This flick is somewhat infamous in that it was such a blatant rip-off of Jaws in terms of story and plot that Spielberg and Universal acquired a court proceeding to pull it from stateside theaters, and were even successful at getting it banned from playing anywhere in the U.S. Having never been available on legit video here in the States, I decided to plunk down my cash for a bootleg and see for myself what all the fuss is about.

Sporting a near identical Jaws storyline, we see that a local mayor of a little seaside community has a bit of a problem on his hands. A rogue great white, make that a thirty-foot and very pissed off great white, has laid claim to the waters by munching on several locals. The mayor, who has to be about the shiftiest looking guy you ever saw, calls in a local expert on sharks as well as a loner shark hunter to help with the problem. These two dudes are supposed to be the Chief Brody and Quint types, as if you haven't guessed. Of course wouldn't you just know it, the big windsurfing race which is a major tourist draw by the way, is only days away and those darn beaches have just got to stay open, man-eating shark or not. I bet you can pretty much guess the rest, right?

The thing I enjoyed the most about this flick was that it seemed to revel in the fact that it's basically just a cheesy, grade-B rip off of a bigger budgeted American blockbuster. I think the filmmakers knew it was impossible to top Jaws, so exactly what does one do to make itself stand out? Well, for starters you create a big plastic looking shark that pops out of the water like a dolphin, growls like Godzilla and gleefully eats as many stupid swimmers as possible. Even though the shark looked extremely phony, I sort of developed a personal fondness for the thing. I mean, this is one motivated shark my friends. Not only does he munch on the typical stupid lone swimmers, in various scenes he also crashes the local windsurfing race, bites the town's mayor in half and proceeds to eat his helicopter (ripping off Jaws 2), as well as dragging about 20 people out to sea on a pier that he himself smashed. This boy just might give old Bruce a run for his money...I think I smell a pay-per view fight here. Some scenes even had a bit of suspense to them, and I really dug the sporadic use of slow-mo, which was used to great effect.

Being an Italian exploitation flick we also get some fairly gory and cheesy death scenes, though nothing is to extreme. The mayor's death scene is a bad movie classic for sure. The downside, as is the problem with most of these films, is that it does tend to meander a bit and can be rather boring at times for the uninitiated to these types of films. There are some various pointless subplots thrown in if for no other reason than to add some padding to the film in between shark attacks. The acting ranges from decent to just god-awful, and since this is a flick shot on the beach, I could have used some skinny-dipping chicks thrown in here and there. Oh well.

Great White is still a fun watch and it's way overdue for a legit DVD release in my opinion. Spielberg and Universal need to get over it already. On a final note, Apocalypse Headquarters is willing to pay top dollar for the fake shark used in the movie. It's gotta be sitting in a warehouse somewhere!