1980 - THE LAST SHARK, fairly outrageous Italian Jaws ripoff

This Jaws ripoff from director Enzo G. Castellari really pissed off Universal studios, they sued the producers of this film and were able to keep it out of American theaters for years.  Times however have changed.

There isn't even any point summarizing the plot since the plot is Jaws.  The two leads are James Franciscus and Vic Morrow with as the Monty Python guys would say "an outrageous Scottish accent," and  of course the usual bunch of Italians pretending to be Americans.

Since this is an Italian redo of Jaws, there are lots of things to enjoy about the film.  When something or someone gets eaten by the shark, they just don't get eaten they explode out of the water.  The obvious stock footage of the shark is actually a couple of different sharks, a great white and a sand tiger shark not that matching the shark footage really matters.  The actual shark that eats the actors is of course the usual phony rubber monster. 

Enzo G. Castellari was a decent action director of Italian genre films, but I have to believe even he probably couldn't figure out how to make this film better than it is.  That said, some of the absurd action scenes are rather entertaining particularly the helicopter fishing for the shark scene that you just know isn't going to end well for the pilot or the passenger on the helicopter. 

Somehow all of these killer shark films have used as their basic idea that the great white shark is some sort of creature possessed by the devil.  My guess is that in real life a shark is just a shark, not some aquatic version of Cujo.

88 minutes