L’Ultimo Squalo AKA Great White (1981) [REVIEW] | #sharkapalooza

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.

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Summer Of EDF redux, Shark-A-Palooza, Idol Honses, Switch 2 and One Piece August

Update time!

Since i’m knee deep in thesis work which it’s gonna take my entire summer and up to October, i had to make some changes to the schedule up to August.

Due to personal stuff, i will be away for thi weekend, hence some EXPRESSO reviews are gonna be late or aren’t gonna happen at all, some were not gonna regardless, for example don’t expect a review of Final Destination Bloodlines as i really haven’t kept up with the series, at all, and this ain’t a reboot, it’s a direct sequel continuining from FD 5, but i will see and review Mission Impossible: Final Reckoning (aka Dead Reckoning Part 2), with some luck i can catch a preview screening for that.

Surprisingly there’s also a Largo Winch movie (this will mean something only to “Europeans” comics fans, maybe) here… but its a sequel to another Largo Winch movie they made in 2008, technically also the sequel to 2011 Largo Winch 2, so it’s the last in a trilogy that just got home video releases (not really publicized at all, too, just put out there) until now here, one i didn’t know it even existed until now.

You know, now i’m kinda tempted to see the movie anyway to see if it made sense to release it as they did. Kinda.

Expect one of Umamusume Pretty Derby too, as the original smarthphone game is finally hitting a global release in late June, i’m gonna be ready.

Summer of EDF is still gonna happen, but will be in “mini” format, meaning 2 reviews instead of the planned 4, and i guess that means we’ll still be doing it next summer, so…

On the flipside, there are gonna be more shark movie reviews, alongside some anime series’ reviews.

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Shark! AKA Samuel Fuller’s Shark AKA 4 Bastardi Per Un Posto All’Inferno (1969) [REVIEW] | #thesharksix

You can hardly get any more basic with a title like “Shark!” (shouted, of course), so it’s no wonder it got mostly forgotten in time, its status as a pre-Jaws shark film not helping, hence leave it to the italian home video market to release under the title of “4 Bastards For A Place In Hell” (4 Bastardi Per Un Posto All’Inferno), far more eye-catching and way fuckin better than just “Shark (exclamation mark)” though making one expect to see a spaghetti western, because deception and bullshit was always the name of the game when localizing titles of movies here in Italy.

Though it also can be summed up as “the shark movie with Burt Reynolds in it”, as we have basically a shark-laden style “Treasure Of The Sierra Madre” plot as well, with the protagonist being a gunrunner that loses its cargo near a Sudanese harbor town, making him stuck there, until he’s hired by a woman to help a scientist raid a sunken ship in shark-infested waters for some.. “valuables”.

Pity is, he faces competition from other people hired to do the very same thing..

Not to be confused with 1975’s Shark Treasure by Cornel Wilde, also about a sunken treasure and criminals, and one that also publicized itself on the realism of the sharks in it, because… minds think alike, especially when you’re gonna cash into Jaws’ success.

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Cocaine Shark (2023) [REVIEW] | #thesharksix

You know the saying, the last year’s sensation is still fresh when gimmicks barely add anything, and by gimmicks i mean the fact Cocaine Bear was actually a big b-movie studio release last year, so by that summer you know they had someone on speed-dial to make their own knock off with 1000 times less the budget.

And it’s telling that in the past The Asylum would have made the movie themselves, but this is modern Asylum, so the first to put the “cocained killer animal mockbuster” was Mark Polonia.

…. though even that isn’t really the truth, as it’s often the case, reality is quite disappointing, as Mark Polonia just happened to release a movie called (Crab Shark) that premiered the 29^th of January 2023 in Japan (apparently even actually got real screenings, which is far more unbelievable than a crab shark but it seems to be true), and he retitled it “Cocaine Shark” when releasing it in the US later that July, to capitalize on the sensation of Cocaine Bear.

Funnily beating the director of Cocaine Bear, Elizabeth Banks, to the punch in making a follow up with a shark, again based on an actual news story.

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Zombie Shark AKA Shark Island (2015) [REVIEW] | #thesharksix

Of course this was already done, i would say i’m surprised it took so long for the obvious idea to actually materialize, but then again it came out in the mid 2010s, an all time high for cheap ass shark movies unafraid to lower the bar even further, this time with the brilliant “ “what if but zombies?” concept, but – again – we never had this specific flavor of shark movie, so whatever.

As even a blind rock could guess by now, it’s a TV movie for SyFy (retitled as Shark Island in some releases), and it’s from director Misty Talley, actually her first shark attack flick, before Ozarks Sharks/ Summer Shark Attack and Mississippi River Sharks (both previously featured here), but also starring Jason London, whom i guess he’s “shark movie borgeusy” since he also shows up in Dam Sharks, for one.

So we have all the ingredients for a mildly fun timewaster… and the result it’s exactly that.

I could end the review here, but lets talk about the plot, despite there being no real need to, since Zombie Shark it’s exactly what it says on the tin and what you’d think it would be.

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The Reef: Stalked (2022) [REVIEW] | #thesharksix

I don’t think it’s controversial to say that The Reef is one of the best shark movies ever made, intense, straight to the point, yet captivating and suspenseful.

So when i heard that there was a “sequel”, i wasn’t surprised and contrary to the publisher’s intended response, i was even more wary because i felt like i was being trojan horsed another middling or subpar shark movie by using the respected reputation of The Reef.

On the other hand, the original director (also known for the Black Water movies and his contribution to the first ABCs Of Death) is back, so it’s not like this an apocryphal follow-up farmed to a random first-time director by the production.

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[EXPRESSO] Under Paris (2024) | Enviro-Jaws

A french Netflix shark movie, released now, it doesn’t look like a Mark Polonia film, yeah, i’ll bite.

Though i’m now convinced the genre will never leave the nursery waters of Jaws, since we still get stuff like a recalcitrant douchy mayor in the plot… though this time is because they plan to host the Triathlon in the Seine river, and there’s a good reason this is a tradition.

Speaking of which, the premise sound like if Sharks In Venice happened in France and tried to be more realistic… it’s not really, it’s actually a shark finding its way into the Seine river, the same shark that massacred the crew of an enviromental protection squad, and despite her past she intervenes to see that the shark is saved from its new unplanned habitat she’s not made for, and to also avoid the same carnage happening once again.

It has the expected horror moments or situations, but it leans a lot more into being a thriller and its enviromental message, which is kinda to be expected since the movie goes for realism, it ain’t trying to be The Meg or even The Reef, and it’s not like it mishandles its own message or themes… it’s just a bit slow moving, even if it uses that time to make the characters more sympathetic and manages that, they simply aren’t good enough to completely offset the pacing issues.

The final act does really pick up “the slack” in this regard, and overall, Under Paris it’s decent, it plays well its modern enviromentalist angle, the effects are quite good… sometimes, it’s just a bit too procedural, the pace is kinda slow until the very end to be proper involving, so it ends up feeling longer than it’s below 2 hours runtime.

Nice ending, though.

Megalodon: The Frenzy (2023) [REVIEW] #thesharksix

Somehow, The Asylum stumbled their way into making a trilogy of films about Megalodon sharks, with the third and last entry so far being last year’s Megalodon: The Frenzy.

I say “stumbled” because i seriously doubt they planned any of this at all, but Megalodon Rising was indeed a sequel to their own 2018 Megalodon film, and this one starts with a recap to get you up to speed and confirm that the events of the previous movie happened.

…not sure entirely to what end, as the plot itself doesn’t have returning characters from either Rising or the 2018 movie, and is about how a submarine mission meant to establish a supply of clean geoenergy from an underwater volcano ends up causing a fissure in the seabed, accidentally unleashing 5 megalodons that wreak havoc.

They do eventually reference the events of Rising and the 2018 film, and the USS King, damaged after the finale of Rising comes into play, but then is now helmed by a character played by Eric Roberts… problem is he wasn’t in Rising, but since the lead characters died in the finale, i guess he was on ship and took over, whatever, who cares, now Eric Robert is manning the ship, in this “it was supposed to be filmed for the finale of the previous movie, but wasn’t” intro.

Whatever keeps him to star into A Talking Cat?! 2: Paws Of Fury, i guess.

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Jurassic Shark 2: Aquapocalypse (2021) [REVIEW] | Sequelgeddon #sharksncrocspartdeux

I eventually had to find out this existed, because words like “sequels” don’t mean anything anymore, even more when we dwelve in the “homegrown/DIY” territory of the shark movies, where one name echoes through the vast oceans, Mark Polonia, and he stands atop of his carboard throne, commanding beasts of papermaciè and plastic (and whatever the budget can afford) to fend off the rare adventurers setting off in the desperate quest for the homegrown crown.

So powerful he is that only he can received the task of doing a sequel of a low budget shark movie he didn’t originally make, as Jurassic Shark was directed and produced by Brett Kelly, but that isn’t even the stranger thing about Jurassic Shark 2: Aquapocalypse.

That would be this one standing as the “official” sequel, as Brett Kelly also directed Raiders Of The Lost Shark, which was a surprise kind of sequel to Jurassic Shark, as i discussed when reviewing it.

But this one gets to have the Jurassic Shark name and slap a 2 on the end, for whatever reason, and so it kinda surprising the plot has anything to do with the first, as the oil company from the first movie (whom accidentally released the megalodon) is back and wanting to drill for oil of the coast of Cat Island (not that one), and its up to the workers of the oil rig – that accidentally discover the beast – to try and save what they can from its unfeeling jaws… And its amazing inflatable fin.

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Horror Shark 3D AKA Blood Shark 3D (2020) [REVIEW] #sharksncrocs

Shark attack movies are an appealing worldwide phenomen, so it’s not surprising even mainland China would eventually invest more and more in these, as they can serve a fairly new domestic cinema industry and are easy to export since the genre is pretty popular everywhere. Shark never get old for audiences, after all.

Obviously this isn’t the first chinese shark movie ever, or even the first one we featured here, but it’s China very first 3D big budget shark attack film. It has received a fairly easy to find DVD release on online marketplaces, but i watched it on Youtube, as it was uploaded in full on YOUKU’s Youtube Channel, with english subs available.

The plot of Horror Shark 3D (also known as Blood Shark 3D) concerns “a swimmer and a marine paradise trainer (trainer for what?) who accidentally fall into a huge conspiracy about blood sharks.”

At least this is the plot synopsis you’ll find around the web, but i’d say it’s badly translated and partially incorrect.

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