¡Tintorera! aka Tintorera: Killer Shark (1977)

(On Cable TV, August 2021) If you ever watched Jaws and caught yourself thinking, “The shark is cool and all, but what this film truly needs is a ménage à trois,” then have I got good news for you! Melding creature horror with pretentious “erotic” melodrama, Tintorera features a British woman, two men and the sharks that love to eat them all. But there’s more: more women, more skinny-dipping and more sharks eating characters, either in part or in whole. Writer-director René Cardona Jr.’s film is supposed to be horror, but in-between so much wanton romance between the characters, it’s easy to lose track of that… especially when the execution of the horrifying bits is so underwhelming. The female characters aren’t particularly convincing (neither are the male ones, but they don’t get as much screen time) and their whole bizarre blend of libidinous vacation relationships with killer sharks is remarkably off-putting. There’s some camp value in Tintorera, but I’d rather select my cult favourites by other factors than a clunky film that doesn’t work.