Killers of the Sea is a documentary about a group of fishermen who go out to the ocean to kill and torture sea creatures.
The captain of the expedition is a man called Wallace Caswell Jr. He is a psychopath who likes nothing better than stripping down to his underpants and diving into the water to attack various sea animals. Dolphins, turtles, octopuses, tiger sharks - you name it – our man jumps into the sea to beat them up. The film itself seems to be a succession of scenes of violence against marine life. Without a shred of irony the film's title refers to the monstrous sea creatures featured in the film, when it's obvious to everybody that it's the blokes in the boat who are clearly the ones on a psychotic rampage. Some of the animal violence would not have looked too out of place in the infamous documentary Faces of Death – particularly the nasty death of the hammerhead. You could almost say that this bizarre little oddity was some kind of precursor to the Mondo films of the 60's and 70's. Similar to those films there is also a cheerful racism on display, at one point after the black crewman falls out of a boat when trying to catch a whale, the narrator says good-naturedly 'the darkie is having a whale of a time!'. The said black man is also dubbed in an unbelievably stupid accent by the narrator. Oh that's another thing; the whole movie is narrated by one guy who also chips in with the dubbing for the various crew members. It's just so ridiculous. He also comes away with some priceless lines like 'we all followed the boobys' and on another occasion has the audacity to tell us in detail how old an age the great turtles live to as we watch the crewmen dragging them on board to be killed.
I guess you could correctly describe this as a curiosity. A film certainly of its time. If you want to spend a couple of strange hours watching very weird sea-based oddities from the olden days, may I recommend you watch this followed by the equally bizarre Devil Monster from 1946. You may not thank me for this suggestion but it is an idea.