What’s the Truth Behind This Controversial Burt Reynolds Movie?

The Big Picture

• The movie Shark caused controversy due to a scene that supposedly showed a stuntman being killed by a shark for real.
• The incident was covered by LIFE magazine, but there are doubts about its authenticity and whether it was a publicity stunt.
• A scuba diving magazine investigation found no evidence of the incident, leading to speculation that it was a hoax.

Plenty of movies have some creepy urban legends surrounding them. For decades, word went around that there was a scene in The Wizard of Oz with a hanging munchkin swinging in the background, and people believed it until it was later revealed just to be a bird bobbing its head. Three Men and a Baby supposedly had a ghost kid in one shot, but nah, it was just a cardboard cutout. Other movies had some eerie real life circumstances in their footage, such as how Poltergeist used real skeletons in its third act.

Then there are movies when it’s hard to know what to believe, where real life meets publicity stunt or urban legend. Such is the case for the 1969 Burt Reynolds movie Shark. It’s not one of Reynolds’ best works, but it is a talked about one due to a shocking controversy. Supposedly, a stuntman was killed by a shark during one scene, and if that wasn’t bad enough, the footage of his death was left in the film! LIFE magazine reported it, it’s seen as fact by many, but is it true? Was Burt Reynolds part of a snuff film?

‘Shark’ Is One of Burt Reynolds’ Earliest Roles

Burt Reynolds was one of the most prolific actors in the history of Hollywood. He began his career in the late 1950s and worked almost up until his death in 2018, a span of sixty years. He found his biggest fame at the time in 1972 for his role in Deliverance, followed by The Longest Yard in 1974, but it’s when Burt’s infamous mustache was born that he really became an icon. Smokey and the Bandit in 1977 made him one of the most famous actors through the 80s as he had his own hit CBS show called Evening Shade, and experienced a second act after 1997’s Boogie Nights.

In 1969, Burt Reynolds wasn’t a household name. You may have known his face due to various TV parts, but Shark was one of his first feature films. Written and directed by Samuel Fuller, Reynolds plays a man named Caine, a gunrunner on an adventure hoping to score some loot from a shipwreck in the Red Sea. It’s a forgettable film and not something that comes up much when people talk about Burt Reynolds, but it does have a claim to fame that has nothing to do with its future famous leading star.

A Stuntman’s Real Life Death Is Supposedly Shown in ‘Shark’

One scene in Shark shows a man in a scuba diving suit being attacked by a large shark under the water. We see blood, we hear his scream, we watch him die. You might not think much of it though, except for the fact that, for over half a century, Shark has found infamy in its assertion that this scene is showing us a stuntman being killed for real by that shark. Despite this heartbreaking moment, it was decided to leave the moment in the final product, even profiting off of it like a snuff film.

LIFE magazine, which was once one of the top magazines millions of people read, jumped all over this sickening story for a 1969 issue, with a piece titled “Shark Kills a Man.” In this short article, stills are shown of stuntman Jose Marco, the stunt double for Burt Reynolds, being mauled to death by the shark. It goes on to describe what happened to Marco, explaining that the shoot happened in Mexico, and for this stunt, a bull shark had been dragged to the beach to make it groggy. And then:

“A huge white shark appeared, having pushed through a protective net strung across the seaward side of the set. Mouth gaping, it swam right up to the camera lens as crewmen inside steel-mesh cages grabbed for spear guns. Then the shark turned on 32-year-old stuntman Jose Marco, who was out in the clear, and ripped his abdomen open, spilling blood into the water. Twice during the wild melee the crew fired spears which had no effect, as the shark mangled its victim. The crew screamed and banged on their cages, and this caused the shark to flee. Marco died in a hospital two hours later.”

Wow, what a story! And they left that in the movie and got away with it?! If all of that isn’t bad enough, Shark‘s poster quotes the LIFE article and shows a drawing of a shark attacking a scuba diver with the tagline “Shark will rip you apart!” The film wasn’t even originally called Shark, and barely had any sharks in it, but had its name changed after the incident. To say that it’s tasteless is an understatement. People have sadly died during film shoots before. The most famous incident might be the accidental shooting of Brandon Lee on the set of The Crow, but even though filming continued after, Lee’s actual death wasn’t put in the final film, and it wasn’t marketed as, “Come see The Crow so you can watch Brandon Lee die.” That is morbid and tasteless beyond comprehension, yet that it was Shark did to poor stuntman Jose Marco. Or did they?

Did the ‘Shark’ Stuntman Death Really Happen?

For 50 years plus, the death of Jose Marco has been one of the darkest moments in film. It’s treated as something that really happened. I mean, LIFE covered it after all, and they were a serious and reputable publication. In 2023, the Shudder documentary, Sharksploitation, about the history of shark films, talked about Shark, discussing the stuntman’s death as if it was a real incident. Thankfully, it may not have been.

There have been many who have wondered over the years if it was all just a sick publicity stunt that LIFE was either in on or taken advantage of by. The most accurate judgment against the death of Jose Marco came in 1969. In a November 1969 issue of scuba diving magazine Skin Diver, writer Dewey Bergman wrote an article titled “The Great Shark Hoax” that sought to uncover what actually happened to Marco. Bergman said he received many concerned calls from fellow divers now not wanting to dive in the area where the incident in Mexico happened. It affected the business of reef diving schools and left a stain on tourism in that part of the country. Bergman said he spent over a year writing letters, talking to experts, and touring the area himself. Here is what he found.

First, no Mexican newspaper covered the accident, only LIFE, which is very odd. How would a magazine that is not seen as a newspaper get the exclusive? Even more concerning was that the local Mexican newspapers didn’t even know about what happened until they saw the LIFE article. A diver who spent a lot of time in the area around when the accident was supposed to have happened told Bergman that he never heard anything about a stuntman being killed by a shark. In fact, he couldn’t find anyone who’d heard about it. No one had heard of Jose Marco before either, and the director of the local hospital told Bergman they had no record of Jose Marco being brought in, or anyone being brought in for a shark attack injury. The LIFE article also mentions Bull and Great White sharks, but Bergman says the footage shows a common gray shark, and it would be almost impossible for any shark to break through a protective net cage so easily. After Bergman’s investigation, LIFE’s counsel finally put out a statement saying “What we considered to be a highly unusual set of pictures may, it turns out, to have been a hoax… We are now satisfied that this incident did not take place.”

Shark is available to stream on Tubi in the U.S.

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