Sharks' Treasure (1975) User Reviews (16)

Old-fashioned and conventional sunken-treasure adventure with Wilde as one man show by writing/producing/directing and acting

[ma-cortes · 4/10 · 4 September 2019]

Below average Cornel Wilde adventure/thriller movie filled with underwater scenes , astonishing fights , well handled sharks scenes and violence . This is a violent adventure movie that earned notoriety because of on location , a sea pleny of hungry sharks , as stunt divers were really injured by sharks . It deals with a band of hustlers and escaped convicts (all-male support cast) led by Jim Carnahan (60-year-old Cornel Wilde who demonstratre his fitness by doing one-handed press-up on deck) commander a boat filled with gold . He's stuck there when a buch of risible pirates assaul the boat . As these desperadoes are also attempting to retrieve gold bullion that lies deep in shark-infested waters . See the most sensational shark fight ever filmed!

Very failed and unexceptional adventure/thriller except as a virtual one man show by Cornel Wilde . It is a typical Cornel Wilde film with action-infested dumbness with plenty of thrills , brawls and violent confrontations . The naivite and oddity of the screenplay can scarcely cope with the diverse strands of script queueing up and waiting to be dealt with : underwater searches for treasures , confrontation themselves and with some nasty pirates . In making this underwater adventure yarn , in freak weather conditions , were hired some stuntmen , and experimenter divers to shot the dangerous Shark Sequences on exotic locations in Coral Sea, South Pacific, Pacific Ocean . Notorious underwater explorer Jacques Costeau commented that despite its cruelty , he had never before known a white killer shark attack a man in so vicious a manner . Rather unified is Wilde's homespun philosophising : the perils of nicotine and drink and the virtues of keeping fit . Two-fisted and tough acting by Cornel Wilde as a drifter who carries out a risked raid on a sunken ship in the shark-infested waters . He played several adventure movies , such as : ¨The greatests show on the earth¨,¨Treasure of Golden condor¨, ¨Passion¨, ¨Sword of Lancelot¨, ¨Omar Khayyam , ¨At sword's point¨ , ¨A thousand and one nights¨ , ¨Norseman¨, ¨The fifth musketeer¨ and directed/acted the classic ¨The naked prey¨ and other successes in all kinds of genres as ¨Leave her to heaven¨, ¨Forever amber¨, ¨Road house¨, ¨Big combo¨, ¨Wintertime¨ , ¨A song to remember¨, ¨High Sierra¨.The film benefits itself from a nice support cast , such as Yaphet Kotto , Cliff Osmond , David Canary , David Gilliam , John Neilson and brief appearance by recently deceased Carmen Argenziano .

It contains an anti-climatic and inappropriate musical score . The movie displays an evocative cinematography , being extremely necesary a perfect remasting . Shot on location in Bonaire, Dutch West Indies , Coral Sea, South Pacific, Pacific Ocean . The motion picture was regularly made by Cornel Wilde . Here he starred , wrote , produced and directed . Always primitive , Wilde's movies seem to operate increasingly in a strange limbo with no points of reference outside his own simple view of the world . In Shark's treasure Wilde does a little effective job both as actor and filmmaker . He is especially credited as a good actor but also known for directing some acceptable flicks . His later films were of varying quality, and he ended his career in near-cameos in minor adventure films . As he directed adventures as¨Maracaibo¨ ,¨Lancelot and Guinevere¨, ¨Sharks' Treasure¨ but also Noir Cinema as ¨The Devil's Hairpin¨, ¨Storm Fear¨ and Sci Fi : ¨Blade of Grass¨. And a real oddity : ¨The naked prey ¨ , it Is an amazingly well done movie , being Cornel Wilde's best movie as a filmmaker .

Too many males in tight Speedos...

[Coventry · 4/10 · 6 April 2020]

Let's start with a round of applause for Cornel Wilde; - that's the least of recognition he deserves for all the work and effort he put into his one-man-show "Shark's Treasure". Wilde wrote, produced and directed the film, and he also plays the lead role of boat captain/treasure hunter Jim Carnahan. And he did all this just to prove that he still looks fit and mighty hunky in his naked torso at the age of 65!

Seriously, at several moments throughout the movie, I had the impression that "Shark's Treasure" secretively was a film for gay men that hadn't outed themselves yet. There's one woman in the cast and she appears only briefly, while most of the film's padding footage exists of the four lead stars parading around the deck bare-chested and in their tight Speedos. Ideally for married men still in the closet. "What are you watching, honey? Oh, just a macho flick about treasure hunting at sea, dear". Unfortunately, the adventure-part of "Shark's Treasure" is quite disappointing. Captain Jim and his crew are peacefully diving up ancient valuable coins off the coast of Honduras, but then become hijacked by a group of escaped convicts that naturally want to confiscate their loot. Admittedly the underwater footage is beautiful, but the pacing is incredibly slow, the film is far too long and it's a little too obvious that the shark footage is either shot at a different location or borrowed from other movies/documentaries.

Average adventure: neither great nor bad

[Maciste_Brother · 5/10 · 1 August 2007]

The story of SHARKS' TREASURE is simple enough: four guys look for sunken treasure in the Caribbean sea. They have fun and the occasional quarrels while looking for the treasure. Midway into the movie, a bunch of escape cons (or pirates) hijack the boat and its crew and forces the foursome to continue on with the search while they eat their food and hide on the boat. Eventually, the original crew makes a pack with one of the ex-cons and they escape and a cat & mouse chase occurs on a nearby island.

SHARKS' TREASURE is not a great film by any means. But it's not a bad film too. It's hopelessly average. The direction, by Cornel Wilde, is competent, with some nice camera-work here and there but it's really uninspired and looks like a TV movie of sorts for most of the film, until the climax at the beach which was well made: we see the men trying to escape the gang of ex-cons with just the sound and image of the roaring waves crashing on the beach. No music. Nice.

The big problem with the film is the limited space of the boat and the really corny acting by Cornel Wilde. The acting by everyone else was good, with Yaphet being the stand-out here but Cornel's acting belongs in the 1950s, not a film made in the gritty 1970s. He stood out more often than not as a sore thumb. To make things more annoying, Cornel (the director/actor) filmed himself prominently, really wanting to impress god knows who that he was still in great shape at his then old age. Fortunately, the film never becomes a total vanity project for Cornel but it sure comes close to it. And the other annoying thing about the film was the song. It's probably the worst song I've ever heard in any film. Extremely corny. The ending is also corny: after everything they went through, you'd think they wouldn't go back looking for the treasure. Aside for those weak points, the film was OK.

I watched SHARKS' TREASURE on a specialty satellite channel from beginning to end without changing channels, which should tell you that it held my attention for 90 minutes, which is more than I can say with majority of movies I watch.

So bad...it's good

[Ghostwood · 1/10 · 16 February 2005]

Sheesh! What a dreadful movie. Dodgy camera work, a script with more corn than Kellogg's, and acting so hammy you could open a pig farm with it.

To cap it all, it doesn't know which audience to aim at - we have Cornel Wilde - or is that Corny Wilde? - getting on his soap box about the hazards of smoking any time someone lights a cigarette, dear oh dear, and in another awkward scene we have the baddie, Lobo, forcing his, ahem, if you will, 'male friend' to do a striptease dressed in a bikini. Try explaining that one to the kids...

Throw in an overly contrived Treasure Island-cum-Jaws type storyline, and the result is a film so unintentionally funny, it's enjoyable - I shouldn't expect a Special Edition DVD any time soon, though.

Don't leave prison without your boy toy

[bkoganbing · 5/10 · 10 January 2013]

In his later years Cornel Wilde did a number of films on his own as his day as a box office draw had long gone. Stuff like Beach Red and The Naked Prey were interesting. Sharks' Treasure was quite a bit less in quality than those others were.

Wilde here is a charter boat captain no doubt giving three hour tours like the Skipper and Gilligan did on the USS Minow. Young surfer kid John Neilson brings an old Spanish gold doubloon and he knows where there might be more on the Mexican coast.

Wilde and Neilson take on Yaphett Kotto and David Canary as crew and the four set out for the spot that Neilson says the treasure was found. The four do some considerable diving and then have the misfortune to run across a group of escaped convicts led by Lobo as played by Cliff Osmond who certainly justified his name.

One of the convicts is David Gilliam who looks a lot like Neilson, blond and pretty and Osmond's personal boy toy from prison. Osmond's weakness is Gilliam and Neilson is no doubt grateful Gilliam's around otherwise these guys who haven't seen any female companionship would zero in on him. It all proves their undoing.

The underwater sequences are nice and the sharks as a dangerous as those in the various Jaws films. And the guys are all walking around in various states of undress which no doubt titillated the women and gay men in the audience. Cornel Wilde certainly looked in good shape for a guy in his sixties.

Sharks' Treasure is your routine action film, other than the underwater sequences and the well put together men, nothing more.

Cornell Wilde Shows Off His Push-Ups

[boblipton · 5/10 · 15 June 2019]

Shipowner Cornell Wilde and some youngsters go in search of sunken Spanish treasure. Along the way they encounter sharks and pirates.

Cornell Wilde wrote, directed and starred in this loosely plotted modern adventure story, along with Yaphet Koto and a couple of youngsters. There's as much underwater photography -- a bit faded in the print I saw -- as story, and as much character exposition as gold.

Wilde had spent the 1950s as a dashing but minor action hero. Born in Hungary in 1912, he came to the US four years later. After a few uncredited bits in the 1930s, his break came in HIGH SIERRA, and he spent the next 20 years playing in a mix of costume dramas and more modern fare; he was one of the movies' better swordsmen, and was reputed to have turned down a slot in the American fencing team at the 1936 Olympics. His career slowed down in the 1960s, but some television guest shots and a few kept him reasonably active until shortly before his death in 1989.

Best not to unearth this "treasure"

[Wizard-8 · 2/10 · 16 June 2019]

Although this independently made movie was picked up by a major American distributor, the distributor hasn't made much effort to push this movie to the public beyond its initial theatrical release - no release on VHS or DVD, and the movie only airs occasionally on TV. Seeing the movie, it's easy to figure out why - it's not a very good movie at all. Possibly because it was the project of someone (Cornel Wilde) whose glory days were starting to fade away at the time of production, the movie has a really old-fashioned feeling to it that must have seemed odd even to audiences back in 1975. But the bulk of the movie also gives off a much stronger feeling, and that is the feeling of utter boredom. Most of the movie is devoted to simply talking between the characters, and the dialogue isn't that memorable or interesting at all. There's almost no tension, suspense, or even mere interest. The little action there is isn't that much more compelling than all that dull dialogue, unless you like to see unfaked footage of real sharks being injured of killed. If you want to see a better effort from actor/filmmaker Cornel Wilde, watch "The Naked Prey" or "No Blade of Grass" instead.

A Curious Vanity Piece.

[TOMASBBloodhound · 3/10 · 3 July 2019]

Every now and then, Turner Classic Movies shows us a film more "notorious" than classic. That explains the recent showing of Shark's Treasure. This is a would-be adventure film about a group of Speedo-wearing men attempting to recover some lost Spanish treasure in the shark-filled waters of the Caribbean. After massacring several small sharks, the group seems to be finding some good loot, but then they are accosted by 5 escaped criminals, who literally appear instantly on their boat. Can these men fight off the convicts and still save their treasure?? If you must, go ahead and find out.

This film was written, directed and produced by its "star", some guy named Cornel Wilde. I have seen many a movie in my life, old and new, but I really don't know anything about this guy. He apparently had a career spanning back to the 1930s. Good for him. You can tell this is little more than a vanity piece. Wilde wears little more than a Speedo for the entire film. He makes sure his pecs are oiled and he even shows off his ability to do push-ups using just his fingertips. He spends a good bit of time also lecturing the others about not drinking too much and eating the right things. Just weird, uncomfortable dialogue that disrupts the already thin plot. He also tries to mentor the young member of his crew. He even offers counseling to the submissive homosexual member of the convicts who is abused by the group's leader. Weird, yo. But you have to give Wilde his due. He does look to be in fine physical shape. The only other actor I recognized was Yaphet Kotto who always gives a good performance in any movie.

Look, I don't have a problem with this movie's general premise. If you want to see this plot done better, I'd recommend The Deep which came out a couple years later. And that film has Jacqueline Bisset in a wet white tee shirt at the beginning. A much better sight than middle aged men in Speedos. The action in Shark's Treasure is sparse, and mostly worthy of its PG rating. The music is an awful keyboard score. The editing is just strange. As far as Wilde is concerned, I'd just tell him (and all fitness enthusiasts) that longevity is not necessarily due to exercise and diet. Wilde died at age 77 of cancer. My own father just turned 81. He has smoked at least a pack a day, drinks at least one stiff drink per day, and never really has exercised. Wilde at one point in this film claims every ounce of alcohol you drink takes your brain 5 weeks to recover from. If that's true, I shudder to think how many weeks behind my brain is from the rest of me!! HA! I'll give this film 3 of 10 stars.

The Hound.

tough indie

[SnoopyStyle · 6/10 · 15 July 2022]

Jim Carnahan (Cornel Wilde) is a charter boat skipper. A kid found a coin off the coast of Belize and he partners with him to look for the sunken treasure. Ben Flynn (Yaphet Kotto) and Larry Hicks join them as divers. Once they get there, they're told that some Americans have escaped from the local prison.

The fighting between the four original crew feels a bit forced. Despite being weeks in building, it feels too abrupt and too random. As for the shark hunt, they are actually battling and killing real sharks. I prefer not to do that. Once the convicts arrive, the intensity becomes more real. The first half of the movie can do with a bit of squeezing. The acting is a little overwrought at times. This is a tough little indie.

Makes Ishtar look like a masterpiece

[groucho-33 · 1/10 · 11 July 2003]

By far the worst movie of all time. Even Yaphet Kotto could not save this turkey. I have heard that the movie was originally supposed to be titled "The Treasure" but was changed to "Sharks' Treasure" in order to take advantage of the excitement created by "Jaws". I think sharks were in one scene of this movie; the fact that they happened to be included in this "thriller" was supposed to sell tickets. Didn't work. Anytime something "good" happens in the movie, the ship's crew toasts each other with a certain brand of beer that had just been introduced at the time the movie was made. Gee, do ya think that beer might have been a sponsor? Could they have made it any more obvious? The only time anyone should break out the beer is if they make it through this thing. That's cause enough for celebration.

The 'Deliverance' of Shark Exploitation Cinema

[TheFearmakers · 9/10 · 17 April 2019]

Cornel Wilde's SHARKS' TREASURE, a Neo Noir in the Ernest Hemingway tradition of the TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT novel-version, centers on machismo verses elements of the sea...

The title killer fish seems to be intentionally guarding a treasure of golden coins at a location that takes over half the film led by Wilde's semi-famous fortune hunter boatsman, Jim Carnahan, along with the map's bearer, a young man played by TERROR HOUSE actor John Neilson...

Although Wilde had been a very good actor since playing the talky inside-man to Humphrey Bogart's in HIGH SIERRA followed by the likes of LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN, ROAD HOUSE and THE DEVIL'S HAIRPIN, it takes a 1970's acting ace in Yaphet Kotto, as Ben, along with his Vietnam vet buddy Larry, played by sporadic BONANZA guest star David Canary, to make the picture more believable and intense...

Well that's the ship's party, and before TREASURE hits the three-fourths mark, the villains arrive: a band of escaped convicts, five of them, though herein only two need naming: Cliff Osmond is a tall, mustached, balding Spanish Alpha Male, cursed within a creepy, bullying love affair with a young blond man who's under his... power, basically...

As an actor, Osmond's turned up as a heavy in Disney movies, which this is anything but... And taking two to tango, Ray Milland's passive, sheepish FROGS grandson David Gilliam plays the put-upon, proverbial punk wherein the most bizarre and sadistic abuse occurs...

While the main players, who, minutes earlier, were so full of life having just succeeded in finding treasure: dodging sharks by either outsmarting or killing them, and a good deal of suspense relies on how quick those suckers are...

So Al Giddings, the underwater photographer, must be given credit as this particular shark picture, while feeling like a pulpy fortune hunting programmer, looks as good as any documentary on the legendary menace of the deep...

A horde of Tiger Sharks as opposed to one menacing Great White. Never have so many finned biters looked so pointed, feisty and mean, and all in their natural habitat as opposed to cheating with stock images...

With a slash of their tails and a quick bunt of the nose, they guard "their" treasure while the men, hard to discern underwater where plot means little compared to the sport of "sharking," turn into harpoon wielding hunters, doing what some viewers may find cruel and pointless when it's necessary...

Especially dark and morbid is gothic row of dead sharks hooked from ropes, hanging in a sort of underwater gallows from the floaty balloons above.

So, overall, this forgotten lost TREASURE is a decent yarn despite suffering through many overlong scenes to get to the proverbial gold...

Unlike Steven Spielberg's request to never show land, during this Third Act, while the boys are hand-tied and threatened, stretches of land are visible so we don't really feel completely out there like in JAWS...

Once a man-to-man fight occurs. things get so bizarre it's up to the film's writer/director, Wilde himself, to make things watchable again, bringing back the lean energy from his Film Noir days, remaining cool and calm while playing the long game, getting inside the head of the only vulnerable convict. The man's acting peaks during these 11th hour moments.

A few scenes, using literal inserted photographs of the treasure hunt after the initial discovery has been established (with a cool yet campy song titled "Money Money" by Ken Barrie plays), seems like a cop-out shortcut but looks creative and moves the story smoothly forward despite hitting a dead calm once the antagonists board...

There's some adventure during the climax but the most fun for the viewer take place during the first half where SHARK'S TREASURE is a bonafide oceanic treasure hunting flick that, like TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE, has the men getting more uptight and then at each other's necks... particularly Wilde and his bitter employee Kotto, who's forced not to smoke on deck...

The tension is more palpable between the four cohorts than the nine or so captives and captors. And while it's the epitome of an uneven picture, after a few viewings the jigsaw pieces together, and you may just find it a fulfilling experience at sea, deeply rooted even while in shallow regions.

shark's treasure

[mossgrymk · 6/10 · 19 August 2022]

Since this movie will inevitably be associated with "Jaws" contrasts are inevitable, so here's one for you: In Spielberg's classic the shark is mechanical while the characters are real. In Cornel Wilde's film it's the opposite. Fortunately, as the title suggests, Wilde spends quality time with the sharks. Give it a C plus.

PS...You haven't lived until you've heard the Slovakian born star of this film channel his inner Randolph Scott.

Impressive underwater shots, not much else

[jellopuke · 4/10 · 3 July 2019]

There's some really impressive underwater action and ocean photography, but the rest of the movie is pretty tedious and unless you really want to watch old men in speedos yelling at each other or innocent sharks getting killed on camera, I can't recommend sitting through this forgotten slog.

an amateur film

[osloj · 5/10 · 3 December 2015]

It looks like an amateur film and has an intense hatred for sharks, as it shows numerous of them getting killed by charges or spears, only to fill up space in the run time. The story is so blatantly absurd that you can guess most of it.

It's hard to get through, since seeing Cornel Wilde and Yaphet Kotto in racing bathing suits, doing a "fake" row, is too hard to bear.

It has a few character actors from the 1960's like David Canary (he gets hit by Paul Newman in "Hombre" (1967), and Cliff Osmond (He was in the original Twilight Zone in "The Gift", 1962)) as Lobo.

Similar themes found later in The Deep (1977).

Like a Puzzle Put Together by Forcing the Pieces

[bkkaz · 4/10 · 15 July 2022]

Okay, a few things. First, the biggest problem with the movie seems to be its editing. Like a freshman essay, there are clearly parts that drag because they're nothing but obvious padding. Who knows how much footage Cornel Wilde -- who wrote, directed, and stars in this movie -- shot that ended up being badly assembled later. This is obvious because on a shot for shot level, the film is not incompetent. It's the patchwork assembly that makes it struggle.

Beneath that baroque mess is a fairly conventional plot. A ragtag group of treasure hunters goes looking for gold in open waters while a group of escaped convicts stand in essentially for pirates. There's the usual tough captain and tense grousing among the crew until the male bonding kicks in. This is also a movie where old fashioned masculinity is on display. Despite what a lot of seemingly young viewers might think about a gay subtext, it was pretty common among tough guys (or the ones playing them onscreen) to exhibit themselves, one part of out narcissism and one part out of intimidation. Sure, it's comical by today's standards, but it was taken more seriously in the 50s, 60s, and even parts of the 70s depending on generation.

That leads to the violence, too. We get to see not just the human stuff, tedious as it is, but more than a few sharks and other fish killed in sometimes brutal ways. It may happen in real life, but it just seems gratuitous here to demonstrate another silly masculine trope that killing something minding its own business somehow makes someone a man. The characterizations follow suit. Wilde's captain comes across as an overbearing nut, but if you know anything about his generation and pay attention to the script, it's mostly an act. For instance, his seemingly psychopathic need to control cigarettes aboard his ship is supposed to -- wink, wink -- show he really cares about his crew, as one of them, indeed, quits without initially realizing it.

In the end, the movie is a mess but not merely as much as some might think. It's competently if not imaginatively acted and directed, and while the recycled music makes for a patchwork score, there are a few moments where everything actually works. For the mid-1970s, that alone is remarkable given that Hollywood couldn't figure out if it wanted to make traditional movies or imitations of the low budget films the French, Italians, and Japanese had made in the 50s and 60s.

excellent sea adventure

[Tony Rome · 8/10 · 1 October 2001]

Sharks' Treasure is an excellent sea adventure. The film centers around four men hunting for lost treasure. The men are plagued with problems from bandits, greed, and dangerous sharks. The underwater photography is superb. Cornel Wilde produced, wrote, directed, and stared in this film; which he states was a "team effort". I give this film a 9/10.