Sunday, September 7, 2014

The Last Shark AKA Great White (1981) Review




I consider myself a connoisseur in badly made killer shark movies, Cruel Jaws, Deep Blood, Monster Shark, Aatank etc. But of all of these types of movies my favorite would have to be The Last Shark directed by Enzo G. Castellari.

This film is considered to be one of the most blatant rip offs of Steven Spielberg's Jaws. So blatant in fact that after only being in theaters for a few days in the US it was pulled due to a lawsuit from universal claiming that the film was too similar to Jaws. And the film has not be released in America since.

How ever as with any film of this type if has become a staple of bootleg circles to the point that its really not that hard to find anymore. It is also worth mentioning it was officially released on dvd in Denmark, Sweden and Italy.

So the plot,
The film begins with a windsurfer who appears to be dancing to cheesy italian disco track planing over the footage of him.

And then suddenly out of nowhere SHOCK TWIST... he gets eaten.
one of his friends tell her father, a writer named Peter (subtle), that he has disappeared.
Peter realizes its a shark but the evil governor denies the truth because the big windsurfing regatta is coming up.

So to make a short story a little bit shorter everything goes wrong, Peters daughter gets her leg bit off, the governor dies etc. So Peter and Qui.. uhh i mean Ron Hammer, an old grizzled shark hunter, go after the shark but Ron eventually dies.

Then the shark pulls part of a pier with a bunch of people on it (Including Peters wife) out to sea.


Peter comes to save the day and Manages to get everyone on to a boat.
But he becomes trapped on the pier himself and instead of the people on the boat trying to help him, he is left to fend for himself. But then out of nowhere the body of Ron pops up (Oh i forgot to mention he was wearing a dynamite belt when he died and Peter has the detonator) and Peter has the idea to feed the body to the shark and...

The End.

Throughout this plot summery i may have portrayed this film in a somewhat negative light and looking at this objectively its a really bad film but i just cant help but love it.
Its just good ol' silly fun and if you're looking for something fun to watch you could do a lot worse.

6.5/10

If you want to see this film you can watch it on Youtube