws 3."

Because it was in 3D,
I think they felt compelled

to amplify the deaths
and make them even crazier

than we've seen before.

- There's a scene
which haunts me, you know,

where there's a shark hunter.

And he goes toe--

goes one on one
with the shark and gets eaten.

But they cut to inside
of the shark

with him getting eaten.

You know, the jaws
are opening and closing,

and he's, like,
fighting for his life.

And just the sound effects
and the way

he's fighting for his life,
trying to get out,

is really disturbing.

- There's another great death

in a movie called
"Atomic Shark"

where this kid
is on the beach,

buried up to his neck
in sand.

And this shark just comes
riding up on the beach.

And the kid just explodes,
because the shark is atomic.

You see a lot of deaths
like this

in the Nu Image movies.

They made "Shark Zone,"

"Raging Sharks,"
"Sharks in Venice."

And let's not forget
"Shark Attack 3: Megalodon."

- Nothing could have prepared
me for this movie,

because this was truly
the triumph

of just how fucking bonkers
you can get.

- "Shark Attack 3" just
goes completely for broke.

I think at that point,
it was that point

in a franchise
where it's like,

"We know we have
a built-in audience.

Let's just go crazy."

- But what
"Shark Attack 3: Megalodon"

has become known for
is the greatest line

in all of cinema.

Because in
"Shark Attack 3: Megalodon,"

we still have
the same setup of the guy

who thinks there
may be something

out there, killing people,

but in this time, we have

the sexy scientist
who is there.

And she's trying to, you know,
give him the whole primer

on sharks and what could
and couldn't be.

And they've had

a very professional
relationship

up to this point.

- So we're at the end
of a long shooting day.

And we have the camera
on a crane

and we've done this shot.

And it's--and
everything's happened.

And we're getting
ready to wrap.

And John comes up to me
and says,

"Can we do another one?

I'd like to say
something funny to Jenny."

I said, "Sure.
Everybody back to one."

So we have a big crane shot
overlooking the harbor.

And we come down on them
and the two shot.

And the other guy drives off.

"See you tomorrow morning."

- I'm exhausted.

- Yeah, me too.

But you know, I'm really wired.

What do you say I take you
home and eat your pussy?

- I fell out
of my directing chair.

I couldn't stop laughing.

I could not stop laughing.

And nobody
didn't break character.

Just said it.

And she was before.

And she was like so.

And then we cut.

It was the funniest thing
I'd ever seen.

And I made the editor
put it in the film

because every time
I saw it in the film,

I fell off the chair laughing.

I just thought
it was fantastic.

And I said to myself,

"I'm going to leave this
in the film

until a producer tells me
to take it out."

- I came on to Syfy
pretty much

right after
the channel launched.

I was originally
the head of acquisitions.

Syfy was new,

and we didn't have
a whole lot of originals,

almost no originals.

And my job was
to fill the schedule.

And I realized
that, well, I can't fill

the schedule 52 weeks
a year every Saturday night.

I would love to have
one of these,

but there's just not
enough good ones to buy

and not enough available.

So I said,
"Well, if we can't buy them,

maybe we should make them."

We started with one
as an experiment.

And it worked.

So after that, we said,
"Oh, let's try a few more."

Management liked the ratings.

They liked what we were doing.

"Oh, try another four."

And after that,
"Try a few more."

All of a sudden, we were doing
24 movies a year.

A few years later, we were
actually doing 36 a year.

We were doing three a month,
which was incredible.

It was crazy.

When we first started
doing these movies,

we didn't go for the big,
over-the-top titles.

But then we slowly started
getting into titles

that were a little bit
more over the top.

And you know, we have
these titles

that grabbed people's
attention.

And then the press started
talking about these movies.

And then the audience realized,

"Oh, these guys are having
a blast.

These guys are
just having fun."

- These movies are
made off titles.

The network just, like, looks
at the movies,

and they're like,
"Okay, we like Sharkacaine

and we like Mega Shark."

And let's see
some rough outlines.

And then it's
like a paragraph.

And they read it.
They're like, "Mm,

let's do sort of something
like this instead."

And then they, like, see
a treatment.

And then they're like,
"We like the treatment,

but how about instead of this,
we do this?"

- I've done pictures
for them before, yeah.

And their process
is basically, you know,

"Bring us ten ideas and just
throw them around."

And they may do none
of the ten,

but they may do, like,
the space aliens

from the first movie you did

and then this giant crustacean

from the second movie
you had an idea.

And we'll put those together

so it's giant crustaceans
from space.

- And then they
approve the script.

So it's
this really backwards process

from what filmmaking
normally is,

where there's, like, a script,

and you have this script,
and that's the story,

and then you get that,
like, financed,

and it goes through
all the, you know, rigmarole

that a movie normally does.

These are literally
just a name.

[laughs] And that's the--
that's the selling point.

Like that's the--that's what
the movie is at its core.

- And when you mix genres,
you actually come up

with movies that really work.

You don't have to stick
to the exact same genre.

You want to take something
people love, sharks,

and then expand it.

- And the Asylum really rode
that whole trend.

- We started off
in arthouse movies.

And then from there,
we did horror films.

We were known for--
as a B-horror film,

you know, slasher movie place.

And then we were known
to a big segment

as mockbusters.

- We've sort of got
a reputation for making

what the "New York Post"
dubbed mockbusters,

where we make movies that are
similar in theme and concept

to big studio releases.

- It's our own genre.

We took over that,
you know, monocle, and we--

it's something
that we embraced.

And we've been
enjoying it ever since.

We were a young company
that had its own genre.

- Mtv.com--I don't know if
they're still around anymore,

but they had contacted me
and said,

"Hey, can you give us
an exclusive on a trailer?"

And we said yes.

And it went crazy:

millions, millions of hits.

And that was our first taste
of a viral success

of one of the films.

We were just trying
to make a Godzilla.

You know, it was
giant creatures.

And that was one of the things
that the Japanese,

not surprisingly, you know,
really insisted upon.

It's gotta be giant.

And you know, you really have
to be creative in terms

of, you know, what are you
gonna do with a giant shark?

Well, of course, you're gonna
take down a jetliner.

- Holy shit.

[dramatic music]

[woman screaming]

- The fact that a shark
would jump

all the way up
and take out a jet,

to me, just was ridiculous.

And I fought to not even
have that shot in the movie

and not even do it.

And it turned out
to be, I guess,

one of the most iconic parts
of "Mega Shark."

- That launched
some more orders

for more shark
or shark hybrid movies.

- And you see
a lot of integration.

It's not a shark movie anymore.

You take the shark as an animal
and then take something else.

And then you combine it to
make an even more crazy movie.

Some of the most
well-known is where

you take, of course, a shark
and combine it with a man.

So you have a Sharkman.

But you also see
when you combine two animals.

The most well-known is perhaps
the movie called "Sharktopus."

- I said to Roger,
"Roger, I've got a movie

I want you to make for us
called 'Sharktopus.'"

And Roger Corman is on
the other end of the line.

I hear him pause.

He takes a breath.
And he goes,

"Tom, I have this theory

"that you can take
the audience to a point,

"but you can't take them
beyond that point.

"You can only take
the audience so far,

and I think that 'Sharktopus'
goes too far."

I said, "That's okay, Roger.

"We'll find
another film with you.

"I love working with you.

"I want to work with you
on something else.

I'll just call the Asylum."

And I knew by saying that,

that was gonna kind of get him.

I hear him take a deep breath
on the other side.

He's like,
"Well, let's not be too hasty.

I think I can find a way
to make 'Sharktopus' work."

- And not only
you're combining two animals,

you're also taking the shark

out of its normal environment,
the sea,

and taking it somewhere else.

- You could be standing
on a street corner

and the shark can come out
and get you.

Because that's--
that's the concept now.

I mean, the logic is,
there's no logic.

- We have movies
like "Ghost Shark."

- That movie was so special.

That was like a haunted shark

that would come after you
in bodies of water.

And then the best part
was that,

towards the end of the movie,

the bodies of water got
more and more, like, nuanced.

[laughing] Like--
like, I think it came out

of, like, sink water,

steam from a bath.

- Or you know, if it's raining,

God forbid, the shark can swim
through the air.

There's, like,
a bikini car wash,

and a girl gets, like,
pulled into a bucket.

- Drinking water
might be dangerous.

A pool could be dangerous.

A Slip 'N Slide
can be dangerous.

I usually had a rule
in most of the movies

that, you know,
adults and teens,

but not kids,
would become victims.

But in this one,
the director really fought

for that gag,
which he just felt

was gonna be a great gag.

I was like, "Okay, let's try
it and see if it works."

And people love that scene.

- So that's quite fun

to see how they're taking
the shark

away from
its normal environment

and then put it
in somewhere else.

You also have movies
like "Nightmare Shark,"

where the shark
is quite like

"Nightmare on Elm Street."

We take the shark
into people's dreams.

- For the shark TV movies
for the Syfy Channel,

there's a very specific
shark formula.

So they are movies
that play out in eight acts

with seven commercial breaks.

And you're required to have,
in each act,

a major gag and a minor gag.

So a major gag is one where
you have to show the shark.

And then a minor gag
would be like, you know,

a shark POV looking
at someone out of the water

and then they go, "Aah!"

And then, like,
blood splashes.

[laughs]
Just kind of implying it.

- One of the things
for the shark movies,

certainly
for the low-budget ones,

what you try to do
is keep it, you know,

we're either underwater

or they're doing
something crazy

flying through space.

So we did shark swimming
through the sand.

It's like,
well, what else can we do?

The sand shark was brown.

And if I just negatived
all the textures,

it became blue and looked icy.

And we're like...[gasps]
A shark in the snow!

- The sort of secret to these--

like, the, like,
climax moments,

the action moments
that try to show the shark,

like, in three different ways.

And so, like,
underwater it jumps out.

Over water, slow-mo.

And then, like, right--
looking from

where you see it, like,
coming right at her.

And then, like, cut to a wide,

and it's, like,
this giant, crazy shark.

And she just shoots it
right in the mouth

and it flies into the air
and just explodes

in, like, gore and fireworks.

And then the whole town claps.

♪

- The scene where the shark
comes out of the water--

that was
in the original script.

That was always there.

That was a part, you know,
of the six-headed shark.

Like, what can we do
with the shark,

you know, that's different,

that hasn't been done
in the other shark movies?

Originally, I wanted it
to walk.

Like, I did an animation,
almost like fingers.

And I think they thought
that was too funny.

You know, it's like a hand.

And so it's--now it's flat

and it's kind of,
like, pushing itself.

It's still hilarious.

I'm like, what's
the difference, you know?

- The visual effects
of the sharks came in,

and they're adorable.

And they're still in there
as the most adorable things

you've ever seen.

I was like, "Okay, well,
it's not gonna be

the scariest
of all the shark attacks."

- The way it works is,
we don't pitch our buyers,

really, what we're doing.

I mean, they tell us
what they want.

So they're much more in tune
with what the audience wants

and what they need.

And so we're just there,

as any good drug dealer
would be,

to supply them with the drugs,

in this case, sharks.

- And we had pitched
a movie

that we were calling
"Shark Storm."

- And they said,

"Well, interesting
that you sent us that.

"We actually have
a pitch called 'Sharknado.'

"And if you can sort of mix
what you're doing,

"which is sharks
in a tornado, with that,

let's make
the movie together."

But finding a director,
it was pass, pass, pass.

- Look, if I'm gonna make
a movie

and it's gonna destroy
my career,

it has to be "Sharknado."

Because I'm just gonna go down
with the flaming sharks

and make the most insane movie
we can.

- We put together
all these pieces

and "Sharknado" starts
coming together.

And it starts being developed.

- Once we got the tone right,
it's

how do you do the things

that are asked of this movie?

I mean, even on--

it was a little bit bigger
budget than we normally have,

but it's still a film
called "Sharknado."

And it's a film that floods,
you know, a house.

And there are a lot
of production challenges

to the film.

- Because of the limitations,

there's an energy
of desperation in making it

where you're using
your limitations

and what you don't have

or what didn't show up
or the problems.

And you're just going,
"Okay, let's do this

and let's do that."

And so instead of being
so precise

and, you know, animatic-ed out
to death

and, you know, everything
is so precise,

it just has
this energy of the moment.

- It's, you know, cut
to this stock shot,

then an actual shot
from the movie,

and then the visual effect.

And really was massaged over
time to somehow be coherent.

- The whole movie is just,
you know,

messed up and crazy and wild.

And it just doesn't stop,
from the beginning to end.

- "Sharknado" really
checks all the boxes,

I think, not just for
the network requirements

and for, like, the genre,
but, like, for the audience.

You know, it's just always
delivering on what you--

on what you expect

out of something
called "Sharknado."

- I remember watching
the film for the first time,

like all together,
before anybody else

was gonna see it,
just to see if it was working.

And after it was over,
it was like,

we were laughing and making fun
of it and all that stuff.

And at the end, I go,
"This is the most insane movie,

I think, that's ever gonna air
on Syfy."

- We had no expectations

because, quite frankly,

we'd made "Sharknado"
a dozen times before this.

- We were doing, you know,

two or three of these movies
a month.

So you never know which ones
are going to take off

and which ones aren't.

And the whole Twitter thing
was kind of new at the time.

It wasn't brand new,
but it was kind of new.

And I remember I was at home,
watching the movie

with my wife and kids.

And all of a sudden,
I get a text

from someone at work saying,
"Go to Twitter right now.

Go to Twitter."

- I did look at Twitter,
you know,

the night that it premiered.

And it just goes on and on.

And it just keeps refreshing.

And the feed just--
I can't keep up with it.

- A couple of celebrities
and comedians

did the first couple
of tweets about it.

And they had
a lot of followers.

And then the snowball
just started rolling.

- And I remember going to bed
that night,

probably about two hours later,
thinking our lives

have changed.

- And then this juggernaut
of "Sharknado"

just like plowed
through everything.

- "Sharknado."

- It's called "Sharknado."

- There's a Sharknado warning.

- At its peak, more
than 5,000 #Sharknado.

- "Sharknado" caught
kind of a wave

on the Internet

of people who were praising it

and also people
who were laughing at it.

And it's the old statement,
any publicity is good,

whether they praise
your picture or not.

- We could have done this
a thousand different ways,

and the outcome would have been

a thousand different,
you know, outcomes.

The fact that, as I've said,
no plane crashes happened

on that day
when it was released

made us a little bit
more newsworthy.

But why we were newsworthy
the next day,

and the next day,
and the next day?

I mean, literally,
it was a news story

for a week on local press
and national press.

It defied logic
and expectation, certainly,

the success and how it was
received and how it was loved.

- It was a great feeling
that we did

this little, tiny film
that the fans discovered

and it became what it was.

- For Sharknado, tons
of, like, sharky nerd people

like me that are
also actually scientists,

they low-key did data
on "Sharknado"

and then they're,
like, putting up

on different social media
platforms

you know, like Twitter,
Facebook,

of, like, a graph that
they did from "Sharknado."

It got people like me
who just love bad movies

like, a little bit further
down the rabbit hole

of the actual science.

Because that's--you know,

like, social media is where
both of these people

find each other.

- I think
that's the beauty of it.

We got to make something.

They trusted me,

even though
I was absolutely insane,

making an insane little film.

And they gave me a lot of rope
to hang myself with.

And we ended up
with a movie

that somehow spawned
six films.

And it's its own
little unique universe.

- After "Sharknado,"
nobody looked back.

You see the shark movies
just popping out

with more
and more stupid movies,

more and more lousy CGI--

quick made movies,
but fun movies.

- The sharksploitation genre,
budget-wise,

really breaks down
into three tiers.

You have the studio-level
sharksploitation movies.

Then you have the second tier,

which are like the Syfy Channel
Original movies.

But then, below that, you have
the micro-budget tier,

which consists of movies
like "Sharkula"

or "Sharkenstein."

Oh, and let's not forget
"Ouija Shark."

- Mystic shield.

- You're taking
the shark sort of milieu,

and you're adding a lot
of extravagant things to it,

idea-wise--sharks that fly,
sharks that can be on land.

You really can throw
any genre or trapping at it

and kind of expand upon just
the shark being in the water.

- I can watch
a bad shark movie with a joy.

If I can feel the heartbeat
behind the director,

then it doesn't matter
that the effects are poor

or that the extras can't act,
or that light is not right,

and the CGI is crappy.

But if you take heart
into it, I actually like it.

- Some of the shark movies
that I've directed

would be "Sharkenstein,"

"Land Shark,"
"Amityville Island,"

"Shark Encounters
of the Third Kind,"

"Virus Shark," "Noah's Shark,"

"Jurassic Shark 2"
and "3,"

"Sharkula," and "Doll Shark,"
just to name a few.

- We had had a great mix
of everything.

We had had the Jawsploitation.

We'd had the sci-fi films.

We'd had everything
in between.

And then you have
the more realistic,

if you were actually
scuba diving and left

or you're a swimmer who's
stranded for whatever reason.

- There's one
called "The Reef,"

which was done by a filmmaker

named Andrew Traucki,

who had done "Black Water,"
where he had composited.

Instead of doing
digitally created crocodiles,

he shot the real thing
and just digitally composited

them in with the actors.

And it was really effective.

So the obvious next step
was to do that

with the great white shark.

And it's
a really solid little film.

- In both "The Reef"
and "The Reef: Stalked,"

I've used, as much
as possible, real sharks.

I think it really pays off
in spades

in terms of your belief
in the situation.

So that's my approach.
It's all about suspense.

And, you know, a lot of that
in a shark film is,

where is that fin?

Like, you know, you show
that fin and then it's gone.

And that, to me,
is a lot scarier

than constantly seeing
the shark and CGI sharks

and all that sort of stuff.

- I just liked what he did
with such little.

The way that he played
the tension of the shark

and then not
really seeing the shark,

I just really bought it.

You know, 'cause I bought
the shark

and I bought the tension.

And so that one
really kind of affected me.

- "The Reef" was based
on a true story.

It happened in Australia
in the '80s,

about a boat that went down.

And in my version,
it's about four friends

who--they're gonna deliver
a boat to Indonesia

and, unfortunately,
hit a piece of reef,

and the boat sinks.

And then they're left
with this terrible dilemma

as to whether they're gonna
stay on the sinking boat

or swim for land.

And some of them decide
to swim,

and one of them decides
to stay on the boat.

And yeah, so unfortunately,
those that decided to swim,

a big shark starts
to come after them

and picks them off one by one.

When you're writing something,

you're always looking
at references

and drawing off things
to get inspiration.

I think a great inspiration
for this, both my--

really in my entire style
of working,

has been "Open Water,"
in the sense

that it's very real
but it also was low-budget

and could be done.

- "Open Water" is probably
the best shark movie

to come out, you know,
maybe since "Jaws."

You know, and it took
a whole different approach.

We were kind of into the whole

"Blair Witch" era of sort of--

I hate to use this term, but
kind of handmade horror films,

which sounds negative.

But it's like
people just going out

with, like,
a camera and a few actors

and taking advantage

of, you know,
the new opportunities

that digital filmmaking
allowed

and not having a big crew

and just going out there
and making a little movie

in kind of
a hostile environment.

Instead of the woods
for "Blair Witch,"

you take these characters
out into the open ocean.

- I'd been a diver
for a long time.

I love diving with sharks
and all these things.

And I got newsletters
from dive magazines.

And a story had come out about
a couple that were left at sea

in Australia
off the Great Barrier Reef,

that they had gone off
on one of these

what we call cattle boats,

because there's, like,
100 people.

And they take them out
in the reef,

and everyone goes in,

and they do the head count.

And these people--they missed
them on the head count.

And the boat left them
in the middle of the ocean.

To me, was the most horrifying
thing that could happen.

What hit me emotionally was,
it could happen to me.

Like, what was that like?

Like, oh, my--
it just taunted me.

Like, it could keep me up.

And like, oh, my God,
how could that happen?

Just when you go on vacation,

you just assume
you're gonna be okay,

especially in
a situation like that.

This is not extreme--
some kind of extreme sport.

It's the most tourist level
of diving there is.

So aesthetically,
we wanted it to look

just like how people film
their vacations.

Because the secret to the film
was--working, in my mind,

was all about point of view.

It was all about putting
the audience right there

and knowing
what that experience was

and limiting
what they can see and do

to what
the two lead characters

could see and do.

- The realism of that movie
is what is so terrifying.

Because you don't start
the movie

being scared of sharks.

I mean, these people have been

scuba diving in this
at this point.

You know that
there are sharks there,

but that they're not doing
anything.

And it's not until
these people

have been just bobbing

in the water for hours
that the sharks

start getting curious,
where they're bumping them.

And then you just see them
swimming by.

And it's a more
real-to-life progression

of how a shark
would actually explore

to decide if you are food
or not.

- And of course, the fact
that the sharks are real--

that just adds to the whole
terror of the experience

of watching that film.

- In every movie,
you see sharks underwater.

And they're not--

I never found them scary
underwater.

And actually diving with them,
they're not.

You know, it's amazing.

Of course, I'm a person
who chooses to do that.

But after the dive,
on the surface,

what's disconcerting is
the tail flapping by or a fin.

And so I wanted
to capture that,

which is something
I'd never seen before,

which is actually
how you'd experience it

if you were in the middle
of the ocean

and sharks decided to gather
and check you out.

So it was all these factors
that came together.

And we said
this feels like a good--

this feels like a good
combination of things

to do something we think
could be kind of different.

[suspenseful music]

♪

- "Open Water" is still small,
but it feels

like a bigger film because we
see shark movies rise

back up
into mainstream movies.

And eventually,
we work our way into things

like "47 Meters Down"
and "The Shallows"

and even films like "Crawl,"

where suddenly
nature attack films

are kind of shifted
back into theaters.

And we see sharks existing
both in A-market

and in B-market
simultaneously.

- I was sharing an apartment
with the producer.

And I told him
I wanted to do a shark movie.

And I was like,
"I have not seen

a good shark movie for ages."

You know, forever,
apart from "Jaws."

You know,
the pitch was so sharp.

It was like, you know--
it was actually, at the time,

the pitch was four people
at the bottom

of the ocean trying to get up.

And people were like,
this is great.

And I'm just like, this is,
you know, the easiest thing

I'm ever gonna write.

I wrote it,
and it just felt like--

you know, it felt like sort of

"I Know What You Did
Last Summer,"

but at the bottom of the ocean.

It just felt like, "Oh, God,
this is just awful."

And then I was sitting

with my script writing
partner, Ernest.

And we watched
"Touching the Void."

And I was just like,
"Holy shit,

that's what this movie
needs to be."

You know, there's that moment
in "Touching the Void"

where the guy is down
the crevasse

and he can see above
and he can't get to it.

So his decision-making process
was, "I can't get up to it,

so what I'll do is, I'll go
further down into this abyss."

And I was like,
what kind of fucking mentality

is happening?

I mean, that saved his life,
but I could not imagine

any moment in my life that
I would leave the light

to go further into a--
into, like, a crevasse.

And I was just obsessed

with these two
crazy characters.

And so that was where
"47" then sprung from.

- It was very, like,
uncharted territory.

And it was this motley crew
in this very small,

quite affordable
underwater stage in England--

not one of the big ones.

And it was like
pirates making a movie.

We were just learning
as we went.

And Johannes did a great job,
but I know it's like,

every day,
there'd be a new, like,

"Oh, you can only be underwater
for four hours"

and all this stuff
that you just didn't expect

or didn't know about.

- You know, I'm a diver,
and I wanted it to look

real, rather than the tank.

So we--I think we did what
nobody else has done before.

We had trucks of broccoli
coming in every day.

And the interns would be
mincing up the broccoli,

and we'd have special divers
putting out the broccoli

before we were filming

so the light catches
the broccoli.

And even in a small tank,
you have a current.

And you see the sediment
sort of flow

backwards and forwards.

And it gives it
a completely different look,

that unique look.

And then we put
milk in the tank

so it really felt
like when I go diving.

It really felt like that.

But the problem was,

it was the hottest summer

we had ever had in England.

It was like
a super hot summer.

- And the sun was just beaming
down on us

inside this tank,

because it was
like a canvas tank

as opposed to, like,
a brick or cement tank.

And so we're just
getting cooked.

- You've got broccoli.

You've got milk.

You've got--when you
shoot in the tank,

nobody goes to the loo.

So you've got urine,
you've got broccoli,

you've got milk all rotting
under this incredible heat.

I remember it clear as a day,

standing there
on the side of the tank.

And I just remember thinking,
"I don't know

how to make this cage drop."

Everything moves
fucking slowly under water.

Not just to get stuff
to happen, but when it does.

Like the cage was--you know,
I wanted it to do that.

And it's like, like that.

And basically,
we just had it go

as fast as it could one way,

the girls go the other,

and then the camera go
another.

And it just looks tumbling.

I think we're now in a world--

like, I love the sharks
in "47."

Like, that shot where
it comes out at the end

and grabs her foot--I remember
when they delivered that.

I was like, "Holy fuck.
This is--this is really"--

there's, like,
two or three shots in there

where I'm like,
"Wow, that's--that's like--

I can touch that."

That's pretty impressive.

- And then you had
"The Shallows,"

which was a similar kind of
thing done on a bigger budget.

But again, it's like
a survival thing.

You know, one young woman
stuck in the sea.

It's a great premise.
She's stuck on a rock,

and the beach is
right over there,

but there's a big shark
kind of circling around

that's gonna make
that impossible.

And that was
another really fun one.

- There's something
really terrifying

about the idea of being trapped
on a buoy with nowhere to go.

And the tide comes in,
and you know

there's a 30-foot shark

lurking around underneath you,

ready to just tear you
to pieces.

- When you watch that film,
it's a great movie.

But the concept--you gotta give
credit to the filmmakers

and the actress.

Because once that film starts,

it literally is just her.

And that's--I mean, for her
to carry that whole movie,

hold that tension
for that long,

was pretty impressive.

- "47 Meters Down"
and "The Shallows"

were really successful
studio-level pictures.

But they were
studio-level pictures

made on a pretty modest budget.

So the natural progression
of that,

because they were
so successful,

it just made sense
to make things even bigger.

And along comes "The Meg."

- A type of shark stronger
inside the shark movies

is the way you see the shark
not as a normal shark,

but as a prehistoric shark.

A big shark, like a megalodon.

- The megalodon was
the largest shark

that ever existed.

It feared nothing.

- The most well-known,
of course,

is the movie called "The Meg"

with Jason Statham
in the lead role,

where you see a submarine
going through

the bottom of the sea
and releasing a big shark.

It's coming back to the human

and actually eating everything
on its way.

- It goes back to this idea

that we want to believe
in the supernatural

and the mysterious.

I think that,
especially as technology

and science advances,

we lose a little bit
of the mystery,

or we think that we lose
some of the mystery

that exists in our world.

And the idea
that someone is out there

who could discover
this thousands-of-year-old

giant megalodon
or prehistoric creature

is really attractive,
not only because it allows us

to stake our claim
over part of the environment

we might not understand,
but because it allows us

to keep that imagination alive.

- I knew that there was
such a thing as the megalodon.

I looked it up online.

And I saw families of people
standing inside these jaws.

These were huge
fucking real sharks

from back in the day.

- What were they saying,
six fully-grown men

could be swallowed
by the megalodon?

I mean, that's
a pretty giant mouth.

[laughs]

- Is that megalodon
out there in the sea?

You know, 80% of the sea
hasn't been explored.

And every day, you see
new creatures popping up.

So perhaps someday,
the megalodon

is coming back to us.

- Megalodons went extinct
370 million years ago.

And, in my opinion,
I can't imagine

any way whatsoever that there's
still any in existence today.

- In the 70s, "Jaws" is
what, like, irked everybody,

because it was
confusing people

on what sharks
were really like.

And I think nowadays, it's
that megalodon mockumentary

that really irks scientists.

Because it's the idea
of being--of people being

tricked into thinking that
there's something out there

that's not really there
and that

it could encourage
current negative behavior.

It did what "Jaws" did
by accident.

"Jaws" accidentally convinced
people something was real.

And "The Meg"
mockumentary was trying

to get people to think

that something
that wasn't real could be.

- They aired this show,

"Megalodon:
The Monster Shark Lives,"

that claimed that
megalodon is not extinct

and it's still out there
and it's an active threat

to you and your family,

and scientists know that,

and the government knows that,

and they're lying to you.

Don't trust scientists
and the government.

I have spoken to thousands
of people all over the world,

giving these public talks

about sharks
and shark conservation.

I can't remember
the last time someone

didn't ask me about megalodon.

This is--Shark Week
just absolutely broke

public trust with this.

- I think that a lot
of shark scientists

and deep-sea scientists get
really angry with something

like "The Meg" is because
of all this intrigue and people

getting passionate
and maybe wanting

to do something with that.

And people like that are
really important,

especially
for ocean conservation,

so it's like you're
seeing this person

that you need on your team
for real ocean stuff,

and you're like,
"No, don't go chase mermaids.

"We need you to help
with like, the manatees

"that are actually stuck
right now

in some sort of climate change
thing in Florida."

Or like, "No, we need
you for the vaquita.

The vaquita is,
like, a real animal."

And instead it's like,
"No, we need to get a mission

to, like, find the meg
that's in the deep sea,"

which, it's not.
It's just gone.

It's extinct.
It's super extinct.

Even if something's extinct,

we want to believe
it's still around.

That's the appeal
of "Jurassic Park,"

right, is that there's
this mysterious element

or thing in the world
that we might be able

to control or discover.

And we like
to discover things.

It's part of humanity.

I think that sharks
become monstrous

because they do seem so alien.

Unlike a lot
of other predator creatures

that we have in our world,
sharks are largely unseen.

Anything that you've seen
in a movie

is the tip of the iceberg.

And what's real about sharks
in the ocean

almost always is
so much cooler.

What exactly steered me
into marine biology

was a very specific incident
with a great white shark.

And so that was
on a fishing boat.

I was about to win
the jackpot of the boat,

which is, like,
a really big deal.

The jackpot on a fishing boat
is the biggest fish.

And it was five days with me
and a bunch of dudes.

And so, like, I thought I was
gonna have this, like--

like, independent lady moment.

But then they yelled shark.

So a shark came over.

It was a great white.

It took my super large tuna.

It came by just like--I would
compare it to, like, Pac-Man.

It didn't look
like it had looked in a movie,

where it's like just all
"Jaws" and, you know,

moving around a bunch.

Long story short:
bring up the fishing line.

And what I have
is just a tuna head.

What had just happened
to the tuna

was the shark had bitten it
so efficiently

that its neurons
were still operating.

And so what I was looking at
was a head

that was still gasping for air.

And I thought it was
the coolest fucking thing

I'd ever see.

Because here this shark
had done the thing

that sharks do on TV or movie,

which is they kind of, like,
scare you and impress you

at the same time.

And here, the shark
had done exactly that,

but without doing
all the action

you see in a scary movie.

- The first time
I saw a great white,

you know, in the wild for real,

for me, it was as if
I had just met Marlon Brando.

That's the way I felt like.

Because, you know,
your whole life,

you read about great whites.

You read about sharks.

You watch shark movies.

You watch shark documentaries.

You see "Jaws."

So, like, this creature is
built up so much in your mind.

And so to actually see it was
like, to me, like, you know,

meeting a Hollywood celebrity.

It was amazing.

- When I spent four days
filming sharks

down in South Australia,
I was surrounded

by great whites for four days.

And you know, everything
I saw of their behavior

was just insanely wonderful.

I love and really do
respect sharks.

You know, I live
by the sea and I'm a surfer.

And I'm in the sea
every second day.

So for me, sharks,
it's their domain.

We're just visitors.

They've got every right
to do what they do there.

It's not like they're being
malicious or horrible.

That's just what a shark does.

If he--you know, occasionally,
there's a shark attack,

it's because it thought it
could eat you and stay alive.

- We just don't look
like anything

that they would want to eat.

If you looked at a table,
and you had a hamburger on it,

an onion, a salt shaker,
a bowl of flowers,

and a pitcher of water,
what are you gonna go for?

You go for the hamburger.

And we're the pitcher
of water.

You know,
we're just not something

they're gonna eat.

But if we aren't paying
attention to what we're doing

and we reach down on the table
and we grab the onion,

we might think it's an apple.

And we'd pick it up
and take a bite and go, oh.

Spit it out and go,
that's the wrong thing.

That's what I think happens
most of the time

when people are bitten
by sharks.

- Whenever we tend
to demonize something--

if that's a human,
or an inanimate object,

or an animal--

it's from a lack
of understanding.

- Peter Benchley used to say
we love our demons.

[chuckles] And sharks
represent iconically, I think,

a kind of a demon-y thing.

Sharks are not demons,
but they are dangerous.

And when you go
into their wild environment--

when you go into any animal's
wild environment--

you've gotta respect
the rules of that environment.

- We absolutely must have
sharks in the ocean.

We need our apex predators,

'cause they keep the balance
in the ocean.

And if you don't have them,

the balance gets
all out of whack.

It's like having the Serengeti
in Africa

without lions.

You've got to have the lions

to keep populations intact

and keep that ecosystem healthy
and thriving.

So apex predators, sharks,
are absolutely essential.

And there are 500 species.

Don't forget there are others
besides great white sharks.

- I call, like,
great white sharks,

like, a gateway drug,

but like,
they're a gateway shark,

because, for the people
that are really interested

in that stuff,
it, like, sucks them

into the whole world of it.

There's, like, all these
ridiculous shark movies,

and they come up
with all these ridiculous ways

to make the sharks scary,

and here's these real sharks

that already do things

that are a great plot
for a scary movie.

The ninja lanternshark
is jet black--

just very, very, very,
very dark black.

And all the lanternsharks
are glowing

as an invisibility cloak.

They're glowing just enough
to hide their shadows.

So basically,
this shark just wants to hide

before it gets you.

When it came to the end
of the project,

okay, we know this is
a real animal.

We know that we can get
this published.

Now we need to give it a name.

At the time of the publication,
it was gonna be

the 40th anniversary of "Jaws."

And we thought it'd
be really cool to use

this whole concept
of the "Jaws" effect

and this obsession with "Jaws."

And then the other cool thing
was to name it

after Peter Benchley.

So the common name
of the shark

is ninja lanternshark.

And then the scientific name
isEtmopterus benchleyi.

The genus isEtmopterus.

And then specifically, it's
named after Peter Benchley.

And so the way
taxonomic names go is,

if it's named after a male,
you add an "I."

So that's why the name is
Etmopterus benchleyi.

People would
probably think, like,

"Oh, it's the anniversary,

and oh, it's because,
you know, 'Jaws' is so cool."

But in my feeling,
it was to recognize

all this wonderful work
that the Benchley family

has done for ocean work
that no one would think about.

- Right after "Jaws"
and the huge success,

Peter was asked to do

many National Geographic
expeditions,

ABC sportsman expeditions.

And we very quickly
began to see

the destruction of the ocean.

We began to see
sharks being finned.

So as this happened,

Peter was being interviewed
more and more

and said, from his heart,

"There is no way I could write
'Jaws' now,

"because I know too much
about the ocean

and about great white sharks
and sharks in general."

So we started
to work hard at trying

to spread
the correct information,

that sharks need
to be preserved.

And please, please, please
don't think that because "Jaws"

was a novel and the movie
is fiction,

that this is somehow real life.

- Peter noticed
that I was getting

into conservation work.

And he said, "I want to do
something meaningful."

So we made--

I don't know,
it's about a dozen films.

We called them the "World
of Water Film Series."

And he and I did that
for the last part of his life.

And then I got
a phone call from Wendy.

And she told me he passed.

And she was crying,
I was crying, you know,

and she said, "And you know,
Greg, Peter always felt

"the work that he did with you

was the most important work
of his life, you know."

And it wasn't, by any means,
financially the most important,

nor was it the most popular.

It was just
the most meaningful.

- I think Peter would be
thrilled to know nowadays

how much interest there is
in sharks,

how much research has
been done,

that the world understands now

how important sharks are.

And there are many, many
environmental groups

working on this issue.

So we've come a long way
in almost 50 years

since he wrote "Jaws."

And I hope that within
the next ten years,

we really make more progress
on protecting sharks,

on marine-protected areas,

and on not overfishing
the ocean.

And you know, what happens is,
if you protect the ocean,

it has amazing ability
to just come back again.

And Peter worked really hard
on this all of his life.

And he always said,
"I'm gonna use 'Jaws'

"for all it's worth to bring
attention to the ocean

and to the issues
of conservation."

And so I've continued
with that thought in mind.

♪

- After we watched
a shark movie,

we also have a responsibility
to think

about how sharks are portrayed

and how you are talking
about sharks.

Yeah, it's a fun movie.

But the shark is actually
not a dangerous animal.

And we have a responsibility
to tell that story also.

- I know that in my research--

and I'm sure you've talked
to people

whose careers were inspired
by seeing "Jurassic Park"

or watching "Jaws."

- I saw Matt Hooper.

They could have put him
in a white lab coat

with a pencil holder
and notebook,

but instead, he had jeans,

he had a beard,
he liked to drink wine,

he told good jokes.

- Arguing with a man who's
lining up to be a hot lunch.

- That's why I think
a lot of oceanographers

look a bit like me.

That was the effect
"Jaws" had on me.

It was--it didn't scare me
out of the ocean.

It made me want to be
Matt Hooper.

- Over the years, that shark
became a character...

- Well, hi.

- That people loved.

- Name's Bruce.

- And people still keep
showing "Jaws."

I mean, I saw "Jaws" a couple
months ago at the Orpheum.

They had
over 1,400 people there

to pay $20 to see this movie

that's been around
for 40-some years.

- I think sharksploitation
will never die.

I think they will continue
to exploit every possible sub,

sub, sub-basement,
sublevel genre

of this particular realm
of films.

- What I'm seeing now
is almost like a renaissance

where there's, like,
this really cool potential

to entertain people
with science and facts

but make it totally
ridiculous at the same time.

- We've made sharks less scary.

Again, you know, it's--

I don't know if we should be
respected for that or reviled.

- Just give me
that great white,

let me eat my popcorn,

let me see it doing
some great white stuff.

- I'm a fan
of this exaggerated, campy,

kind of horror sci-fi
where it's very implausible,

but that doesn't mean
we can't enjoy it.

And I think that's
the important thing

with looking at any kind
of horror film

or any kind of film that paints
a real person or real animal,

like a shark,
as being a monster

or being evil
in some capacity,

is if we approach it as fun,
as an exaggeration,

and not as reality,

I think that we can still
appreciate it.

♪

[shark roaring]