The GREAT lost Jaws RIPOFF!!…
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Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — Jaws
— 6 years ago(June 26, 2019 03:42 PM)On March 5th, 1982,
Film Ventures International
released a
KILLER
-shark movie called...
Great White to 300 North American theaters in Southern California, Texas, Louisiana, and Michigan, with a plan to expand to hundreds more across North American. Though audiences showed up to the tune of $3 million, that plan didn’t work out. One month prior to the film’s North American debut, Universal Studios filed a civil-action suit complaining of copyright infringement against the films Jaws and Jaws 2. On April 22, U.S. District Judge David Kenyon issued a preliminary injunction against the film, putting a halt to any expansion plans and prompting Universal to demand it be pulled from theaters. Universal’s efforts expanded around the globe, bringing similar suits in France, Belgium, Great Britain, and Australia, effectively making the film disappear from all but the memory in most of the world.
That’s kind of extraordinary since Jaws’ mammoth success inspired one imitator after another. These include well-known films like Joe Dante’s clever Piranha and the dreadful killer-whale-on-the-loose film Orca, but also titles like Mako: The Jaws Of Death and Tintorera… Tiger Shark, films that did little to try to hide their main source of inspiration. They joined other Jaws-inspired efforts that simply switched up the killer monster, films like Grizzly and Tentacles. What’s more, Universal was still embroiled in legal issues stemming from a 20th Century Fox complaint that the Universal-produced TV series Battlestar Galactica bore too strong a resemblance to Star Wars, meaning any charges of plagiarism could invite further discussion of a sore subject. To raise the studio’s ire, any film would have to be pretty brazen in its thievery.
But brazen might not be a strong enough word to describe Great White, which has stuck around despite Universal’s attempts to turn it into an un-movie. Great White played to some success in Italy—home to its prolific director, Enzo G. Castellari—and elsewhere, under titles like The Last Shark and, most flagrantly, The Last Jaws. It soon became available via bootlegs in the U.S., though the injunction stood as late as 2008, when Los Angeles’ New Beverly Theater attempted to screen it on a double bill with another of Castellari’s films, The Inglorious Bastards, the Italian World War II movie that inspired the Quentin Tarantino film of the same name, though not quite the same spelling. More recently, Great White has quietly surfaced legally via Amazon, where viewers can stream it and buy it digitally, and less officially on YouTube, where a user has uploaded the entire feature.
The years have done little to make Great White look less like a Jaws rip-off. If anything, its inspiration’s longevity and iconic status have only underscored the similarities. Great White opens with teens on a beach, one of whom becomes a great white shark’s first human meal, and it ends with an exploding shark. In between, we get: a self-serving politician (Joshua Sinclair) who insists a beach event must go on despite the dangers of shark attacks; underwater footage from the shark’s point of view; and—to add a dash of Jaws 2 to the mix—some dumb teens recklessly putting their lives in danger. Universal’s suit offers even more details, with point-by-point examples of similarities that include:
In Great White, the empty boat of a local fisherman is found floating in the water. After examining the arm of the fisherman discovered in the hull, the expert tries to warn the politician about the dangers of the shark. In Jaws the police chief and the scientist find the empty boat of a local fisherman floating in the water. After examining the body of the dead fisherman and a shark's tooth found in the hull, the two men try to warn the politician about the dangers of the shark.
And:
The local shark expert in Great White, Peter Benton (James Franciscus) is a combination of two characters in Jaws: the shark expert (Richard Dreyfuss) and the local police chief (Roy Scheider). As the shark expert in Jaws, Richard Dreyfuss tries to warn the town of the dangers of the shark; in Great White, the shark expert does the same thing. In Jaws, the local police chief has a blond wife and a child injured by the shark; in Great White, James Franciscus has a blond wife and a child injured by the shark.
That last detail may seem nitpicky, given that there are many blond wives in the world, but it actually skips over a few details. Not only does the name Peter Benton bear an unmistakable resemblance to Peter Benchley, who co-wrote the Jaws screenplay based on his novel of the same name, but Great White’s Benton is also a bestselling author who happens to be the local shark authority in Port Harbor, the film’s idyllic setting (even though the dialogue reminds viewers that Port Harbor has never had any trouble with sharks).
Another item from the suit could define understatement: “The salty skippers, both of whom have heavy English-type accents and are e -
— 6 years ago(June 26, 2019 03:51 PM)
I saw commercial advertising it BUT didn't get to see it in the theatre. I did EVENTUALLY get to see it on the old Google Play where it was titled
The Last Shark
and have seen clips on
YouTube
.
“Call a SPADE, a SPADE; and a TRANNY, a TRANNY, or an IT!!!”.
"THAT'S SOME BAD
SHIT
,
HARRY
!".
— 6 years ago(June 26, 2019 05:37 PM)
