jellopuke Pretty terrible all around with laughable effects, bad acting, and a total disregard for any originality. That said, there are a couple of saving graces, like the part when the newscaster laments the lack of good shark footage and his cameraman says "just put in some stock footage, no one will know the difference" which is EXACTLY WHAT THEY DO IN THIS MOVIE! Barely watchable, there are at least a couple of good kills, but other than that, not much here.

Leofwine_draca The era of the late '70s/early '80s was chock-full of JAWS rip-offs: they came from Mexico, the Philippines, and most of all, Italy. This is one of the most blatant copies out there, directed by cult action favourite Enzo G. Castellari, and it has the dubious history of having been pulled from North American theatres by Universal because the similarities with JAWS were just too many. For what it's worth, I love rip-off films and I love "when animals attack" horrors, so I was well placed to enjoy THE LAST SHARK. It's no masterpiece, but it is a fun, brainless film.Castellari was famous for his 'polizia' flicks in the '70s, usually starring Franco Nero. His trademark was slow-motion; he used it in stunts, in shoot-outs, you name it. It's present here in some superbly hilarious death scenes and at random other times (usually when somebody is falling slow-motion into the water). Otherwise, his direction is good, although he's let down by a pedestrian script that never strays far from Spielberg territory. Roy Scheider is replaced by James Franciscus (who already tried his hand with underwater monsters in KILLER FISH), and Robert Shaw by a slumming Vic Morrow. There's a lack of decent eye-candy, and Castellari's daughter, Stefania Girolami, doesn't really cut it. As another negative, none of the characters are very well developed and they all seem rather unpleasant.Still, for a thriller this isn't bad, and by Italian standards it's decent. It helps that THE LAST SHARK has an absolutely brilliant score which, I thinks, rivals that of JAWS itself. The action sequences are also pretty good, and they don't skimp on the gore either. My favourite scenes include the half-a-victim gag (when said person is pulled out of water/trapdoor/ladder/hole etc. and it's revealed their legs are missing), an absolutely hilarious set-piece in which the shark attacks a helicopter (ripping off JAWS 2) and bites a guy's legs off, and some other fun bits where victims literally 'explode' out of the water (the obvious dummies add to the fun). The ending is abrupt, and crucially it doesn't reveal the shark's death (apparently it was blown up or electrocuted or something) but the special effects are surprisingly great and there's one moment of a real-life shark devouring raw meat which is absolutely terrifying. THE LAST SHARK is a treat for those who like movie cheese.

JasparLamarCrabb A dim witted & entirely shoddy rip-off of JAWS directed by none other than Enzo G. Castellari. To say Castellari, director of many great Italian crime thrillers, is out of his depth here is an understatement. When a 35 foot shark invades the waters off of an unnamed coastal community, James Franciscus & Vic Morrow (as deep sea divers?) attempt to kill it. Franciscus is bland while Morrow is absolutely dreadful...at times brandishing an Italian accent, at other times sounding Irish and then occasionally speaking with zero accent at all. All this and the inane dialog would be forgivable had the shark looked even remotely realistic (it doesn't).

Bezenby 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!