THE LAST SHARK (1981)

THE LAST SHARK (1981)

Tagline: You're what's for dinner

(Adventure, Drama, There’s Something Fishy Going On Here and I Don’t Like It) [PG]

It's not his hunger he wants to satisfy. He wants to kill. So you have two choices. One, get out of his way. The other is to hold your ground and fire and try to kill him because you do not have another choice. Any questions?

In this one, a coastal town is being terrorized by a shark and none of the authorities seem to care as per usual. Now it’s up to shark hater Ron Hamer and Peter Benton to stop it before a big windsurfing event on Saturday. I am not sure what day the movie starts on, but that’s it. That’s what’s going on. 

So apparently Universal Pictures sued the makers of this movie because it borrows nearly everything from JAWS regarding the plot. Universal actually won the case against the Australian distributor and got this movie pulled from theaters where it was playing. Japan didn’t care though and actually doubled down releasing the movie as JAWS RETURNS, literally promoting it as a sequel in the JAWS series. Having said all that, this is an Italian film. 

One of the things I noticed is that even though this movie came out in the early 80s, like a lot of 80s movies, it features at least what “sounds” like an all 70’s soundtrack. The score is decent, but they don’t have anything iconic in this like the classic JAWS score.

Acting wise Micaela Pignatelli doesn’t get a lot to do in this as Gloria Benton, but she does fine in the role. I haven’t seen any of her other films, but she continued acting after this till 2016. James Franciscus (KILLER FISH) is actually pretty solid in this. I think I actually like him more as a lead than I liked Roy Scheider as Brody in JAWS. I know that is probably considered crazy, I just prefer him as an actor. Vic Morrow plays Ron Hamer in this who is clearly a character modeled after Quint from JAWS. Morrow was a really solid actor whose life was sadly cut short in a helicopter accident while filming THE TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE. The rest of the cast is actually fine. I don’t really think acting was much of an issue here, it was more just the fact that this was a rip-off of a massively successful masterpiece.

People complain about this thing so much that at one point people actually thought it might be the worst shark film ever made. Maybe it was for a while, but then CRUEL JAWS and DEEP BLOOD got made, and ever since Wild Eye and the Polonia Brothers, got a wild hair to start making shark films, nearly everything they do is worse than this. Effects wise we do get a couple of shots of real sharks, several of what looks like some sort of submersible model shark, but for the most part it’s this kind of floating bobbing shark head rig with a mouth that doesn’t really move in a realistic way at all.

I think the lack of interesting dialog, score, the way it’s shot at some points, and the way that the camera guys seem to be hiding behind things while shooting, all put this film way below the level that JAWS. We even get some stock footage and shots that look like they are repeated several times. However, saying it’s not a pretty fun shark flick and that there are no cool moments is a bit much. There is a scene in this where a dude gets bitten in half by a shark while he’s hanging from a helicopter. Don’t tell me if you are a shark movie fan that, you haven’t always waited for a crazy sequence like that. 

Yes, the effects are bad, yes the script and acting could have been better, but I actually had a lot of fun with this one. I gave JAWS a 6 out of 7, this isn’t that, but it’s still pretty cool. THE LAST SHARK gets a 4 out of 7 for just being quite a bit of fun. 

GRAPHICS ARE THE PROPERTY OF FILM VENTURES INTERNATIONAL (FVI) AND ARE USED FOR REVIEW PURPOSES ONLY.