Very best movie i ever watch

Memorable, crazy movie

Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

When there was a successful film here in the states during the 70's and 80's it was not uncommon for the Italian film industry and other European countries to try and emulate the success of said film by making one very similar to the successful American film. George Romero's Dawn of the Dead would spawn several zombie films, Alien would also have imitators as did Mad Max (though that one was not even American). Then there were several shark films that tried to emulate Jaws to a degree; however, none would be as flagrant a rip off as this film that was titled The Great White when it was initially released in American theaters and subsequently yanked when Speliberg's company threatened a lawsuit. Yes, it was that close to being Jaws that they successfully got this one pulled. The story, a shark begins to terrorize a small community on the coast where the mayor wants this stupid race to occur no matter the risks! Sounds familiar doesn't it? But wait, there's more! We even have a grizzled old fisherman who wants to hunt the shark and a marine biologist type who is also hoping to stop the super shark! Granted, there are a few differences as it does have a nifty ending on a makeshift raft formed by a pier pulled out to sea by shark...oh, wait, that was in Jaws too, just not at the end. I saw this film in the theater as I was a kid who loved sharks. I also saw the original Jaws at the theater, though I have no memory of seeing it in the theater as it literally came out my birth year so I may have been two at the oldest (movies played differently back then, they didn't just play a few weeks then get pulled). I also saw Jaws 3D, which was cheesy and lame, but better than this one. There are a couple of cool shark attacks in this one and the shark looked okay in a few scenes, but it most of the time they used stock footage or it looked like it belonged in a ride or something they way it popped up. The film also adds this cowboy type character near the end with a gun and this really goes nowhere. So, the film is a bit entertaining, but not in a good way. There were parts in this that had me laughing because it was so incredibly goofy, such as the shark using rocks to block the guys trying to kill it in a cave and the scene where these people are acting like a windsurfing race was incredibly exciting when it clearly was not. Not sure it was really worth the effort of actually threatening it with a lawsuit to keep it out of theaters, I doubt it would have detracted from Jaws which is still the best shark movie ever made.

Notice: Laughter is a requirement when watching this movie.Let's rip -The Last Shark- shall we.My, my, just WHAT have we uncovered here?! Why it's none other than "The Last Shark"......this riotously funny and exceedingly poorly made JAWS rip-off has to be the ultimate "big fake-looking shark movie". This movie is ABSOLUTELY AWESOME in it's complete and utter terribleness, truly pathetic in every way, it seems to showboat (and even celebrate) it's own ineptitude, which spans from start to finish; and THE EFFECTS, oh my the effects are hilariously terrible. This awful Italian-made "aqua-shlock" most certainly lands squarely in the category of: "It's so bad, it's good". But at the very least it is exceptionally entertaining -but for all the wrong reasons.With my recent discovery of this Italian-made JAWS rip-off from the early-80's, (thanks to the guys at Rifftrax) all of the sudden the last two JAWS sequels, don't seem all that bad in comparison and that's really saying a lot, as those two movies suck badly. This is further proof that in the 80's, the Italian's were simply unbeatable at producing horribly lame rip-off films of well-known Hollywood blockbusters and The Last Shark is a prime-time example of that. Where to start, there isn't one single aspect of this preposterously illogical film, that was handled with any obvious skill or talent - especially in the effect's department! And let us not forget the music of The Last Shark, which is nothing more then some ones LAME and ineffective attempt at "shark music" - produced by Casio keyboard's by the sound of it. From a musical prospective one can just sense the envy and jealousy John Williams must harbor for this movie and of the incomparable musical statement that it makes. In fact, this movie is such a blatant rip-off of JAWS, that Universal Studio (that's the JAWS studio for the few of you who don't know) blocked it's release in the States and it's not hard to see why. I've seen a good deal many Italian-made movies, particularly from the 80's and they are always embarrassing spectacles, with little to no money or talent and laughably poor production values. Stick to making spaghetti and sports car's guys, movie's just aren't your thing.I usually like to avoid detailed plot summaries, so I'll just give you chunks of The Last Shark as I go. Well it's based around JAWS and it's familiar plot scheme's, so there's an Italian Amity Island equivalent, that's being terrorized by a big fake-looking robotic shark (and they show that thing a lot too), there's a political figure in there to complicate and obstruct the flow of things, various people on boats, wind surfers and in helicopters, that all fall prey to the shark, usually because of their own massive stupidity and poor/ illogical planning. This Italian-made faux-JAWS even has it's own "Quint", played by the late (and soon to literally lose his head) Vic Morrow. In all fairness his ability to imitate Robert Shaw's character was pretty spot on, however, much of his dialog is very difficult to make out, dare I say it's unintelligible. Getting back to the massive stupidity of the victims, all the Islanders are totally gung-ho about killing the shark, THEY ALL want to TAKE ON the shark and it's in these highly entertaining attack sequences, that you'll see some of thee worst-looking shark effects ever committed to film. They are INTENSELY funny and the faker the effects look, the funnier the movie seems to get. The Last Shark is a riotously entertaining, cinematic whirl-wind of terrible effects, stodgy acting, illogical situations, 80's mustaches, very poorly matched live shark footage, appallingly lame attempts at suspense music, etc. And in the end this epic slice of aqua-shlock comes to a head in an explosive finale - poorly done, of course, just like the rest of the movie.Once you've seen this bogus, Italian-made, stinking pile of sh** JAWS rip-off - I think you'll arrive at the only conclusion possible, which is "Yep, movie's don't get much worse than The Last Shark".Flash-forward: For those of you who got a kick out The Last Shark, I strongly recommended that you track down a copy of "Orca", (that's right, killer whales this time around) this movie, just like The Last Shark, has incredibly bad effects and reaches unhinged levels of highly illogical lunacy. Expect to see Richard Harris square off against a vengeful killer whale, that seems to have, of all things, human-like intelligence.

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.

I've no idea why a guy like Enzo Castellari would stoop to such a wholesale rip-off of the Jaws movies, but we're talking about the wacky world of Italian cinema, so who knows? Castellari never ceases to amaze me with his action-packed, stylistic films like Street Law and the Big Racket, and although folks say that he lost it a bit during the eighties, the Last Shark is the only film I've seen by him that's less than great (c'mon - Bronx Warriors and The New Barbarians are still a hoot, despite their limitations).The plot is a bit of Jaws and a bit of Jaws two mixed together. We've got an Italian b-movie cast from heaven - James Franciscus (Cat o Nine Tails) is our hero, with Vic Morrow (Bronx Warriors) as the pseudo Scottish Robert Shaw facsimile, Joshua Sinclair as the troubled mayor torn between his polls and the safety of his folks, Romano Puppo as a shark hit-man (or something like that), with Giancarlo Prete and Massimo Vanni turning up as a ruthless film crew.Basically: it's Jaws. A large Great White turns up in the sea outside of town and starts eating folks. The mayor doesn't really want to shut the beach due to an upcoming Regatta, and Vic Morrow offers his hand in wasting the troublesome fish. The plot is so nearly identical that Spielberg sued the film right out of the USA! It never come near the original's level of tension, and there's not much by way of shocks (the 'head popping out from under the boat bit' in Jaws is a classic), but I'd say that the Last Shark is mainly interesting for fans of Castellari himself, as well as his perpetually recurring actors. Every non-shark orientated shot is full of primary colours: blues, yellows and reds abound. There's a ton of style injected into these proceedings, plus plenty of Castellari slow motion, and the usual gore (though not so much as Jaws).The Last Shark starts off well, slumps slightly in the middle, and picks up again towards the end when Joshua Sinclair tries his hand at fishing the shark out the water using a helicopter. Plus, any film that has Massimo Vanni being bitten in half earns extra points.At the end of the day though, it's still a blatant rip-off of Jaws, and the low budget rears its head whenever shark footage appears, with some dodgy models and terrible stock footage. Some copies of this film are very dark too, which would hamper viewing (although the first version I watched, on Italian television, was as clear as anything).For Enzo Castellari fans only - his mark is all over this film. Check out Vic Morrow's Scottish accent too! I've never heard a Scotman talk like that, and I live there!