Sadly Over-hyped

Brilliant and touching

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

This movie is an absolute gem. When it comes to great bad movies this ranks near the top with the best of them. It's such a rip-off of Jaws that it feel like a parody. The shark looks awful; they use a bunch of documentary footage intertwined with the footage of their shark and both are shot differently which is very noticeable. I though Jaws the Revenge will forever be the best terrible shark movie I'll ever see but this is even better. The way the shark behaves are highly unrealistic and all the attack scenes are great. This is just a great laugh-out loud comedy, there is one scene of someone dying and getting catapulted into the air which they show again later as someone in the movie filmed that moment, it's like the director knew how terrible and hilarious it was and wanted to give us another chance to see it, God bless him. for that and for making this beautiful moving picture.

Enzo Castellari's colorful career has seen several famous (or infamous) re-interpretations or takes on popular American box-office hits alongside his quirky original works. L'Ultimo Squalo, may contain shades of another famous shark movie, but manages to endear (perhaps unintentionally) because of its combination of Italian strangeness and American elements.James Franciscus and Vic Morrow lead a film-depiction of a quiet American beach town populated solely by Italians. The lengths the film goes to to assure us that this is the USA only makes the dissonance more jarring. The overabundance of American (and Confederate!) flags, random country music bands, and a cowboy shark bounty hunter are all humorous interpretations of the USA.A plot? Suffice to say: a giant shark eats locals just in time for the summer windsurfing regatta, and election season! It's up to Franciscus and Morrow, old shark-hunting friends, to put a stop to the shark's rampage.Franciscus' chiseled good looks make him a natural lead, even if it is rather vague his whole connection to the plot, other than that he has a boat so he can look for the shark. Vic Morrow puts in a lovably hammy performance as the Scottish shark hunter. He really chews the scenery, but the camaraderie he shares with Franciscus at least comes off as genuine. The other standout is Joshua Sinclair as the governor candidate. In an unusual twist, he plays a fairly responsible and concerned politician, who goes to great lengths to ensure the safety of the town - at least until the script calls for him to go into a foolhardy tete a tete with the titular shark.The shark, the last shark I presume, must be mentioned as the other star. Castellari knew that audiences watching a shark movie want above all to see the shark. Enzo blends stock footage with model usage, with mixed results. Sometimes it is quite clear that the shark you are watching on camera is not the same as the one you saw a few shots earlier. This is amusing though.When you get to see the shark constructed for the movie, it is a treat. There are plenty of scenes to show it off. The underwater version of the shark comes across as a bathtub toy awkwardly jetting forward with no regard to its surroundings. The above-water head shot version looks and moves suitably fake, content to usually ram something into submission. When the shark attacks, it is usually either by awkwardly ramming a target or exploding it! These moments are very funny to watch as actors or dummies careen through the air, helpless against the shark's prowess. It is easy to laugh at the shark, but truth be told, it is far better constructed than most shark movies, and 100x better than the CGI sharks that populate today's lousy Asylum cash-ins riding off their "so bad it's good" flavor. This stubby fish has got heart.At less than 90 minutes, the movie does not waste time. Shark-on-human violence punctuates the proceedings, growing in intensity and goofiness as the movie continues. From explosions, to helicopters, to cowboys, this shark knows how to steal the show. It does not overstay its welcome, and Castellari wisely gives us what we want. Enzo's photography in general is very good, with lots of wide and varied shots, slo-mo to spice things up visually, and generally solid composition throughout. The man brings a real joy and energy to genre filmmaking that more should take note of.RETROVISION DVD: For an amateur release by a small start-up (one person), Retrovision's release earns a lot of good will. Even if it is just a DVD and a case, it feels like a legitimate product with actual effort and polish. Poster work is used for the cover, instead of the boring floating-head syndrome that plagues US DVD/Blu-ray releases. The disc has printed artwork as well, which makes the disc feel special. Compared to the bootleg copies of the movie floating around online, the visual quality is quite good (though not without flaws, grain, and spots here and there), and the audio mixing is done well. The picture quality is doubly commendable because for a long time The Last Shark had a reputation of incomprehensible underwater photography. We now see that this is the fault of VHS bootlegs, not the film itself.The special features are an admirable attempt to add content. Three trailers, two deleted scenes (which are underwhelming, unfortunately), and a short retrospective on the film by a film historian and the young founder of Retrovision itself. It's pretty cheesy but likable despite itself. A welcome feature is some clips of the alternate American soundtrack. Though not as enjoyable as the bouncy Italo-disco soundtrack, it stands as a worthwhile curiosity for the movie buff. Each menu has crisp audio-recordings of the film's catchy music. On the whole the package displays a lot of effort and makes The Last Shark stand out in a see of cheap plastic cases with blank dvds passing off as "official" releases. Why must only cult films be graced with such dedication? Retrovision's release is thus the best and perhaps definitive release of this forgotten cult-classic, and earns extra marks for attempting what most film studios neglect which is to give us meaningful content on our DVD. This is a fun time at the movies. With brisk pacing, fun character performances, and a lovably goofy shark, I easily recommend The Last Shark for people who want to gather a group together and have a good time in front of the TV. It stands as one of the most enjoyable shark action/thriller/horror movies I've seen.

Obvious mannequins are propelled skyward for some unexplained (and unintentionally funny) reason, as a shark, or in some scenes, a dolphin, terrorizes a small coastal community, just like in that other shark movie. Intro scene has seemingly never-ending windsurfing footage culminating with the shark causing the guy and his board to explode out and fly up out of the water! The bite marks in what's left of the board look more like razor slashes, at angles which could not have possibly been made by a shark, as we go back to the "bite radius" bit from Jaws. And remember when the head in the boat scared Hooper (and us, the audience) in Jaws? There is even a rip off of that here, as we find an arm bitten off by the shark. And, aww, innit that cute, they even tied a pink balloon around the shark to track it. Are you kidding me? Is that the low rent substitute of Quint's yellow barrels, pink ballons? There actually is a little bit of tension toward the end of this one, in between bouts of unintended comedy, and some of the modelwork is amusing, The shark looks okay at a distance or at high angles, but when we're shown the shark at closer angles and for longer amounts of time, we realise just how inferior to Jaws it really is. Ron succumbs to a fate similar to Quint's, in Peter Benchley's original novel, but the film is too derivative and slowly paced to amount to much more than a third-rate ripoff. Such a close ripoff, in fact, that Steven Spielberg and co. took legal action against the makers of this one, and had the movie effectively banned.

Italian Jaws rip-off is most infamous for Universal having sued it's makers for plagiarism and getting it's US release blocked. It still has yet to get any kind of official release here even after over 30 years. As a movie, it's pretty bad although, mildly amusing at times especially when you see Universal's point. Story has an enormous great white shark attacking a beach community and writer Peter Barton (Peter Benchley?) as played by James Franciscus and shark hunter Ron Hamer, played by the great Vic Morrow fading in and out of a Scottish accent, are the only two who can stop it's rampage. Director Enzo G. Castellari directs the carnage by the numbers and we actually wish he would have been a bit more over the top as a lot of Italian films do with material like this. He seems to really want to make a serious shark flick from Vincenzo Mannio's script and we wish he had just cut loose and had a bloodier good time with it. The FX range from passable to bad such as with a helicopter scene becoming laughable when the model used during it's crash is a completely different type of helicopter then the one it represents. The shark varies from live footage to a cheesy underwater miniature to an actually decent full size mock up but, we never really come to fear it like Spielberg's carnivore. Overall an amusing curiosity but, one we wish was just a bit more fun to make tracking it down more of a delight. For Jaws completest and Vic Morrow fans (like me) only.