El último tiburón

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.