Director William Grefé on 'Mako: The Jaws of Death' (1976)

Mako: The Jaws of Death

One Sheet 1976

Swamp Things: Attack of the Giant Leeches (1959)

Cannibalism, Savagery, and Unconditional Love: Jack Hill's Spider Baby (1968)

The Alamo Drafthouse Ritz, 320 E. Sixth Street in downtown Austin, presents Mako: The Jaws of Death as its "Weird Wednesday" selection as part of "Shark Week," tonight, Wednesday August 4th at 11:55 p.m.

Writer-producer-director William Grefé has been making exploitation pictures since 1963, primarily in South Florida. Among his credits are Wild Rebels (1967) starring pop singer Steve Alaimo, The Naked Zoo (1970) with Rita Hayworth, and Impulse (1974) with William Shatner. He is also the subject of a documentary, They Came from the Swamp: The Films of William Grefé.

In 1975, after the massive box office success of Jaws, Grefé was first in the water, leading the wave of films that followed in the wake of Steven Spielberg's blockbuster with his film Mako: The Jaws of Death.

"Weird Wednesday" programmer Lars Nilsen describes the plot of Mako:

"Richard Jaeckel plays a weird nature-loving guy in South Florida who has a psychic link with sharks. When he finds out they're being exploited by scumbag scientists who conduct illegal experiments on them, he decides to take a bite out of crime. More a portrait of Jaeckel's obsessive oddball than a shark movie at all, Mako: The Jaws of Death has a lot of the steamy pulp energy that characterizes Florida movies. Everyone is covered with a thin layer of sweat and grime and most of the plot logic seems to have been boiled out of the mixture. With foxy Jennifer Bishop as one of those mermaids in a tank, Harold 'Oddjob' Sakata and Milton 'Butterball' Smith as 'Butter'".

Also in the cast is Grefé (and Peckinpah) regular John Davis Chandler as Charlie, a nasty shark-poachin' no-goodnik. An underappreciated, idiosyncratic, and brilliant character actor who specialized in playing creeps and killers, Chandler passed away earlier this year.

In this exclusive interview, William Grefé spoke to the Austin Classic Movies Examiner from his home in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

Austin Classic Movies Examiner: How did Mako: The Jaws of Death come about?
William Grefé: I had directed all the shark sequences in Live and Let Die, the James Bond film, and I had done Stanley [about killer snakes], and it had done so well, that I went ahead and wrote a treatment for Mako: Jaws of Death, but I couldn't get any financing for it. And then Spielberg comes out with Jaws [in 1975], and all of a sudden, it's a shark frenzy...and the distributors and professional investors who had seen my storyline wanted to capitalize on the popularity of Spielberg's movie, and I got the money immediately. Everybody thought I had ripped off Jaws, but I had actually written it three years earlier.

A.C.M.E: What's the proper title of the movie?
W.G.: Mako: The Jaws of Death. It was also released in some places as The Jaws of Death.

A.C.M.E: Where'd you make the movie?
W.G.: Fort Lauderdale, Miami, and we did all of our underwater work in Bimini in the Bahamas.

A.C.M.E: Richard Jaeckel is great in the film. What was it like working with him?
W.G.: He was honestly the most professional, most perpared actor I've ever worked with. The guy was 100% pro. As you know, he was in every scene in the movie, and in the entire time we shot, he only blew one line, which is unheard of. That's why he kept working, he was such a professional. I mean, he was in every war movie ever made, practically: The Dirty Dozen, The Sands of Iwo Jima...The very first day on the set, he split his head open, was rushed to the emergency room, got like eight or ten stitches, then came back to the set and insisted on working. That's the kind of pro he was.
A.C.M.E: The video quality is not the greatest on the DVD releases that are out there. Any chance of a deluxe widescreen edition?
W.G.: There's been some negotiations on that. It's in the works, but it hasn't been finalized, as far as getting the original negative and making a crisp, clean transfer of it.

A.C.M.E: Is there any chance of doing a personal appearance at the Alamo with some of your films?
W.G.: Lars Nilsen of the Alamo Drafthouse has invited me to come to Austin to show Impulse with William Shatner, and also Stanley, which is a real classic Grindhouse film. I'm supposed to come out in November, so hopefully I'll see everybody in Austin then.

Subscribe to the Austin Classic Movies Examiner HERE.

Your comments, suggestions, and requests are welcome.