Deep Blood will give you cinematic thrombosis

Reaching deep into the chum bucket of bad shark movies for Shark Weak 4, I’ve managed to dredge up the cinematic equivalent of a decomposing fish head in the form of 1990’s spectacularly awful Italian sharksploitation flick DEEP BLOOD.

Four friends head off on vacation but when a killer shark starts to terrorise the beach community where they’re staying and kills one of their number, the survivors realise that the creature is none other than the Wakan, an ancient Hoodoo spirit that ten years ago as boys on a camping trip they took a blood pact to destroy. No, really.

If you think that all sounds familiar, you’d be right. It’s basically JAWS crossed with IT…or at least something that ends in **it. Filmed with the kind of production values you’d expect in a late-season filler episode of BAYWATCH and infused with the dramatic heft of a poorly acted public information film DEEP BLOOD is probably best watched the way I watched it – in the eye-blisteringly high definition format of an old VHS videocassette.

There’s no greater sin in bad shark movies than being boring and on that basis alone, DEEP BLOOD is destined for the ninth circle of movie Hell. While the quasi-mystical native legend provides an intriguing jumping-off point, the film uses it to belly flop into the briny deep and sink without a trace. The actual shark attacks are few and far between and almost exclusively use stock footage purchased from National Geographic which, of course, never match up with the above-the-water action or, indeed, each other. What practical effects there are, are risible in the extreme from the Ribena and cornflour blood to the final explosion which is lifted directly from THE LAST SHARK.

For fans of expansive directorial visions such as Peter Jackson’s KING KONG or ZACK SNYDER’S JUSTICE LEAGUE, DEEP BLOOD does perhaps offer one saving grace: although it’s only ninety minutes long, it’ll feel like you’ve been watching it for four hours by the time it finishes.