What do you think?
Rate this book
Cruel Jaws
- GenresFiction
274 pages, Mass Market Paperback
Published September 29, 2020
2 people are currently reading
36 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
November 8, 2024
Link to my YouTube review for this book: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSyTA...
What a surprise, a novelization to a movie that came out 25 years ago. I’m not saying that to be sarcastic, I’m genuinely surprised.
Oh, it’s still a total Jaws rip-off but it also has a better executed story narratively than the movie as well as gives you a better visual idea of what kind of carnage and destruction we could’ve had in 1995.
This is, as I said before, a trashy book. It’s filled with sex, drugs, and vulgarity. It’s kind of like the movie dialed up to eleven. Everything is amped up.
The several storylines are still very much here – there are even some extra ones. However, they all flow naturally for the most part. They don’t just appear like the mafia did in the movie.
Characters:
Billy Morrison is somewhat of a marine biologist. He dropped out of college and has been working with the Mattei institute. Nice little wink there. He’s also a cocaine addict and loves to get it on with Vanessa.
He and Vanessa make for an odd couple. She’s cheated on him before and will again within the pages of this book. Yet he likes to hear how much better he is than her affairs while they do it dirty. I guess it gives him an edge?
Vanessa is a total… you know what. She does kind of redeem herself later in the book when she realizes she actually loves Billy. It's too little too late by then though.
Moving on, Dag Sorensen is kind of a tragic character. He lost his wife and his daughter became a paraplegic due to a car accident. Now, his aquarium/livelihood is in serious debt and about to be shut down within the month.
Still, Dag remains strong and hopeful.
His other children, Larry and Bob, both have their stories and quirks. Larry is the quiet guy who doesn’t have anything to say unless it’s poetic or meaningful. Bob is secretly seeing Gloria.
They’re the lovey dovey ones of this story. They’re always gushing over each other. It comes as no surprise when Sam and Ronnie Lewis, her father and brother, get wind of this that they’re not too happy.
While Sam Lewis is greedy (trying to get a casino built on the aquarium’s property, working with the mafia) he isn’t as evil as Ronnie.
Ronnie just enjoys getting into trouble. He knows he’s always going to be let go because his father basically runs the town.
His friends are no better. Tommy is a suck-up. He wants to get some of that relaxed freedom that Ronnie has so he became his personal b*tch.
Glenda is going with Tommy but has the hots for Ronnie.
Doyle is a very minor character. He doesn’t even go with them on the boat to hunt the shark. He’s a bumbling idiot so it was probably for the best.
Sheriff Francis Berger is just tired of all the stuff that’s going on. He eventually needs to sleep but even that gets interrupted. He does go out to hunt the shark with an idea that was obviously doomed from the start.
Deputy Lamar has larger role. He catches Ronnie and the gang doing a couple of heinous acts which get overlooked. He’s a take-no-crap kind of character. He’s a black guy in a mostly white population but he still holds his own.
Last to mention is Susie who isn’t as annoying as in the movie but she still serves about as much purpose.
I like the attention being brought to the minor characters from the movie. It helps flesh out the story more too. We get extra scenes and dialogue.
In fact, the dialogue as a whole feels like movie-talk which isn’t a bad thing all the time. Especially when the movie itself turned out the way it did.
Gore:
We get people being chomped on, decapitations, severed legs, a severed arm, a rotten corpse, and more! It’s definitely a worthwhile gore-fest. However, much of the carnage doesn’t start until the regatta scene.
All in all, there are thirty-two deaths in this because as a result of the tiger shark. That’s around ten more than the movie.
In the regatta scene it is a massacre. Windsurfers are eaten; the pier is destroyed along with the civilians atop it.
It’s an amazing attack and the book helps you visualize the carnage and action in a way that just feels epic.
Also, the battle of Dag versus the shark near the end is so bloody and epic. Harpoons fly, Jaws chomp. It's a battle for the ages!
There is a twist at the end of this book but I won’t spoil it. I’ll just say its… shocking!
Overall Thoughts:
This is a fast-paced, gruesome, sleazy schlock-fest that is just a blast to read.
It’s not the best shark book out there. Near the third act there are some spelling errors but they weren’t too distracting. Plus this is just a trashy shark book so I’d put it up there with the original Jaws novel if I’m being honest. I think this is a bit better though.
This shark will take everything in two bites of its cruel jaws.
Overall Rating: 2.5 out of 5 (closer to a 3 than a 2)
What a surprise, a novelization to a movie that came out 25 years ago. I’m not saying that to be sarcastic, I’m genuinely surprised.
Oh, it’s still a total Jaws rip-off but it also has a better executed story narratively than the movie as well as gives you a better visual idea of what kind of carnage and destruction we could’ve had in 1995.
This is, as I said before, a trashy book. It’s filled with sex, drugs, and vulgarity. It’s kind of like the movie dialed up to eleven. Everything is amped up.
The several storylines are still very much here – there are even some extra ones. However, they all flow naturally for the most part. They don’t just appear like the mafia did in the movie.
Characters:
Billy Morrison is somewhat of a marine biologist. He dropped out of college and has been working with the Mattei institute. Nice little wink there. He’s also a cocaine addict and loves to get it on with Vanessa.
He and Vanessa make for an odd couple. She’s cheated on him before and will again within the pages of this book. Yet he likes to hear how much better he is than her affairs while they do it dirty. I guess it gives him an edge?
Vanessa is a total… you know what. She does kind of redeem herself later in the book when she realizes she actually loves Billy. It's too little too late by then though.
Moving on, Dag Sorensen is kind of a tragic character. He lost his wife and his daughter became a paraplegic due to a car accident. Now, his aquarium/livelihood is in serious debt and about to be shut down within the month.
Still, Dag remains strong and hopeful.
His other children, Larry and Bob, both have their stories and quirks. Larry is the quiet guy who doesn’t have anything to say unless it’s poetic or meaningful. Bob is secretly seeing Gloria.
They’re the lovey dovey ones of this story. They’re always gushing over each other. It comes as no surprise when Sam and Ronnie Lewis, her father and brother, get wind of this that they’re not too happy.
While Sam Lewis is greedy (trying to get a casino built on the aquarium’s property, working with the mafia) he isn’t as evil as Ronnie.
Ronnie just enjoys getting into trouble. He knows he’s always going to be let go because his father basically runs the town.
His friends are no better. Tommy is a suck-up. He wants to get some of that relaxed freedom that Ronnie has so he became his personal b*tch.
Glenda is going with Tommy but has the hots for Ronnie.
Doyle is a very minor character. He doesn’t even go with them on the boat to hunt the shark. He’s a bumbling idiot so it was probably for the best.
Sheriff Francis Berger is just tired of all the stuff that’s going on. He eventually needs to sleep but even that gets interrupted. He does go out to hunt the shark with an idea that was obviously doomed from the start.
Deputy Lamar has larger role. He catches Ronnie and the gang doing a couple of heinous acts which get overlooked. He’s a take-no-crap kind of character. He’s a black guy in a mostly white population but he still holds his own.
Last to mention is Susie who isn’t as annoying as in the movie but she still serves about as much purpose.
I like the attention being brought to the minor characters from the movie. It helps flesh out the story more too. We get extra scenes and dialogue.
In fact, the dialogue as a whole feels like movie-talk which isn’t a bad thing all the time. Especially when the movie itself turned out the way it did.
Gore:
We get people being chomped on, decapitations, severed legs, a severed arm, a rotten corpse, and more! It’s definitely a worthwhile gore-fest. However, much of the carnage doesn’t start until the regatta scene.
All in all, there are thirty-two deaths in this because as a result of the tiger shark. That’s around ten more than the movie.
In the regatta scene it is a massacre. Windsurfers are eaten; the pier is destroyed along with the civilians atop it.
It’s an amazing attack and the book helps you visualize the carnage and action in a way that just feels epic.
Also, the battle of Dag versus the shark near the end is so bloody and epic. Harpoons fly, Jaws chomp. It's a battle for the ages!
There is a twist at the end of this book but I won’t spoil it. I’ll just say its… shocking!
Overall Thoughts:
This is a fast-paced, gruesome, sleazy schlock-fest that is just a blast to read.
It’s not the best shark book out there. Near the third act there are some spelling errors but they weren’t too distracting. Plus this is just a trashy shark book so I’d put it up there with the original Jaws novel if I’m being honest. I think this is a bit better though.
This shark will take everything in two bites of its cruel jaws.
Overall Rating: 2.5 out of 5 (closer to a 3 than a 2)
December 15, 2020
The movie novelization has often been regarded as, well, lesser, in terms of fine literature, or books in general for that matter. It’s also no surprise that the movies are often better than those thin paperback abridgments of cinematic genius. They’re usually based on a screenplay and the more interesting ones include stuff like deleted scenes that were written for the script but never made it into the final cut of the film.
These things are, for the most part, true of the typical American film novel adaptation, but what we’re dealing with in the case of “Cruel Jaws” is pretty far removed from the Hollywood marketing machine and rests square in the realm of Italian horror ripoff. Just to give you an idea, after the success of James Cameron’s “Aliens” and “Terminator” films, in 1989 the Italian film company Flora Films made a movie called “Shocking Dark”—released in Europe as “Terminator 2”—that combined elements of both films, complete with plagiarized dialogue, that created one hell of an entertaining “so-bad-it’s-good” flick.
Anyway, to save you the college course on bad Italian knock-offs, and to save me a few nights of too much research, I’ll get right to it.
“Cruel Jaws” was a sharksploitation flick of the 80s directed by the legendary Bruno Mattei, that hung its hat on the success of, well, the “Jaws” franchise. It was even shamelessly released in Europe as “Jaws 5.” In the film, a monster shark terrorizes a Florida beach during Memorial Day weekend, meanwhile the local heavy is trying to shut down the quaint Ocean Adventureland aquarium attraction and replace it with casinos. Take these two things and throw them in the idea bag, sprinkle in some top secret military black ops genetics, shake it all up and you got yourself a pretty crazy flick.
This film was released on blu-ray from Severin Films earlier this year and just for the hell of it, they commissioned a paperback novelization of the film, and let me tell you, not only did author Brad Carter have his work cut out of him trying to 1) make sense of that thing and 2) you know, develop characters—cheap Italian films don’t waste time on stuff like exposition—but he also delightfully delivers fantastic embellishments and a humorous reverence that plays perfectly to these ridiculous characters and their motives.
Carter’s enhancements, if you will, are hilarious, but so dry and fitting that they really work best only if you’ve seen the film. I mean, that’s part of the joke, and to go along with how hokey this thing is, Severin gave it the book treatment which invites you to be in on the joke with them.
For a film that has no nudity that I recall, Carter manages to work a series of sordid sex plots amongst the characters, one which culminates in a darkly hilarious death scene that was simply brushed over in the film. There are also several asides that allude to things like the Sheriff’s burgeoning alcoholism that is never brought up in the movie, the main character Billy’s coke addiction, and I believe some New York gangsters that I don’t immediately recall doing much in the film but have a key role in the book’s climax. Carter also wraps things up with a wild epilogue that teases a sequel that I wish could be made as some Italian knock-off.
And the best thing about this book that edges out to a four star rating is its entirely self-aware, and I will never not give high marks for something that knows exactly what it is.
Four stars.
These things are, for the most part, true of the typical American film novel adaptation, but what we’re dealing with in the case of “Cruel Jaws” is pretty far removed from the Hollywood marketing machine and rests square in the realm of Italian horror ripoff. Just to give you an idea, after the success of James Cameron’s “Aliens” and “Terminator” films, in 1989 the Italian film company Flora Films made a movie called “Shocking Dark”—released in Europe as “Terminator 2”—that combined elements of both films, complete with plagiarized dialogue, that created one hell of an entertaining “so-bad-it’s-good” flick.
Anyway, to save you the college course on bad Italian knock-offs, and to save me a few nights of too much research, I’ll get right to it.
“Cruel Jaws” was a sharksploitation flick of the 80s directed by the legendary Bruno Mattei, that hung its hat on the success of, well, the “Jaws” franchise. It was even shamelessly released in Europe as “Jaws 5.” In the film, a monster shark terrorizes a Florida beach during Memorial Day weekend, meanwhile the local heavy is trying to shut down the quaint Ocean Adventureland aquarium attraction and replace it with casinos. Take these two things and throw them in the idea bag, sprinkle in some top secret military black ops genetics, shake it all up and you got yourself a pretty crazy flick.
This film was released on blu-ray from Severin Films earlier this year and just for the hell of it, they commissioned a paperback novelization of the film, and let me tell you, not only did author Brad Carter have his work cut out of him trying to 1) make sense of that thing and 2) you know, develop characters—cheap Italian films don’t waste time on stuff like exposition—but he also delightfully delivers fantastic embellishments and a humorous reverence that plays perfectly to these ridiculous characters and their motives.
Carter’s enhancements, if you will, are hilarious, but so dry and fitting that they really work best only if you’ve seen the film. I mean, that’s part of the joke, and to go along with how hokey this thing is, Severin gave it the book treatment which invites you to be in on the joke with them.
For a film that has no nudity that I recall, Carter manages to work a series of sordid sex plots amongst the characters, one which culminates in a darkly hilarious death scene that was simply brushed over in the film. There are also several asides that allude to things like the Sheriff’s burgeoning alcoholism that is never brought up in the movie, the main character Billy’s coke addiction, and I believe some New York gangsters that I don’t immediately recall doing much in the film but have a key role in the book’s climax. Carter also wraps things up with a wild epilogue that teases a sequel that I wish could be made as some Italian knock-off.
And the best thing about this book that edges out to a four star rating is its entirely self-aware, and I will never not give high marks for something that knows exactly what it is.
Four stars.
Read
June 4, 2023“That’s some bad outfit”
July 12, 2024
Sam Lewis' Prize Shark
Now, I am probably the only person who unironically loves Cruel Jaws so hearing that it was getting the tie-in novel treatment like Jaws 2 and Jaws: The Revenge was a real treat. And it did not disappoint.
The book stays pretty faithful to the film, delving into the implied lore of the shark in the film, exploring the characters more etc. The best thing about this book is that it is flat out entertaining. The other Jaws books have the issue of being pretty solid but getting boring in the middle. That's not an issue here. I never get bored reading this one.
For this unofficial 5th Jaws entry, it fits right in.
Now, I am probably the only person who unironically loves Cruel Jaws so hearing that it was getting the tie-in novel treatment like Jaws 2 and Jaws: The Revenge was a real treat. And it did not disappoint.
The book stays pretty faithful to the film, delving into the implied lore of the shark in the film, exploring the characters more etc. The best thing about this book is that it is flat out entertaining. The other Jaws books have the issue of being pretty solid but getting boring in the middle. That's not an issue here. I never get bored reading this one.
For this unofficial 5th Jaws entry, it fits right in.
November 6, 2021
This is a strange book.
Based off of a wonderfully terrible movie, the book succeeds where the movie falls short.
No bad special effects or acting to contend with the goofy shark story becomes a bit haunting and scary.
It seems that once again the book is better than the movie, even is the book comes second.
Based off of a wonderfully terrible movie, the book succeeds where the movie falls short.
No bad special effects or acting to contend with the goofy shark story becomes a bit haunting and scary.
It seems that once again the book is better than the movie, even is the book comes second.
June 3, 2021
Based on the Italian jaws knock off, Cruel Jaws is now a book! I never would have saw that coming, I'm even surprised the film itself received an official blu ray relaese as well. Goes to show you nothing is impossible. Its a fun book actually, alot more coherent then the movie, and quite raunchy too. It has some funny bits here and there, and doesn't take it self to seriously. It knows what it is. If you love Jaws and any other shark movie, and I do mean any, chances are you might like this book too!
April 29, 2021
This was fun and over the top. Could've used a bit more editing though. I caught quite a few mistakes and I normally don't pay attention to those.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews