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Incredibly bombastic narration (the most overblown I’ve ever heard) and some appalling racist “humor” make this 49-minute documentary a jaw-dropping experience. Based in Panama City, Florida, Captain Wallace Caswell is a constable and hunter of ocean predators that foul up the local fishing business. Caswell is described in heroic terms that would embarrass a god. He’s killed sharks with only a knife! He has muscles of steel! Even his binoculars are astoundingly wonderful (“they see far and clear!”). And he has a black cook named Evolution (“Look at Evolution, dark Evolution, humorous Evolution!”) who has a wooden leg and provides bug-eyed comedy relief that Steppin Fetchit would have passed up as too demeaning. Between fights with fish everybody dances around the boat to accordion music (“All week before going into action, Caswell likes to hear a jolly song, a salty sailorman tune! He’s a musical constable! So let the tune ring out with a shout and a fling!”)

The first sea creature he goes after is hardly dangerous -- a bottlenose dolphin. (“The constable takes off his pants, a tell-tale sign! Trousers would never do for fish fighting! So when you see Caswell climbing out of those pants, that means the battle is about to begin, man versus monster!”) This is supposed to take place far out at sea but you can tell it’s staged in waist-deep water. When it gets away, the bastards harpoon it, and the narrator gushes about “fun.” For killing Flipper, one of the most lovable of all animals! I guess if they slapped a child they'd have a hoe-down. When the dolphin gets in the boat with a black sailor, the narrator says “That darkie sailor is having a whale of a time! What colored man ever dreamed of having a leviathan in his boat?” Then they harpoon a hammerhead shark, which keeps raising hell on the boat even after they cut its head half-off. Then Caswell goes after a tiger shark with only a knife, which looks like ill-advised showboating. When birds spot schools of fish, the narrator declares “We are guided by boobies!” How true that is.


Then, they kill sea turtles (“Science says a sea turtle can live without a brain, as some international statesmen do!”) and a guy in a diving suit finds a sunken ship and a herd of octopus, which the narrator hates (“like a horrible symbol of sin… fantastically odious… unmitigated ferocity! The octopus is so fierce that the devil fish, when hungry, has been known to attack one of its own tentacles and devour its own arm!”) In the wreck is a skeleton and a chest, just in case you thought this wasn’t set up. A turtle and octopus attack and obviously-stuffed diving suit, so, knife in his teeth, Caswell dives in to save the day. The whole thing’s shot silent with occasional faked dialogue. At times you see the narrator at a desk staring off into space and talking. Truly jaw-dropping old curio that must be seen to be believed, with many obviously faked scenes. “Constable, off with those pants!”