Roger Corman - She Gods of Shark Reef

After collecting the lobby cards to this movie for years now I decided to buy the DVD. Got it on ebay for $10.

I haven't watched it in SEVERAL years and I was really surprised. Shot on location in Kauai this flick has some great footage. Wardrobe by Shaheen, even the skimpy frock that the men are stuck with, for all the ladies.

Nice shots of hula dancing, the hideous stone tiki god in the water and the beautiful wahines sailing along in their outriggers. One of the best scenes has one of the gals stabbing sharks in the waters off of the island. All in Corman style. The island is populated by female pearl divers.

You guys have got to check this out.

Thanks for the tip Killiki. I just picked up the DVD for $10.00 on ebay.
The cover alone was worth the price.
Chongolio

I found about 6 smaller lobby cards from "She Gods" in N. carolina of all places, and KICK myself for only buying one!

I've wondered if it could be as good as the lobby card looks, so thank for the tip!

Kentiki

Thanks for the tip. Roger Corman is great. His films have that cool, campy 1950s style. "Highway Dragnet" is a favorite of mine.

Found this DVD at my local used bookstore for $5. A classic cheesy movie! My only complaint...I thought the women would be dressed more scantily, based on the cover art! :)

Two complaints: There were only a few quick shots of the sunken tiki. (No wonder the gods on the island were pissed!)

Dude, you're gettin' a Tiki!

[ Edited by: TikiMikey on 2003-03-12 22:59 ]

As I only really became obsessed with all things Tiki after

1. most all things Tiki became 'spensive
2. I became mostly broke

I am not rich in Tiki. Yet. Do have a nice rattan bar, and a few mugs, etc...one day, though, I am going to create The Film Noir Tiki Lounge.

This is because one thing I did acquire a lot of back when I was a bit more, er, solvent or whatever, was vintage noir POSTERS. I did make exceptions, genre-wise:

It just had to go over the bar.

Movie's a lot of fun, too. "Hideous stone god," yeah!

[ Edited by: tikivixen on 2003-03-13 00:01 ]

Tiki_Kiliki, me picked up She God of Shark Reef from ebay for 6 coconuts. Cris good, Lee bad! But Lee Hot! Me cry at end of movie. Shark God happy! Thanks for puttin me in the know! - Dawn

Greetings all ye who keel at the altar of Tiki and the B-movie. Yes...Tiki and B-movie are, in case you didn't know, cousins. In fact I could sware that Roger Corman and Don the Beachcomber and/or Trader Vic were probably fraternity brothers at one of those Brylcreem colleges out in SoCal of the late 50s/early 60s.

Next time your watching 'Caged Heat', 'Rock & Roll High School' or my personal favorite 'The Trip' mix yourself a nice Mai-Tai, hit play on the DVD (hooked up to your stereo is recommended) and enjoy the trancendental experience that most people might only attain by studying some eastern religion.

(I know Corman wasn't tied into 'Easy Rider' but you know Mr. Hopper must have studied him. With that said I'd just like to steal a quote from Peter Fonda from said biker film: "Hey man...I'm just gettin' my thing together")

Mahalo :drink:

[ Edited by: donhonyc on 2003-03-19 22:20 ]

By the way, this movie is public domain and is available for free download at Archive.org.

..and if you want to own it you will find this dvd and so much more at this site

http://www.oldies.com

oh yeah, you can also get the t-shirt with the movie artwork on it at this site as well....

at least i thought they had it,,but you can get the poster and the dvd is only $5.95

[ Edited by: Tipsy McStagger 2007-08-23 12:52 ]

[ Edited by: Tipsy McStagger 2007-08-23 12:55 ]

On 2007-08-23 12:51, Tipsy McStagger wrote:
..and if you want to own it you will find this dvd and so much more at this site

You gettin' a cut of the DVD sales, Tipsy?...:wink:

I have mentioned this before, and now, since,( although I got to squeeze in about a hundred images more into Tiki Modern than are in the Book of Tiki,) I STILL did not have enough room to get in all THESE Tiki Trivia below....without further ado, behold the visual history of: The "Hideous Stone God"!!!:

The title, AND the subtitle of this movie are really THE classic South Seas FILM TITLE per se, I mean they are perfect Polynesian Pop poetry. Unfortunately, (for us Tiki addicts), Mr.Hideous Stone God only makes a brief appearance in the film, in the oh-so-exciting "Tangaroa's virgin sacrificed-to-the-shark-god" scene:

...not tooo quick of an appearance though to jog my photographic Tiki memory to identify the bugger as the smooth operator in the background of Martin Denny's classic "Forbidden Island" record cover:

...which then of course meant that he also was the Tiki companion to the slightly less hip Mills Brothers on this cover:

...and last not least, the lucky bystander in THIS classic piece of Polynesian Pop cheescake! (which actually DID end up in Tiki Modern, I am happy to say):

This fellow obviously was a favorite rental item from some Hollywood prop house (I have the suspicion it was ROSHU) because he was probably cheap and lightweight. Well, to us, Mr. Hideous Stone God is a heavyweight of Polynesian Pop now!

Please report any further sightings of Mr. Hideous Stone God to this thread!

[ Edited by: bigbrotiki 2007-08-24 16:58 ]

On 2007-08-23 15:17, bigbrotiki wrote:
...the slightly less hip Mills Brothers...

I was about to protest this, but on reflection I guess as "hip" goes, and with the comparison being to Martin Denny, I'll refrain. Oh, those Mills Brothers though. "Pops" from the fireplace logs intermixing with the occasional scratch on the record (you often couldn't tell them apart) as Donald sings, smooth as silk, "two drifters, off to see the world, there's such a lot of world to see..." over Dad's cabinet stereo (which vibrates on every bass note). What great material to expose a youngster to.

OK, sorry about the digression from the topic at hand. That is a great album though. Mills Brothers; Hawaiian songs; tiki on the album cover ... one's cup runneth over.

I find that many of these sorts of DVDs from oldies.com are good just as little 5" x 7" visual pieces in themselves -- the DVD covers, that is, while frankly the movies they contain are often, well...

I kind of go into this here:
http://www.tikicentral.com/viewtopic.php?topic=23748&forum=6
where I list the results of some informal "research" along these lines.

A few of the DVD covers, in addition to She Gods of Shark Reef, actually have tikis on them; two examples are
Omoo-Omoo: The Shark God; image: http://www.oldies.com/product-view/5301D.html
and
Wild Women Double Feature: Bowanga, Bowanga (1941) / Devil Monster (1946); image:
http://www.oldies.com/product-view/5267D.html

I only have / have seen Omoo... and the tiki they put on the DVD cover is a misrepresentation of what is actually in the movie, a much less interesting (and poorly lit) idol. Still, great DVD cover I think.

Oldies sells laminated posters, such as of She Gods..., as well as of Creature From The Haunted Sea:
http://www.oldies.com/product-view/4009PL.html , an unbearably bad movie with a great poster.

On 2007-08-23 17:00, Thomas wrote:
I was about to protest this, but on reflection I guess as "hip" goes, and with the comparison being to Martin Denny, I'll refrain.

I also LOVE the Mills Brothers! My dad was a German Swingboy. "Paper Doll","Glow Worm","Till Then"...aaaah...I'll put them on right now! But on that cover, they appear as the personification of WHY Tiki and Polynesian pop was wiped out by the young set of the 60s and 70s: Silly, aloha garb costumed old farts only fit to entertain senior citizens. ---This is not a value judgment mind you, just an objective observation of history!

One more thing, in case anyone wonders why Mr. Hideous Stone God appears so small in the first two film stills:
Since he was a Hollywood prop, the underwater scenes were probably shot in a studio water tank, (not on Kauai), with him being outside, BEHIND the tank, while the actors dived through the glass tank in the foreground like aquarium fishies. He must have been out of plaster or fiberglass, not something to drop into water if you don't wanna buy it...and Corman would not have wanted to!

PS.: One more thought: I bet Corman expected the "Idol" to look bigger, but had to concede with the distancing effect of the water tank....making it sort of an early version of the famous low budget Stonehenge scene in "Spinal Tap"! :)

Roger Corman ? Check out Bucket Of Blood .

That's him. One of my first jobs in Hollywood was driving the grip truck and generator for a Corman low budget Malibu beach flick named "Hardbodies"...which the crew affectionately re-named into "Dogbodies", because the budget was so low that they could not afford better models!

[ Edited by: bigbrotiki 2007-08-23 18:36 ]

On 2007-08-23 17:15, Thomas wrote:
A few of the DVD covers, in addition to She Gods of Shark Reef, actually have tikis on them; two examples are
Omoo-Omoo: The Shark God; image: http://www.oldies.com/product-view/5301D.html
and
Wild Women Double Feature: Bowanga, Bowanga (1941) / Devil Monster (1946); image:
http://www.oldies.com/product-view/5267D.html

I only have / have seen Omoo... and the tiki they put on the DVD cover is a misrepresentation of what is actually in the movie, a much less interesting (and poorly lit) idol. Still, great DVD cover I think.

I checked out those covers, and I am 99% certain that the Tikis on those covers are post-Tiki revival additions by the DVD company to market these oldies specifically to us Tikiphiles....I think they were clipped from some Kona City of Refugee photos.

[ Edited by: bigbrotiki 2007-08-23 19:17 ]