Having mentioned this before at least twice, i feel this year is the one we finish off the vintage italian Jaws ripoff, after reviewing Cruel Jaws before, it’s time to tackle Enzo Castellari’s L’Ultimo Squalo (literally “The Last Shark”), released in 1981 but better known in the US and internationally as Great White. … or it was until Universal slapped the filmakers with a lawsuit on grounds of it being too similar to Steven Spielberg’s Jaws.
So it was pulled from cinemas in North America, and this is way it gained this mystique, even more because it was never released on home video there until 2013’s RetroVision DVD release, which is Region 0 and comes with the documentary featurette as an extra. Obviously this wasn’t the case here in Italy, as we did get the movie rereleased, but we didn’t get much better treatment, as the latest Italian home video release is a 2007 DVD one that doesn’t even have the full cut of the film, as the usual versions going around doesn’t have 5 minutes of – mostly – gore.
So AS USUAL we gotta import a UK or German Blu-Ray edition of our own genre films because they’re better in every single way.
What’s we’re dealing with here it’s yep, indeed, a crystal clear Jaws rip-offs made in Italy, but with a couple of American actors for international market appeal, these being Vic Morrow and James Franciscus, and for a bargain, it rips off Jaws 2 as well, with the windsailing subplot, the teen going scuba diving, the police finding an abandoned boat , when it’s not doing subtle stuff like the aping of John Williams “Jaws theme” (but just the first notes, we do not wanna get sued… for that, anyway), having the Quint stand-in salty sea dog character hyping up the creature or the mayor covering up the incidents since it’s election season. And so on.
And yet, believe it or not, this is actually the classy one of the italian Jaws rip-offs, especially compared to Cruel Jaws (kinda hard not to compare them, since those actuallyhave a shark in them), as in at least they put the money and some effort in, heck, just having Vic Morrow and James Franciscus in it makes it already more classy than 80% of the shark garbo we review here.
Even if Vic goes on an accent randomizer run depending on the scene, there’s some pretty bad acting, they somehow thought really putting the windsailing competition at the forefront of the plot would make anyone think this was NOT a Jaws rip-off.
Heck, they also made the mechanical shark… even thought it looks very “baloony” and some obvious real footage of great whites, sometimes of a dolphin… the mannequins are pretty obvious…
Look, the effects are often bad, but they’re cheesy bad, funny bad, as is the editing, the sloppy continuity, especially because the film overall tries to be serious but it’s so silly (see the shark somehow managing to drag down an entire helicopter) the clash is hilarious, especially at the end with the somber ass tone…. BUT Castellari’s direction injects a lot of energy to this rehashed sharkfest with a dull recycled plot, making for a entertaining flick i wouldn’t have minded seeing it theathers back then (if i was alive in 1981), since it does exactly the job.
It’s not good, but – again – it does do the job, it’s one of the better rip-offs of Jaws, quite decent on that regard, plus the soundtrack is quite fun, with really distinctive 80s italian horror tunes (and some oldies for good measure), and even with the obvious budget limits, the effect are far from the worse, hence it surprises no one that Cruel Jaws stole footage from it….alongside a movie called Deep Blood (takes note), that was down right plundered so much stock footage from Castellari’s film.
In a bout of poetic irony, the shark animatronic being too damaged after the shooting was the main reason due to a sequel eventually not going through, because otherwise the movie did well in terms of box office in Italy.
And fittingly, there’s also a Rifftrax version, which i might have to check out!
Wise Cafe (International) 