The Last Shark

The Last Shark (L'ultimo Squalo) (1981)

Runtime: 88 minutes

Directed by: Enzo G. Castellari

Starring: James Franciscus, Vic Morrow, and some random Italian actors

From: Several Italian and American companies

Even in the realm of Italian genre films, this was a blatant rip-off.

In fact, when this was released in the United States, Universal sued because it was too similar to Jaws (and as I discovered once I saw the movie, Jaws 2 was also lifted); after a few weeks, they found a judge who agreed so it did not have a full theatrical run. If it wasn't for that footnote, many likely would have forgotten about this random cashgrab based on something popular from Hollywood... Italian film loved doing that for decades, and God bless them for that as some of those were tremendously entertaining.

This, it only gets an OK rating from me but there are some hilarious moments, especially in the final act as it gets real stupid. An author named Peter Benchley... er I mean Peter Benton and a sea captain named Ron Hamer (instead of Quint) are after the titular creature. It is said to be 35 feet long, although the critter often changes appearance and size throughout as none of the stock footage matches each other, let alone is matched to the model they created. To be fair it does not look bad for the low budget and if you want to see some gruesome moments, the creature does do that. Still, there are some effects that have aged rather poorly-at least those made me chuckle. A positive is a groovy score from personal favorites of mine, Guido and Maurizio De Angelis; they are great at catchy soundtracks... not to mention tunes that are earworms.

Of course there is the town's mayor (Wells) that does the wrong thing; here, he is running for the governorship of Georgia (one scene makes it clear they filmed part of this in Savannah, even if that was never explicitly said in the film) and instead of the 4th of July, it is... a regatta event highlighted by a windsurfing competition. At least Wells tries to take precautions that include a giant net around the cove which proves to not be enough. Honestly, this could be an even better pandemic parable than Jaws itself.

Anyhow, that event is where the dumb teenagers come in, and of course one of them is the kid of our lead (James Franciscus) and another is the mayor's son. That's why I brought up Jaws 2. This was dopey yet was alright overall and IMO are overall better than Jaws 3-D and Jaws: The Revenge. Not that those are high bars to jump over...

Vic Morrow played Ron Hamer; whether it was by accident or by design, he reminded me a lot of Edward G. Robinson's lead turn in 1932's Tiger Shark; there he played a Portuguese sea captain of a tuna fishing vessel who spoke with an accent that like with Hamer can be best described as “vaguely foreign.” As someone else noted here, the movie has the misfortune of featuring helicopters in several scenes... I know not everyone knows that tragic tale; sometime soon Twilight Zone: The Movie will be reviewed so that can be discussed. As for The Last Shark (sometimes referred to as Great White) it is an acceptable slice of B-movie cheese.