So I had a bit of a movie marathon last night and I watched two of the 70's set, this being the second one. I again had a moment where I wanted horror and I leafed through my description booklet, remembering that one movie said something about a shark or a haunted ship or something. I am going to have to go back and reread the description to this, because I seriously thought it said anything about sharks or ghosts or ANYTHING, but there was none in this movie.
Instead, Treasure of the Jamaican Reef is about a group of people that go out treasure hunting in, you guessed it, the Jamaican Reef. Cheryl Ladd of Charlie's Angels stars as part of the gang made up of pretty random-ass people also including ex-football star Rosey Grier. They head out to the beautiful waters searching for their bounty, and gather up their snorkeling and scuba gear to hit the warm waters. And in the warm waters they stay.
Seriously at least 50-60% of this movie take place underwater. And I'll say, it looks fucking amazing. Given this said shark (I swear it said it somewhere) and given the creepiness of the underwater barges and ships and stuff, I was genuinely interested in this for quite a while. We see amazing documentation of the ships, and the narration in the film provides a nice backdrop for "what they're doing" which I wouldn't have known otherwise. Seriously, watching this I felt like I learned a lot about how one might find and excavate an underwater ship, and they use all sorts of marking techniques, technology, and other stuff to search for the treasure.
In the meantime, they're followed by a small group of baddies who don't get enough screen time to be memorable and who promptly die still a ways away from the end. Also, there's a bit about storm and a missing buoy and a crashed airplane, none of which are big subjects, but merely touched on in this film as it flies by without a care in the world.
I'd say this was high budget by the looks of it. On this DVD set it is the only film which has been preserved in 2.39 to 1 scope formatting, and easily the best looking of any film in the set. The audio is another story, as the levels jump all over the place, and there's many times you won't have a clue as to what they're saying as the water swells, the ship rocks, and their words become random nonsense carried off by the wind.
I did like the underwater scenes, the highly detailed tracking of the gold, and hell even the acting is good. This would make the ultimate weed movie, cause it's highly entertaining and yet has no significant plot at all. Nothing really happens per say in the entire length of this thing, but it's still fun enough, and there's even a nice sense of tension in the early water scenes if you think a shark might be coming. I stopped hoping for a shark 50 minutes in, I remember. I will give this 4 stars. Fuck it right?
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