Retro Review: The Last Shark AKA Great White

I wasn't really sure if I wanted to make this review a Drunken one or a Retro one. The Last Shark is an old . . . as in retro . . . movie, but I was drinking while watching it. Just not to the level that warrants a Drunken Review.

Then I figured I was thinking about it too much, and stopped. We go Retro on this one!

The Last Shark, or Great White, as it was known while making the rounds in theatres back in 1981, is a notorious Italian Jaws rip off that, when I was a kid, was very hard to find. Thankfully it's popped up on Amazon Prime, and I was able to take this mother down.

Don't judge me, but the booze I did indulge in made the laughable shark effects (at one point it looks like one of those wind-up toys kids play with in the bathtub) easier to digest. Ditto a sequence taken directly from Jaws 2.

Oh, and if it looks like the late Vic Morrow is channelling Robert Shaw's Quint a little too well, you're right. He is, right down to the hat and mutton chops.

Also pretty good is Micaela Pignatelli as eye candy, and that's not just the booze talking. And, as someone who used to windsurf, I dug watching all the windsurfing in this movie (I never, ever got that good at it), especially a sequence when the Great White uses a race as a sort of smorgasbord. Made me nostalgic.

The windsurfing, not the eating of the windsurfers.

Anywho, The Last Shark is a Bad, with or without the alcohol. But it's also a harmless way to pass a night.

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