Underwater photography is the true star of The Treasure of Jamaica Reef, a pleasingly tame action-adventure about San Diego professionals who quit their day jobs to go hunting for rumored sunken gold in the Caribbean. The guys are played by The Oscar’s Stephen Boyd, future MGM exec David Ladd and a Wolfman Jack-bearded Chuck Woolery, right before achieving fame on the tube as the host of a new game show called Wheel of Fortune. Rounding out the quartet is a feisty blonde named Zappy (Cheryl Ladd, then Stoppelmoor and three years from joining Charlie’s Angels).
First-time director Virginia L. Stone (Run If You Can) takes an A-to-Z, near-documentary approach on getting our heroes to the ocean — for example, showing them negotiating to buy an old truck shaped like a wine barrel. Along the way they meet surfer-dude teen Darby (Darby Hinton, Malibu Express), who aids them in a chase in which Zappy hangs onto the luggage rack of a thief’s speeding car, and teddy-bear boat captain Rosie Grier (Skyjacked), who does not.
By the time the team is piloting small-prop planes and surveying the ocean floor from the comfort of a glass-bottomed raft, it hit me: The Treasure of Jamaica Reef plays as if based on the Fisher-Price Adventure People toy line, perhaps from a 9-year-old’s thunked-up outline. It’s certainly that sexless, with Mrs. Ladd in not only an overly modest bikini, but the same bikini day to day to day. As her character’s name hints, Zappy is presented as more kid sister than sex object, with Stone’s camera more interested in what lies beneath sea level. Unlike most B movies, Reef’s underwater footage is neither muddy, stock nor faked, so at the very least, viewers can appreciate local flavor galore.
When Jaws busted blocks the next year, the producers presumably kicked themselves for not having sharks in their film. Wrangling Boyd back, they shot bookends that graft a new plot of a cursed treasure map, and added some gore, some sex and, most importantly, some sharks. The resulting waterlogged mess was rechristened Evil in the Deep. No word if, per the poster, anyone’s nerves were ripped to shreds, but the 2.0 ending is an absolute hoot. —Rod Lott