Shock Waves (1977)
Brooke Adams is Rose, our female lead – a sort of Karen Allen lookalike, who just about fulfills the movie’s obligatory bikini/cleavage quota. She is discovered floating in a dinghy, somewhere in the Caribbean, by a father and son fishing vessel. The tale is then frustratingly narrated in bookends by her, foolishly robbing the movie of much of its uncertainty and suspense. Why on earth this particular narrative structure ever took off is beyond me. It’s generally slow-paced, and takes about 40 minutes to really get going, but at a mere 85 minutes, you’ll be grateful that Shock Waves doesn’t waste a great deal of time.
Flashing back *sigh*, we meet bitter old sea captain on borrowed time, Ben (John Carradine), and the good-looking, incredible-haired Robert Redford-esque (again) navigator, Keith (Luke Halpin). Dreadful acting ensues, by used car salesman and uppity husband, Norm (who we pray gets butchered early), his wife, Beverly, Ronald Shusett double and drunkard cook with a necktie geezer, Dobbs, and Chuck – a wisecracking Billy Crystal mated with John McEnroe meets James Caan impersonator, medallion and tighty whities wearer, and coconut tree climber extraordinaire. A sinisterly scarred, luger-toting, SS Commander, Peter Cushing, is the elderly island occupant who warns of, “Danger in the water.”
Although the slow-moving, or should I say marching, Todeskorps – relentless, Nazi sea-zombies, somehow still functioning after all these years, are fairly mighty foes and can kick and smash their way through rickety old fences, their Achilles heel lies when their SS-issue goggles are removed, leaving them totally blind and stumbling into shrubbery, before collapsing and suddenly rotting in the blink of an eye.
Shock Waves certainly has a notable Jaws influence, with its deep underwater POV shots observing potential victims from the depths. It’s a handy, if derivative, technique and elicits immediate suspense. The tense, pulsing synth score, and downright freaky imagery of the underwater undead, lurking, as our characters are trekking through the jungle occasionally hits the desired mark. Although the watery tension is somewhat effective, there’s no real gore to speak of as the Todeskorps simply drown you. The film eventually descends into a simplistic stalk and kill exercise, as the thinly-drawn pawns are predictably picked off one by one as Death Corps fodder.
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