Without a doubt the most BORING JAWS rip-off you're ever likely to see, I had the misfortune to catch the extended two-hour-plus cut of this film – and did I regret it! A silly sexploitation film masquerading as a monster flick, TINTORERA is utterly inoffensive throughout, aside from one key area which I'll come to later. Now, I'm a great fan of trash movies, and I also love Mexican flicks: horror films, masked wrestlers, you name it. Knowing that Rene Cardona Jr. delivered such cheese as TREASURE OF THE AMAZON and NIGHT OF A THOUSAND CATS, I was pretty excited about watching this flick. Heck, his DAD made the cult B-movie NIGHT OF THE BLOODY APES, so how could his son go wrong? Well he did, with this misfiring, yawn-inducing effort at a sex film.
The main problem with TINTORERA as a sex film is that it's boring. The sexy is silly rather than sleazy, and even when a couple of women avoid rape by openly giving themselves to the rapists you can't find offence. No, the focus of this film is on the nudity, and there's a ton of it, although some male viewers might find it a bit dubious when I say that MOST of the nudity in the film is from the two guys...do I REALLY want to see near-constant butt shots from these chaps? Of course, there's a fair share of topless and full nudity from the women too, but it really does get boring after a while. Amusingly, two British actresses, Susan George and Fiona Lewis, turn up for the sole purpose of getting naked. Lewis appears for the first twenty minutes and wanders around topless before getting eaten by a shark (nobody notices – not even the viewer) while the awful George shows up for forty minutes in the middle of the flick and appears (very briefly) naked. We're stuck with her absolutely diabolical acting for a good long time, though.
What about the sharks? Well, truth be told, this film DOES have some of the bloodiest death-by-shark scenes in any movie. When somebody bites it (or rather gets bitten) here, the sea around them turns blood red for about a mile and body parts are everywhere. The problem is that there are only two such scenes in a two-hour-plus flick. So what does the rest of the film entail? Two guys sitting around chatting, sailing, drinking, and screwing. That sums it up nicely. Sometimes they speak in English, sometimes in Spanish, but it doesn't matter because they never say anything of merit. Now, I liked Hugo Stiglitz when I saw him in NIGHTMARE CITY, but this must be his worst role. He's just creepy and dull, if those two traits are possible in one character. Andres Garcia is mildly amusing I guess, but he doesn't have anything to work with other than his face-value attractive womaniser role.
I tried to like this film, and I looked out for 'fun' stuff. There is a little. The underwater photography is top-notch, and there are some hilarious Darth Vader-style breathing effects dubbed over the shark. But it's all so routine – so routine that I can't remember how the shark actually dies at the end, although I only finished watching this film two days ago. So all that's left to write about is the offensive bit, and that's the real-life animal killing. If you thought those Italian cannibal flicks had too much of it, wait until you see what's in store here: guys harpooning fish over and over again, for minutes on end. At least a few dozen real creatures died so this movie could get shot. Watching a fish – sometimes sharks – writhing in their death throes and bleeding all over the place is NOT my idea of a good time. It's cheap and it's utterly reprehensible. The worst bit is probably when they shoot a fish and we get a close up of the poor creature bleeding through its gills. Not nice! This sort of stuff normally doesn't bother me but it's so graphic and in-your-face here that it's impossible to ignore. This is why TINTORERA ranks as one of the worst films I've seen, an utter waste of time with no redeeming values whatsoever. I guess this is one of those movies where the shorter US cut is actually BETTER; at least there's less of this mess to sit through.
The main problem with TINTORERA as a sex film is that it's boring. The sexy is silly rather than sleazy, and even when a couple of women avoid rape by openly giving themselves to the rapists you can't find offence. No, the focus of this film is on the nudity, and there's a ton of it, although some male viewers might find it a bit dubious when I say that MOST of the nudity in the film is from the two guys...do I REALLY want to see near-constant butt shots from these chaps? Of course, there's a fair share of topless and full nudity from the women too, but it really does get boring after a while. Amusingly, two British actresses, Susan George and Fiona Lewis, turn up for the sole purpose of getting naked. Lewis appears for the first twenty minutes and wanders around topless before getting eaten by a shark (nobody notices – not even the viewer) while the awful George shows up for forty minutes in the middle of the flick and appears (very briefly) naked. We're stuck with her absolutely diabolical acting for a good long time, though.
What about the sharks? Well, truth be told, this film DOES have some of the bloodiest death-by-shark scenes in any movie. When somebody bites it (or rather gets bitten) here, the sea around them turns blood red for about a mile and body parts are everywhere. The problem is that there are only two such scenes in a two-hour-plus flick. So what does the rest of the film entail? Two guys sitting around chatting, sailing, drinking, and screwing. That sums it up nicely. Sometimes they speak in English, sometimes in Spanish, but it doesn't matter because they never say anything of merit. Now, I liked Hugo Stiglitz when I saw him in NIGHTMARE CITY, but this must be his worst role. He's just creepy and dull, if those two traits are possible in one character. Andres Garcia is mildly amusing I guess, but he doesn't have anything to work with other than his face-value attractive womaniser role.
I tried to like this film, and I looked out for 'fun' stuff. There is a little. The underwater photography is top-notch, and there are some hilarious Darth Vader-style breathing effects dubbed over the shark. But it's all so routine – so routine that I can't remember how the shark actually dies at the end, although I only finished watching this film two days ago. So all that's left to write about is the offensive bit, and that's the real-life animal killing. If you thought those Italian cannibal flicks had too much of it, wait until you see what's in store here: guys harpooning fish over and over again, for minutes on end. At least a few dozen real creatures died so this movie could get shot. Watching a fish – sometimes sharks – writhing in their death throes and bleeding all over the place is NOT my idea of a good time. It's cheap and it's utterly reprehensible. The worst bit is probably when they shoot a fish and we get a close up of the poor creature bleeding through its gills. Not nice! This sort of stuff normally doesn't bother me but it's so graphic and in-your-face here that it's impossible to ignore. This is why TINTORERA ranks as one of the worst films I've seen, an utter waste of time with no redeeming values whatsoever. I guess this is one of those movies where the shorter US cut is actually BETTER; at least there's less of this mess to sit through.