The Last Jaws - Der weiße Killer

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.

The Last Shark would actually be pretty great if it had a better editor: the heroes leave port to kill the shark and return unsuccessfully so many times it will make you seasick. However, this is still an enjoyable Italian rip-off of Jaws (and Jaws 2, for that matter), featuring some decent attack sequences and gory moments, not to mention Vic Morrow as a hilarious ersatz Captain Quint.

One great thing about the shark in this film is that it appears to be jet-propelled (at least that's what it sounds like when its conical head breaks the surface) and has the ability to blast watercrafts fifteen feet into the air. Hilarious! If you're looking for camp, The Last Shark certainly doesn't disappoint.

And, while the animatronic shark isn't on par with Bruce from Jaws, it's not bad for a knock-off.

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 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.

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.