John’s Horror Corner: The Last Shark (1981; aka L’ultimo squalo, The Last Jaws, Great White), an Italian B-movie Jaws rip-off.

MY CALL: This B-movie Jaws (1975) rip-off is 60 minutes of general boredom followed by 20 minutes of decent bad movie fun. But if you’re looking for a fun bad movie in general, this is a decent sleepy Sunday afternoon choice. MORE MOVIES LIKE The Last Shark:  If you want more movies inspired by Jaws (1975), I’d direct you to Piranha (1978) or Piranha 3D (2010), Crawl (2019), 47 Meters Down (2017) or Shark Night 3D (2011)… not to mention Deep Blue Sea (1999) and The Shallows (2016).

After what I can only describe as three straight minutes of awkward softcore windsurfing porn, the movie corrects its horrible misstep with a shark attack. The shark POV is no more menacing than peaceful underwater shots of coral reef and school fish, yet leads to our shark takes a chunk out of the windsurf board. Unfortunately, we see as little blood as we do the shark—which is to say none at all.

Rather blatantly, we are introduced to characters that are carbon copies of Jaws’ (1975) Quint, Brody (here as Peter – James Franciscus; Killer Fish) and the ambitious local mayor. This beach town is approaching a major televised windsurfing competition and the mayor will not see it canceled over a few shark-related deaths. Deny, deny, deny, right? Only quite contrary to its 1975 source material, in this movie the mayor and our Quint character work together to keep beach-goers safe rather than having the problem largely ignored.

It pains me that this was only PG! Although clearly PG-13 by today’s standards. There’s slow-motion bikini running but no nudity (not that it would have enhanced this movie), there’s shark footage of a rather narrow-snouted normal-sized shark but the on-screen shark attacks are some humungous broad-faced monstrosity of a great white, and most shark shots seem to just be nature show stock footage. A few shots show the bloated shark emerging from the water and, when it does, it’s momentarily satisfying.

Director Enzo G. Castellari’s (Escape from the Bronx, Warriors of the Wasteland) movie starts slowly with the action, from almost none in the beginning to just a little in the middle. We do see windsurfers knocked off balance into the water, a lone severed limb, swimmers yanked beneath the water’s surface, sand the occasional comical catapulting of a motorboat and its human (or dummy) occupant into the air as if a bomb went off underneath them.

But finally after an hour we finally get to SEE something when someone is hanging from a helicopter and has both their legs bitten off! It’s bad, but it’s delightfully awesome—and it’s one of the most worthwhile scenes in this entire movie. Other highlights include pulling a man out of the water to discover he’s missing his lower half in a chunky gory mess (a gag well-utilized by the various Piranha), and the shark’s eventual defeat is a bloody underwater explosion.

After a very, very slow start, overall this movie is mildly entertaining and I certainly enjoyed a few laughs—even if biased towards the final third. But still, the movie isn’t really worth it unless you’re a fan of the era, Jaws rip-offs, or hokey Italian 80s horror. But if you’re looking for a fun bad movie in general, this is a decent Sunday afternoon choice.