To me, this movie is perfection.

Absolutely Fantastic

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

The original working and first release title (co-feature with "Witch Mountain") by Buena Vista was "Secrets Of Jamaica Reef".Cheryl Ladd was credited as Cheryl Stoppelmoor, because that was her name when working on the film. She met David Ladd -=on=- this film and married (after his divorce) later! Not that the film is any better for it, but the original was almost totally filmed on location in Jamaica. It was 'spiced up' with later 'additions' such as those commented upon by the first review.Daily'd, Sync'd and Edited in Jamaica.JA - Production Sound Mixer

I own a G-rated alternate cut of this film entitled "The Treasure of Jamaica Reef;" I watched it and found it to be a very pleasant and enjoyable diversion. A motley assortment of intrepid and adventurous divers who include Stephen Boyd as the laid-back leader, a pre-"Charlie's Angels" Cheryl Ladd as the token feisty hottie chick, the hulking Rosey Grier as a gregarious steamboat captain and Darby Hinton as a brash young kid go searching in the Caribbean sea for a sunken Spanish galleon which contains a fortune in gold coins. Naturally, finding said galleon and retrieving the coins proves to be an extremely difficult and challenging task.Virginia Stone's snappy direction, working from J.A.S. McCombie's lively, colorful script, keeps the nonstop pace hurtling along throughout, maintains a charmingly breezy'n'easy goofy tone, elicits spirited performances from an amiable cast, and stages several stirring action set pieces with considerable panache (a rousing car chase, some rough'n'tumble fisticuffs and a thrilling beat-the-clock rescue operation are the definite highlights). The lovely, picturesque widescreen cinematography (the underwater photography is especially breathtaking and impressive), the gorgeous Jamiacan locations, Christopher Stone's bouncy score, and the spectacular sight of the tiny, delectable Ms. Ladd in a skimpy bikini further add to the infectiously frothy merriment. An engagingly silly and good-natured piece of lightweight fluff.

This was released on a widescreen VHS tape by Anchor Bay a few years back, and if you're a fan of silly, slowly-paced, violent 70's films, you may find it to be fun.This is a fairly standard treasure hunt film in which some decent people decide to photocopy a supposedly cursed map ("If there was a curse, it could hardly go through a copy machine," the narrator confidently explains) and go looking for the sunken cache of gold. Nice underwater footage of rotting old boats, sharks, coral, and various kinds of grody sea scum. It seems that the diving footage was captured first, and the script then written around it; the film subsequently made with actors wearing diving suits that matched those of the divers in the original footage. At least, that's what it looks like to me. If that is the case, it's pulled off fairly well.Film is notable, or maybe not, for its 70's-style mean-spirited violence, which provides for some fairly graphic and shocking moments, including sharks munching on a girl, and a face burned on a barbecue. This was before sophisticated gore effects were in vogue, and so most of the violence is achieved with simple makeup and bright red opaque 70's blood poured all over the place. The intent to startle is clearly there.As mentioned in another review, there is a G-rated cut of the film available, in case you'd like to see the treasure-hunt stuff without the gruesome, gory violence. This shorter cut isn't too bad either!Not high art, but it's not a bad movie, really, just a bit of low-budget exploitation.

A cobbled together non-film, which ranks as one of the most tedious 75 minutes I have ever spent.The story, for what its worth, concerns a cop who comes into the possession of a cursed treasure map - he takes a vacation and jets off to the Caribbean to try and find the sunken treasure.There may be more to the plot than this, but it would be impossible to tell from watching this utter shambles of a film - the increasingly random and meaningless scenes are tenuously held together by voice-over explanations. Arbitrary underwater footage is used whenever the stitched together dialogue scenes go off at too great a tangent.The search for the treasure totters along until the spare footage runs out and we have the cop returning to his desk delivering some banal story wrap-up.Don't misunderstand me, I am a lover of rubbish films, but 'Evil in the Deep' doesn't even register on my scale as a film in the proper sense - there is no characterisation, no dialogue of any consequence, no continuity, no token nudity, no nothing ! ! Even Cheryl Ladd (billed as Cheryl Stoppelmoor) in a bikini can't save this from sinking like a brick.As the video cover states - "Rips your Nerves to Shreds" - too right! I was a gibbering wreck after being subjected to this water torture. I can't figure out how to quantify just how bad this film is, but 'Jaws IV The Revenge' is at least 10 times better.