Caine (Burt Reynolds) is a stranded gunrunner stuck in a small port on the Red Sea. Looking for a way out of his financial and logistical nightmare, he crosses paths with an alluring woman named Anna (Silvia Pinal). Anna and her associate proposition Caine to take on a diving expedition into treacherous, shark-infested waters.
While Anna initially pitches the gig as a routine marine research dive, Caine quickly wises up to the truth: they are actually after a sunken treasure. Seeing a golden opportunity to recoup the losses from his forfeited cargo, Caine jumps right in. But down in the deep, nobody can be trusted, setting off a ruthless chain reaction of double-crosses among a crew of characters who are all looking out exclusively for number one.
Based on Victor Canning’s 1955 novel His Bones are Coral, the project was steered by legendary maverick director Samuel Fuller (The Naked Kiss, Shock Corridor). When Fuller came aboard, he completely overhauled the script (originally titled Caine), shaping it into a cynical morality play about deeply amoral characters. Fuller famously noted that he loved the narrative structure because the hero was actually a heavy, the girl was a heavier heavy and everyone turned out to be completely corrupt.
However, the production’s history off-screen became even wilder than the fiction. During the nine-week shoot in Manzanillo, Mexico (standing in for the Sudan), rumors began swirling that a stuntman named José Marco had been fatally attacked on camera by a shark that broke through protective netting. This supposed tragedy even generated a sensational photo spread in Life magazine.
Yet, subsequent investigations by dive publications and marine experts—including biologist Richard Ellis—exposed the whole thing as a sensationalized hoax utilizing a drugged grey shark and plenty of stage ketchup. Despite the dubious claims, the studio capitalized on the controversy by slapping the exclamation-pointed title Shark! onto the picture.
The trouble didn’t stop on set. Fuller supervised the editing in Mexico City, only to have his cut taken away and re-edited by Herbert L. Strock without his permission. Disgusted with the studio-tampered theatrical version, Fuller demanded his name be removed from the credits—a request the producers flatly refused.
Following its initial theatrical run, the film received a notable push when Hallmark re-released it in 1975 under the alternative title Man-Eater. Capitalizing on the massive cultural phenomenon of Jaws, the marketing heavily leaned back into the sensationalized, debunked stuntman death rumors to lure thrill-seekers into theaters.
