Omoo-Omoo the Shark God (1949)

Highly Overrated But Still Good

From my favorite movies..

Am i the only one who thinks........Average?

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

Saturday afternoon matinées were filled with Z grade bunk like this, and with a temporary end to the Tarzan series, Jungle Jim and Bomba would take their place. But, there are 52 Saturdays in a year, so there had to be more than those films, the Bowery Boys and various Z grade westerns to get the young juvenile crowd in. So Abbott and Costello, Ma and Pa Kettle and Francis the Talking Mule had a predecessor to their screening along with the last of the comedy shorts and serials, these otherwise un-bookable third tier films would never have seen the light of day.Made with a low budget that couldn't have topped $50,000, this comes from a poverty row studio that I had never even heard of up until now yet starring actors I was fairly familiar with, this is silliness taken to the max, the often "uh oh, there goes the neighborhood" theme of greedy civilized explorers out to hunt pearls and wild life without regards to the islanders whose lives they turn upside down. This was done so much better and on higher budgets (in color) featuring such lovelies as Dorothy Lamour, Maria Montez and Yvonne de Carlo, who while not acting school graduates, offered sincere (or at least campy) performances. The same cannot be said for vixen Devera Burton who has the drama education equivalence of Acquanetta.Plenty of stock jungle footage as old as Trader Horn is used to show the wildlife of the jungle, so if the kids weren't being entertained, at least they got a crash course in biology. I've seen a ton worse than this among the Z programmers and it gave me a few laughs. So an hour was worth it, and in coming from public domain DVD king Alpha Video, the price was right as well.

Imagine my shock to learn that this film was based on a Herman Melville novel. I checked into Wikipedia and learned that Omoo-Omoo The Shark God was a sequel novel to Melville's first published work Typee. The film adaption of Typee was nothing to write home about. But next to this it is Citizen Kane. I'm sure the book was nothing like what we get here.Now if you said this was an Edgar Allan Poe story I might believe it better. A schooner bound for the South Seas is on a mission to recover two stolen black pearls that Captain Trevor Bardette stashed before he could get away. Those black babies were the eyes of the native Shark God, Omoo-Omoo. And Omoo-Omoo has tossed some mighty bad karma in the direction of Bardette and later his daughter Devera Burton.Ron Randell one of the crew of Bardette's schooner has made friends with Chief Pedro DeCordoba and he's working to recover the pearls without a finder's fee, just a chance to get away alive and with Ms. Burton. But the rest of that crew wants those pearls.I can only imagine what Herman Melville would have thought of this. This one is cheap all around. No color which would have been a must for a story set in the South Seas. The players looked pained delivering the dialog probably because it was so bad and because they were worried their salary checks might not clear. Lots of stock footage from various jungle films used and some shots from an aquarium no doubt.Probably they had no shark footage so a tiger which we all know is native to the Pacific Islands is brought in to do the shark god's dirty work.Don't criticize Ed Wood for making bad films before you see this.

A ship heads to Tahiti in order to recover some hidden pearls. The captain of the ship is sick, a native stowaway insisting that the illness is tied to the captains stealing of two huge black pearls that were the eyes of the natives' shark god statue. Its greed, romance and spliced in nature footage as some of the crew seek to make things right while others are looking for the treasure. Nominally based on a Herman Melville story this is mostly a concoction of Hollywood story telling with a Bengal tiger figuring prominently into the story (wasn't this about a shark god?).Creaky set bound film best known for its unique title rather than for any quality or lack there of. Neither good nor bad the film just sort of is. It's the type of thing that one used to run across at 3am on the Late and then half remember in the daylight. In this case it's the sort of thing that you remember the title of because it sounds so silly. Worth a look only if you need to know what is hidden behind the legendary title of the film. All others are advised to look elsewhere. (and if you do pick this up with the intention of doing so make sure its part of one of the numerous multi-film packs that it appears in so you get maximum bang for your buck)

Oh, Man, talk about the effect of advertising. Apparently, all that you have to do to enjoy box office succes is title your movie after a revered 19th century novel. Horrendous acting, directing, and cinematography in this sham of an effort.