The Last Shark

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.

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.

I was fortunate enuff to see THE LAST SHARK on a double bill with BEYOND THE DOOR (an Italian ripoff of The Exorcist) ad as many have commented here - Last Shark was threatened with a lawsuit by Spielberg's studio and was yanked from theatres so it is not always easy to see it. For fans of bad movies that are soooo bad that they are enjoyably hilarious - this is a winner. There are many long, drawn out scenes where absolutely nothing happens and yet there are tons of scenes of really bad special effects, hammy acting, and some decent attempts at gore. I love the fact that they try and tie the whole plot around a WINDSURFING CONTEST! So lots of talk about windsurfing, who is the best windsurfer, how excited the whole town is, etc. Vic Morrow (god rest his soul) shows up as the obvious Robert Shaw Cap'n Quint character but Morrow (who appears good and soused) does one of the worst accents I've ever heard - sometimes it's Irish, other times it is a thick Scottish brogue, other times, who knows what it is - the mayor of the town - sorry the Governor in this version - is this fey, badly dressed guy who looks like more of a fashion designer than a powerful politico. The scenes of the actual attacks (especially when the Governor's snotty assistant gets it) is hysterically bad. So as long as you don't go in thinking you are going to see anything of true quality, you should have fun. It is a mess - a true frothy shark toothed mess!!!

Somewhat nicely done Italian derivative of 'Jaws' shares many of the same themes and set-ups and compresses them into 90 minutes, but is still worth a shot for advocates of Nature-Runs-Amok movies. As history states, this film was notoriously crowbarred out of its cinema release by Universal for being *too* like the Spielberg film (and also its sequel).

In its own right, 'L'Ultimo Squalo' is an entertaining - if not trashy - killer shark movie which throws in some of the typical Italian touches of humour and ambitious technical trials. The shark - when it appears - is only marginally less convincing than Spielberg's Bruce, but looks okay from high angles and while it's under the surface. Also, the stock footage of real fish is used to better effect here and shows the savagery of the shark attacking the many pieces of meat that varying characters attempt to lure the creature with.

Unfortunately, the evident budget used here hampers some moments: underwater and night shots are hard to make out and the toy helicopter that crashes into the water is pretty obvious. The shark chomps 7 people, drowns an 8th, and destructs a pier, a surf board, a couple of boats, and sub-aqua cave.

Final verdict, a nice distraction if you don't mind skipping some logic. 6/10.

Obvious mannequins are propelled skyward for some unexplained (and unintentionally funny) reason, as a shark, or in some scenes, a dolphin, terrorizes a small coastal community, just like in that other shark movie. Intro scene has seemingly never-ending windsurfing footage culminating with the shark causing the guy and his board to explode out and fly up out of the water! The bite marks in what's left of the board look more like razor slashes, at angles which could not have possibly been made by a shark, as we go back to the "bite radius" bit from Jaws. And remember when the head in the boat scared Hooper (and us, the audience) in Jaws? There is even a rip off of that here, as we find an arm bitten off by the shark. And, aww, innit that cute, they even tied a pink balloon around the shark to track it. Are you kidding me? Is that the low rent substitute of Quint's yellow barrels, pink ballons?

There actually is a little bit of tension toward the end of this one, in between bouts of unintended comedy, and some of the modelwork is amusing, The shark looks okay at a distance or at high angles, but when we're shown the shark at closer angles and for longer amounts of time, we realise just how inferior to Jaws it really is.

Ron succumbs to a fate similar to Quint's, in Peter Benchley's original novel, but the film is too derivative and slowly paced to amount to much more than a third-rate ripoff. Such a close ripoff, in fact, that Steven Spielberg and co. took legal action against the makers of this one, and had the movie effectively banned.