Great White (1981)

Put a great white shark in a movie and I’m guaranteed to enjoy it. No matter how awful the film is – or how fake the shark is – the moment I see those cold dead eyes and monstrous teeth, I get a little shiver of excitement. Seriously, even Jaws the Revenge got me a wee bit giddy. You see, I’m terrified of great white sharks – like proper terrified. I can’t go in water deeper than my stomach at the beach. I even get panicky swimming in creeks and rivers – my mind wanders to horrible tales of great whites making their way in from the ocean. My initial obsession began with a book on sharks my parents got me after visiting the Great Barrier Reef. It was filled with terrible stories of great whites and their victims. I read it front to back several times – freaking myself out before bed. Then I saw Jaws. Jaws traumatised me so strongly that I switched from baths to showers. Jaws remains the only truly brilliant great white movie out there – Jaws II is pretty rad too – but luckily there’s plenty of shoddy cash-ins to keep us shark nuts entertained. When I heard that Italian trash kingpin Enzo G. Castellari had created his very own Jaws rip off, it became a must-see. The result – Great White or whatever other name you know it under – is a hilarious turd of a film with some unforgettable shark moments…

GREAT WHITE
aka The Last Shark aka L’ultimo squalo
aka The Last Jaws aka Jaws Returns (no joke)
Italy, 1981, Enzo G. Castellari

I probably don’t need to tell you the plot of Great White. It’s essentially Jaws. Except there’s one big difference. Remember in Jaws how Brody – the protagonist police chief – is constantly locking horns with the mayor who wants to keep the beach open over summer? It adds an awesome amount of tension to the story and dollops of sympathy for the likable lead. Well, in Great White, Peter Benton (James Franciscus) – the film’s “reimagining” of Brody – faces absolutely no conflict from the mayor. Great White‘s mayor makes a few mistakes, but in no way gets in Brody/Benton’s way. Vic Morrow also shows up as a super restrained version of Robert Shaw’s Quint. Come on! If you’re going to rip off Quint, go the whole way! While Great White steals its plot and characters from Jaws, it steals its tone and background teenagers from the fun Jaws 2.

Great White can be pretty frustrating. The film spends a lot of its time being a dreary soap opera. The first half is simply an awkward build up with Peter Benton, who crowns himself King Shark Expert (Benton is just some guy by the way, not a cop like Brody in Jaws), and Vic “Quint” Morrow lecturing people about great whites. Between the lectures there are shark-stalks-teens scenes. These stalk scenes are not your run of the mill shark film stuff. They’re so demented, so oddly shot and edited, so damn stupid that a mere written description will not suffice. Watch this:

What the fuck was that all about?! Bizarre slow motion shots of teens interspersed with bizarre slow motion stock footage?! The scene suggests some sort of payoff, but no, nothing happens. Teens run into water, shark is nearby (I guess), teens leave water. The end. But hey, how about that shark, huh? Pretty good, right? Boy, oh boy, I love me a fake shark and that great white is one plastic looking motherfucker. I had a shark bath toy as a toddler that looked better than the shark they use for the underwater shots in Great White. The version of the shark that emerges from the surf to chow down on humans – with its tiny mouth and immobile jaws – is not much better. But I’m so scared of sharks that even the shark’s appearance in this scene gave me a (very, very tiny) fright (and a very big laugh):


I love how the shark in Great White really enjoys smashing stuff up from below and biting people’s legs off. The best part of Great White involves a bad-ass shark hunter who is introduced towards the end of the film. This character appears out of nowhere, chewing on the scenery harder than the fake shark. The film implies that he will play a major role in taking down the giant shark. He doesn’t. He spends about five minutes of the running time alive and dies a hysterically undignified death. He’s the one in the cowboy hat:


Great White is a stupid piece of shit. But it works because it’s a stupid Italian piece of shit. Great White is ripe with qualities unique to 80s Italian trash – goofy dubbing, off dialogue, gore and nonsensical plotting to name a few – giving it its demented charm. It was an Italian tradition for their b-movies to rip off popular American films, but Great White takes it to new levels. I don’t even know how this film is available at all. Universal sued the crap out of Great White (and won) and it was pulled from its original release. I’m glad it managed to sneak its way onto the television screens of Italian genre lovers and shark nuts – Great White is cheesy goodness. Oh, and you know how I said the video above was the best part? I lied: