User Reviews

I started watching this film thinking it was going to be another 70s killer animal movie or a Jaws rip off. For the first 1/3 or so of the film it seemed that way. It had several underwater attacks by the title fish, but after a point it became a mystery about the why the fish are aggressive and soon became a conspiracy movie.

The film is decently acted for the most part, but there are parts and roles that are just very poorly acted or awkward. Papa Jack's son reminded me of Buford T. Justice's son Junior in the Smokey and the Bandit films. He acts more or less like an idiot or adult child. There is one scene with extras who get in a fender bender and start arguing. The acting here is really bad and comes off a little cheesy. Same goes for the diner sequence with the waitress spilling the glass of water and arguing with the cook. Both seem very unnatural.

The barracudas themselves look like puppets when biting people. When it is the tail end you see it seems like a set hand was just holding the puppet by the head and shaking it in front of the camera.

Overall it is an OK film. It is cheesy enough to be fun for a watch, just don't expect anything great.

~Spoiler~

Barracuda is NOT the movie you think it is. It is not a rip-off of Jaws and it is not as much fun as Piranha. There is only one scene really of Barracuda even attacking people. What this actually is is a government conspiracy movie that is a bit boring. The government is tampering with the water supply of a small town with a form of rage serum. These aren't the rage infected zombies from 28 Days Later however. These poor townsfolk just get upset and yell at each other. The serum also leaks into the ocean and that's were the barracuda come in, briefly. The movie vaguely reminded me of Halloween III only it's not as much fun. It has the same silent, suited men stalking around that were in Halloween III, and the bad guys win. That was the best part of the film: seeing the heroes get blown away in slow motion, Sam Peckinpah style. So, in closing, creature feature buffs should stay away.

Come on...The bad guys win in the end! how bad could any movie be, where the heroes are blown away, IN SLOW MOTION, by the evil empire of sludge lords? rent it. watch it. love it.

After clocking Barracuda's suitably trashy Jaws-style poster art, I took the bait and settled down for what I hoped would be an entertaining exercise in B-movie schlock horror. Unfortunately, rather than the cheesy monster-fish movie that had been promised by the publicity material, the film turned out to be an incredibly dull conspiracy thriller in which 90% of the action seemed to take place on dry land.

Set in the sleepy coastal town of Palm Cove, this dreary yawn-fest stars Wayne Crawford as Mike Canfield, a marine biologist who helps the local police in their investigations after a series of vicious barracuda attacks on local swimmers results in body parts washing up on the shore. Mike traces the problem back to the local chemical plant, whose waste products are polluting the ocean and affecting the sea-life, but certain unsavoury types are out to hide the truth—at any cost!

Poorly directed, totally devoid of suspense or terror, and relatively gore free, this film will definitely disappoint those looking for a cheerfully cheap Jaws knock-off. The shoddy direction, endless scenes of chit-chat, and particularly cruddy fish attacks will leave you wondering why anyone would have parted with good money to make this film, or to watch it.

The only positive thing that I can say about Barracuda is that it does end on a surprisingly downbeat note with the death of its two 'good guys'—a small touch of originality in the closing moments.

Given the premise (a small coastal community beset by ferocious flesh-eating barracuda in the ocean), one would easily assume that this is yet another run-of-the-mill opportunistic "Jaws" cash-in. However, the scenes with the titular fish attacking people are surprisingly few and far in between, with a greater emphasis instead on a conspiracy thriller plot that takes on truly unsettling monolithic proportions as the narrative unfolds towards a genuinely startling surprise bummer ending. Alas, the sluggish pacing, perfunctory direction, and an overly talky script all unfortunately prevent said conspiracy angle from acquiring the necessary tension and momentum it really needs to seriously cook the way that it ought to. On the plus side, Wayne Crawford as a crusading biologist and Wiliam Kerwin as the folksy sheriff make for personable heroes, the underwater photography is sharp and impressive, the overall brooding tone astutely captures a distinctly 70's post-Watergate sense of vehemently anti-government distrust and cynicism, and Klaus Schulze's moody'n'energetic score hits the quivery ooga-booga spot something sweet. Moreover, there are solid supporting contributions from Roberta Leighton as the perky Liza Williams, Cliff Emmich as bumbling overweight deputy Lester, Jason Evers as the nefarious Dr. Elliott Snow, and Bert Freed as crusty CEO Papa Jack. It's just a shame that this movie never quite obtains the essential punch that in turn would give it a more substantial impact. As it is, this flick ain't half bad, but it could (and should) have been ever better.

What starts off well with some very colorful underwater photography becomes a non thrilling bore. This quickly disinigrates into a stereotypical conspiracy of greed as a coastal community is terrorized by giant man eating fish and even bigger man eating men. The proprietor of a local factory is upset by the present of college age ecologists who discover that the toxic waters are unhealthy, and eventually, it's discovered that it is in more ways than one. We get to see the effects of the toxidity of the local plants not only through attacks on humans but the sudden presence of gutted marine life found on the coast which reveals that there is something terrifying out there.

One-dimensional characters, either extremely noble or extremely evil, populate this film, and the subplot involving a drug produced by the factory that ends up in the food source of the community, begins a mind control theory involving the lack of the nutrients in the food that not only the humans eat but the barracudas and marine life as well. To prevent the secret of what is going on inside the factory, those under control of whatever they are consuming, officials turn to acts of violence which backfires on the factory owner.

Then there's that sound effect trying to pass off as a musical score that becomes really irritating after a while. This community may be able to be controlled, but the viewer has other options then to be manipulated by another hideously ridiculous 70's combination of science fiction, horror and political thriller that turns it's townsfolk into the walking dead, that is if they don't get eaten up by the barracudas or die from boredom from watching films like this.

Barracuda accomplishes a miracle. It goes from a movie that bored me senseless at the beginning to one that had me riveted at the end. That's a pretty incredible feat. It's also a time capsule of the post-Watergate emotions of 1978 while also taking huge bits out of the script for Jaws.

Now, compared to piranha, great white sharks and killer whales, barracudas don't seem so terrifying. According to Wikipedia, "Like sharks, some species of barracuda are reputed to be dangerous to swimmers. Barracudas are scavengers, and may mistake snorkellers for large predators, following them hoping to eat the remains of their prey. Swimmers have reported being bitten by barracuda, but such incidents are rare and possibly caused by poor visibility." That's hardly the ringing endorsement for their potential for carnage.

It all starts out with some promise, as some barracuda digest some swimmers and leave behind a bloody hand. Awesome. Show us more.

Nope - you have to wait a half an hour for more barracuda before we get to the real plot of this film - a top secret government experiment (I love that this film rips off Piranha, which was ripping off Jaws, making this film fish a bottom feeder) leads to barracuda going out of control, but they are really there to make everyone in town hypoglycemic so that they can control the whole town.

Seriously, the last half an hour of this film becomes a conspiracy movie where every single person in the town who could get the story to the public is murdered by men in black, including the two heroes who are gunned down in slow motion.

The underwater scenes were directed by the film's star, Wayne Crawford, who is also in Sometimes Aunt Martha Does Dreadful Things and HBO favorite Jake Speed. In fact, he was Jake Speed! The land-based director is Harry Kerwin, who also brought you God's Bloody Acre.

The town's doctor is played by Jason Evers from The Brain that Wouldn't Die. The town's deputy? Cliff Emmich, who played Haddonfield Memorial Hospital security guard Bernard Garrett in Halloween 2. The sheriff? It's William Kerwin, who in addition to being the director's brother, is also the voice that warns viewers of how much violence they are about to see in just about every Herschell Gordon Lewis movie. Finally, Papa Jack, the owner of the town's manufacturing plant, is played by Bert Freed, who was the police chief in the original Invaders from Mars and Ben Golden in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? He was also the first actor to play Columbo, acting as the gumshoe in a 1960 episode of The Chevy Mystery Show eight years before Peter Falk ever donned his famous trenchcoat.

I was totally prepared to hate this movie, but by the end, I was charmed by its left field turn into conspiracy and darkness. Man, the 1970's were really a rough time to be alive.

I still remember sneaking downstairs one June evening when I was about 12, watching the tail end of Johnny Carson and then managing quite by chance to catch BARRACUDA on The Late Show. This would have been in about 1979, and amazingly three scenes stuck with me for the ensuing 28 years: A cute young chick in her swimsuit (identified as one Jill Shakoor, who was cute enough for me to have a crush on all summer after seeing it that one time) playing fetch with her dog in the surf before finding a severed human head, a nauseating roadside diner lunch consisting of fried fish with the eyes still intact (echoes of CHINATOWN, maybe), and the predictably nihilistic paranoid 70s ending where the two heroes are blown away in slow motion by a legion of crooked state troopers.

If you think I just gave away the whole movie rest assured that there's a LOT more going on here than meets the eye, even on a threadbare budget that barely afforded a dune buggy for the hero to drive around in during the big climax. As a matter of fact, this movie has a bit of everything: JAWS ripoff, environmental "nature strikes back" thriller, a newspaper investigative editor on the trail of a hot scoop, government corruption intrigue, a few girls in swimsuits, PG rated but still somewhat gory barracuda attacks, a doctor who may be mixed up in a military chemical warfare experiment, men in black government assassins with chirping silencer equipped pistols, intriguing underwater photography, a greedy chemical plant owner with a somewhat retarded son, goons menacing people with shotguns, a touch of summer love romance, and an amusing parade of late 70s fashions & hairstyles that is exemplified by the hero's striped rugby shirt -- remember those?

Nearly 30 years later now I managed to track down a foreign language subtitled VHS of the film and was pleasantly amused to find out that while BARRACUDA is a home-brew vanity project of sorts (written in part by Wayne Crawford, directed in part by Wayne Crawford, produced in part by Wayne Crawford, and starring Wayne Crawford under his clever early years screen name of Wayne David Crawford, who is still at it these days with favorites like 2002's SNAKE ISLAND) it's actually a pretty competent little low budget "Regional Horror" effort made in and around Pompano Beach, Florida, that managed to anticipate THE X-FILES 20 years before Chris Carter debuted his creation, including an ominous electronic synthesizer music score by Klaus Schulze. Someone had their thinking cap on when they wrote this.

We get the scruffy looking post-doctorate grad school teacher marine biologist hero-type trying to get to the bottom of a mystery of why the local barracuda population has suddenly turned to attacking humans, teaming up with a reluctant local sheriff (Hershel Gordon Lewis favorite William Kerwin), the requisite Fat Cop deputy (longtime supporting heavy favorite Cliff Emmich), the sheriff's sweetie pie 19 year old daughter (Roberta Leighton, looking fresh), and the local newspaper editorial staff (Wayne Hackett, along with future gay porn actor Scott Avery as his, ahem, assistant) with the town doctor (the late Jason Evers, whom Star Trek: TOS fans will recognize as Scalosian leader Rael from "Wink of an Eye") implicated by shady connections to the mystery which -- get this -- involves creating a "hypoglycemic condition" within the townspeople via the chemical waste produced by the corrupt chemical plant owner (ubiquitous bad-guy expert Bert Freed in another priceless role) that is really the front for a government run chemical warfare experiment on creating hostility & disorder within a civilian population.

In other words the movie has almost too much going on, with the at times gruesome barracuda attacks just a red herring to involve viewers in a mystery that explains itself from the back to the front: Events in the final ten minutes cast ominous light over actions from the body of the film which seem at the time to have little bearing over the story (people arguing for no reason, a seeming addiction to bottled water, the doctor doling out odd looking blue tablets for the slightest ailment), but by the time the pieces all fall into place the heroes have been effectively condemned by their mounting paranoia, with only one possible conclusion.

So here's a movie who's ideas are actually bigger than the production itself. The cinematography is rather pedestrian with no real grabber moments -- aside from the three big barracuda attacks, which occur at roughly 20 minute intervals -- and none of the acting will make anyone forget about Brando's monologue about nearly being a contender. A couple of the sequences are lifted directly from JAWS, most notably a dinner table discussion followed by late night scuba mission that is as close to plagiarism as it gets. But the story being told is convoluted enough to help the film amount to more than the sum of it's parts, and rewards patient viewers with a taste for regional low budget horror with something that's quite out of the ordinary ... in spite of how ordinary it appears to be.

7/10

Underwhelming thriller is really not what the viewer thinks it's going to be. They'll think this is another of the various knock-offs that proliferated after "Jaws" became a sensation. Well, the title fish really don't have much to do in this ecologically conscious tale. Sure, they kill a FEW people, but never become that much of an issue. Instead, what this film does is get bogged down in a landlocked conspiracy plot. This plot involves a chemical company dumping its waste into the ocean, affecting the marine life, but there's more going on than that. It turns out, the PEOPLE are getting affected too. Young marine biologist Mike Canfield (Wayne Crawford, who also co-wrote the story and screenplay, co-produced, and supervised the underwater photography) teams up with local sheriff Ben Williams (William Kerwin, familiar to any fan of the Herschell Gordon Lewis classics "Blood Feast" and "Two Thousand Maniacs!") to probe the mystery, while nothing terribly interesting ever happens. Not even the barracuda attacks are that thrilling. For a B movie there's a better than average supporting cast, including Jason Evers ("The Brain That Wouldn't Die"), Cliff Emmich ("Payday"), Roberta Leighton ("Stripes"), and Bert Freed ("Paths of Glory"). The luscious Leighton is easy to watch, but what's going to stupefy the audience is seeing her throw herself at the not particularly attractive Crawford and seeing him show little interest! Evers is mostly okay - he is a veteran, after all - but when it comes time for him to emote, he can't pull it off. Director / co-writer / co-producer Harry Kerwin just can't seem to build up any real dramatic tension, despite the efforts of composer Klaus Schulze, who gives this thing a better music score than it deserves. Viewers may still be able to appreciate the last second twist ending, which concludes the story on a very downbeat note. Too bad the balance of the movie isn't that effective. Five out of 10.