Deep Blood

Deep Blood (Sangue Negli Abissi) (1989)

Runtime: 94 rather dull minutes

Directed by: Joe D’Amato/Raffele Donato

Starring: A bunch of actors no one has heard of along with a married couple w/ ties to The Beatles & their appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show!

From: Filmirage/Variety Film Production

Did ChatGPT travel back in time and write this script?! Until this was added to Arrow’s streaming site recently, I had never heard of this motion picture before. Their overhyping of the movie plus the amusement of this being a production from sleazemeister Joe D’Amato intrigued me. Heck, it’s been a long while since I’ve seen a shark movie, The Meg’s sequel will be out soon and those that actually watch Shark Week, might as well, right? What a mistake I made with this stupefying film!

The opening scene is a quartet of young boys on a beach being met by an obviously white guy made up as a Native American and are given a wooden carving that is the key to stopping a Great White Shark that has plagued his tribe, which is then buried in the sand--after a blood oath! No, don’t ask me why it has to be a bunch of random white boys that is supposed to stop this menace rather than someone in the tribe.

After that, it’s a time-jump and the rest of the film is the quartet of young boys as a quartet of young men. Before that though, a mom is “attacked” by the shark… all the attacks are people diving down into the water and red-colored water suddenly appears. Much of the shark footage was taken from National Geographic, no lie. BTW, the same time the mom is “attacked”, her young son is snorkeling by her—only it is plain as day that he’s actually swimming in a pool! You can see the tiles and everything.

The reason why I speculate that The Entity traveled back in time to write crummy Italian ripoffs in a genre that had long ago faded from relevancy: the general idea of foes becoming friends to combat this menace is a sound one, and even all the drama that the main players deal with when it comes to family/their future/love interests should be a fine way to kill time. In execution… the acting is stilted due in part to the script and in part due to acting “talent”-many of whom had the charisma of a wet carrot (to borrow a phrase from someone in a non-movie context)-some horrifyingly bad dialogue, bizarre character statements/actions (especially concerning the town’s police chief, who is the polar opposite of Brody), a finale underwater that felt longer than all the footage under the sea from Thunderball, and some huge sins for those that had the expectations of an Italian shark movie containing much sleaze & gore.

Hold onto your hats: this had minimal gore and NO nudity! What mind-bendingly bizarre decisions that were made here; as in actuality I imagine the writing credits are legit and it wasn’t AI that time traveled, foolish humans decided that a dull movie full of unnatural dialogue featuring precious little of any shark action would be fit for release… Deep Blood-even the English title makes little sense; the original translated title is “Blood in the Abyss”, which is much better-isn’t even bonkers enough for viewing.

That is unless you’re really curious about a 60’s comedic duo that’s a footnote in history. For some reason, Charlie Brill and Mitzi McCall appear here as parents of a main lead. Brill you might recognize as Arne Darvin from an episode of Star Trek but the duo had the misfortune of appearing on the same episode of the Ed Sullivan Show that The Beatles made their initial appearance. Needless to say, no one remembers who else was on the episode.