Tintorera (1977)

Mexican shlockmeister René Cardona Jr. strikes again with this lurid Jaws rip-off about a mammoth tiger shark preying upon sexy singles near a Mexican beach resort. The movie is abysmal, of course, but Tintorera delivers the goods in three respects—it’s gory as hell, the production values are better than one normally expects from Cardona, and there’s an enormous amount of nudity. Cheap thrills aside, however, Tintorera is a painful to watch because of the stupidity on display both in front of and behind the camera. The characterizations range from nonexistent to superficial; the story is a muddled blend of horror and melodrama; the picture features several distasteful scenes of real animals being killed; and the dialogue is marred by bad acting, ghastly writing, and (for actors not native to English) sloppy dubbing. The narrative revolves around two Mexican studs, Miguel (Andrés García) and Steven (Hugo Stiglitz), who make their living as shark hunters near a resort. The studs hook up with a sexy British tourist, Gabriella (Susan George), for an idyllic period of hookups and threesomes. Tintorerais basically just a compendium of scenes featuring attractive people screwing, stripping, and swimming, and once in a while the shark shows up for a snack. Further, it seems as if the studs are the only people who get the idea of fighting back, even though the shark’s body count is astronomical. The vibe of Tintorera is weirdly lackadaisical, although the intensity of the gore occasionally demands attention; scenes of a shark with someone’s head in its teeth, and of the dismembered lower half of a human body floating to the bottom of the ocean, are particularly realistic. Yet the kills aren’t the least bit scary, especially because Cardona employs a ridiculous device of playing heavy breathing on the soundtrack whenever the shark approaches a victim. Huh? Still, for those who care about such things, the movie’s eye-candy quotient is significant, with starlets Priscilla Barnes, George, and especially Fiona Lewis generously sharing their physical gifts. Even the actors playing the studs get into the exhibitionist act.

Tintorera: LAME

Guyana: Cult of the Damned (1979)

          The first of two ripped-from-the-headlines dramatizations about the Jonestown massacre that occurred in November 1978, when Peoples Temple leader Rev. Jim Jones compelled nearly 1,000 followers to commit suicide by drinking poison, Guyana: Cult of the Damned is low-budget sleze presenting the most lurid aspects of the Jonestown incident clumsily and without context. Even co-writer/director René Cardona Jr.’s efforts to fictionalize the story are laughable—Guyana: Cult of the Damned features “Rev. James Johnson” and his followers at “Johnsontown.” Cardona neglects to develop interesting supporting characters, and he presents Johnson (Stuart Whitman) as a one-note psychopath. So, if you’re looking for a somewhat responsible examination of the history behind the massacre, seek out the 1980 TV miniseries Guyana Tragedy: The True Story of Jim Jones (1980), which features a spectacular leading performance by Powers Boothe. That film isn’t perfect, either, but it’s a world away from this exploitive treatment.

          Still, Guyana: Cult of the Damned is quasi-watchable within its lowbrow parameters. Cardona’s movie constructs a simplified narrative that transports Johnson and his followers from America to French Guyana within the movie’s first 10 minutes; as a result, Guyana: Cult of the Damned is essentially a thriller illustrating how a crusading U.S. Congressman tried and failed to save people from Johnson’s planned apocalypse. The Congressman in the movie, “Lee O’Brien”—played by Gene Barry—is a fictionalized version of real-life San Francisco politician Leo Ryan, who was killed in Guyana by Jones’ operatives.

          Cardona’s movie features lurid depictions of Johnson sermonizing to his people and occasionally supervising their torture; this lopsided depiction accentuates the horrors of what really happened in Guyana without exploring the more troubling nuances of why so many people fell under a self-proclaimed messiah’s spell. Nonetheless, it’s impossible not to generate tension when presenting a story filled with so much danger, and once things turn deadly in the jungle, Guyana: Cult of the Damned becomes darkly exciting. Using an eerie synthesizer score to pull together handheld, jittery shots of ghastly things like mothers force-feeding poison to their babies, Cardona’s climax captures the scope of a modern-day holocaust. As for Whitman’s fire-breathing performance, the actor is effective when simulating the demonic aspects of the real man’s charisma, but that’s the only note he plays.

Guyana: Cult of the Damned: FUNKY