La mort au large

A quaint little beach town is terrorised by a bloodthirsty great white shark.

Universal Pictures' Jaws law suit aside, the film became the 72nd highest-grossing film in Italy 1980-1981. Enzo G. Castellari's offering suffers from the usual Italian ripoff trappings poor editing and ill-fitting music. Sadly the cut away stock footage of sharks really spoils an already chummy film. That said, it has some redeeming features including some of the shark special effects and James Franciscus performance.

When it was released, The Last Shark (aka Great White) got quickly pulled from theaters due to threats of a lawsuit from Universal Studios, producers of the Jaws movies. Having seen the film on DVD, I can see why. The writers of The Last Shark basically watched the first two Jaws movies and stole every good scene from them, even going so far as to clone characters.

All the main elements from Jaws are here. The gnarled seaman...check. The heroic everyman...check. The corrupt government official who tries to cover up the attacks...check. Even some of the attack scenes mimic specific scenes in Jaws I and II.

These things are made worse by the fact that the Italian studio behind this film had nowhere near Spielberg's budget. Consequently, we have an obviously fake shark model that appears every time the shark sticks it's head out of the water, which is quite often. The underwater shots are accomplished by a mixture of stock shark footage and very fake looking stop motion animation.

Making things even more ludicrous is that the shark appears to be intelligent, engaging in uncharacteristic shark behavior such as trying to trap people in caves with rocks and using ropes as tow lines. At times, it comes across as a comedy.

I had an opportunity to view this film on Japanese laser disc. The film's history is more interesting than the movie itself. Released in the U.S. under the title, "Great White," in 1982, the movie went as quckly as it had come into theatres at the time due to Steven Spielberg and Universal Studios having the film barred from distribution due to the blaring similarities to JAWS and JAWS 2. The company that distributed the film in the US went bankrupt and the producer disappeared.

Getting to the film itself, it has always had a mystique being banned in the US and not seeing video release. Released in other countries as "The Last Shark" or "The Last Jaws" the film is not completely lost. Having wondered whatever happened to this movie and why there wasn't a video release ever, I was surprised that "Great White" was available abroad under different titles. Having seen the film, I have to say that it wasn't anything special at all. The film is Italian with some of the actors clearly dubbed and a shark that could be a giant pool toy. The stock footage of real sharks sometimes helps but there is one where the silhouette is of a nurse shark and not a great white.

The late James Franciscus and Vic Morrow do as much as they can with their roles and do bring something to a film with no shortage of bad lines and wooden acting co-stars. But there's no sense of humor or interesting characters which helped "Piranha" overcome its extremely low budget special effects. There are a lot of slow scenes and the film is clearly not realistic such as the Mayor fishing for the shark with a side of beef dangling from a helicopter or the Shark shooter using a small rifle from a pier. Also, when one of the victims disappears while windsurfing, his friends go on a boat to look for him rather than calling the coast guard or police. The film fails by going for a quick scare and not building up the suspense to a crescendo that Speilberg did.

This film continues to be a curiosity due it's lack of availability here otherwise it would have become forgotten if no one had said anything collecting dust in a video store somewhere.

Holy CRUD! I couldn't wait to see this flick since I heard it was yanked from theatres by Universal for being such a Jaws rip-off. Good Lord... if they even LET it play it wouldn't have cut the mustard. There ARE some cool directorial elements (like the wide slo-mo) but I think they belong elsewhere...like >another movie. This film is so bad, with an awful Soundtrack, that I kept my finger on the fast forward button after the first 8 minutes. James Franciscus looks as great as ever... he and Morrow both try...Morrow a bit TOO much with an overly acted "Quint" impersonation. There is a great scene on a shattered dock and part of the finale is not to be missed because it's so damned hysterical; But despite it's one or two laughs and it's serious attempts by the director and editor to save it, The Last Shark is bad to The Last Frame. A combination of Tentacles, Piranha and Jaws all rolled up into one hell of a rotten script. As usual, though, an "A" for effort.

This movie is really worth the money! I went to a DVD store one day and found this movie amongst splatter movies. I read the cover describing it as a real success at the 80's and how mad Spielberg was when the movie got released. I can't believe this movie got that low rating! It may be cheap, it may be campy, but it's really truly entertaining! When I watched the movie I almost smiled the whole time. And that scene with the helicopter... the gore... his legs! Amazing! Laughed my tears out! Sure it isn't as great as Spielberg's Jaws, but it sure beats the guts out of the bad Jaws sequels! Those who thinks my comment is stupid are just the ones who don't understand how bad can be good. Worth watching!