[Archive]: Sunday School Musical (2008)

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Director: Rachel Lee Goldenberg

Screenplay: Rachel Lee Goldenberg and Ashley Holloway

Cast: Chris Chatman as Zachary; Candise Lakota as Savannah; Krystle Connor as Aundrea; Robert Acinapura as Miles; Amy Ganser as Margaret; Millena Gay as Anita; Dustin Fitzsimons as Charlie; Cliff Tan as Trevor; Mark Hengst as Pastor Joe

First written on 10th July 2013

Continuing with my Archive reviews, here is piece of an entire month of "Bad" cinema from my older blog, which is still in existence but with mind of keeping all my materials together, I've transitioned to here. This was film #12 of The ‘Worst’ of Cinema, back when I was mad enough to coordinate an entire month where each day had a review; eventually, to pull back the curtain like the Wizard in Oz, I cheated by composing the reviews the month before, as with my October horror festivals, but the challenge was felt and I am still proud of these mad little challenges even if they caused more stress than the plan was intended to.

As always, none of the material no matter how embarrassing it is will be altered, just with the grammar and paragraphing changed when required to make it easier to read.

In terms of the review, I was mean to The Asylum, but I will defend the attitude of my older self that by the 2000s this straight-to-video market got exceptionally lazy, even if my rose tinted glasses about Roger Corman have disappeared, and in mind to how I have become found of the low budget curiosities that have made up this era. The line later on that Christians should make their own films has becomes ironically precedent for myself hasn't it though? I confess I haven't dealt into the wave of Christian cinema from the United States that was being made from this era onwards, but by all accounts, the modern strain has none of the nuisance of say, Robert Bresson, instead falling into the kind of very simplified viewpoints that are problematic. We should point these issues out as much in liberal American cinema, but there's as much to clearly find in this wave of Christian cinema of a conservative bent which isn't helping the cause either, not just Kirk Cameron taking a nose dive on metaphorical concrete when he made a very embarrassing defend about Christmas that appeared in some cinemas. There's a lot I'd want to watch and even cover though, not just morbidly as by accounts Indivisible (2018), a war film based on a real life war chaplain, is a fascinating and appropriately complex film I'm now reminded to investigate, so I wouldn't just dismiss this entire cultural movement offhand without an eyewitness account.

As for Sunday School Musical itself? I'd gladly investigate the film again even though I was put off by The Asylum back then because they never lived up by the standard of at least being memorable. Sadly Chris Chatman, the lead who I compliment, never made enough film baring one in post-production called Welcome Matt. The director Rachel Lee Goldenberg, to my surprise, is behind the curious Lifetime film A Deadly Adoption (2015), played entirely straight by all accounts as their usual type of film but starring Will Ferrell and Kristen Wiig outside their usual ballpark, marking it a potential curiosity if I can ever track it down. Goldenberg is also unfortunately the directoress of the musical remake of the 1983 film Valley Girl, which has been in limbo due to its casting of YouTuber Logan Paul, a figure whose controversial decision to upload footage of a suicide victim on his YouTube page contributed to the film, which was complete, never getting released.

To soften the tone of that later, incredible dark piece of knowledge I learnt of just putting together this Archive review, I'm also throwing in a bonus mini-one about the live action Fist of the North Star adaptation. Not really reviews, more of a stub, but sod it, since I horde this content on my computer hard drive, why not release it again anyway? Plus it's a reminder that, whilst a 1000 Anime review in truth, if I could ever re-see the 1995 film, based on the Japanese manga/anime franchise, I'd more than happy revisit the film for all the curious tit-bits I mention. I didn't even write, to my surprise, that Malcolm McDowell is also in it of many details long forgotten...

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From http://www.cantstopthemovies.com/wp-content
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Original Review

I worried, looking out of curiosity for reviews of this film online before planning one of my own, that by covering it I fall in danger of taking on the same cheap targets that I questioned professional critics of doing with the Jack and Jill (2011) review. Is anyone who reviews a film like this, including myself, really going to write anything thoughtful, even actually funny, or will this be like a bad video review where you see the whole film dispersed with obvious and bad jokes? Am I just being a hypocrite for reviewing this, and writing this entire introduction?

I have broken a rule set up for this season by reviewing a film made by The Asylum company. I was willing to break the rules here because this movie seemed to be an exception from the material that made me put that rule up in the first place. It’s not about an overgrown, CGI fish monster but a low budget musical designed to take advantage of the High School Musical phenomenon and also be part of the company’s Faith Films subdivision, designed to make Christian themed films. Getting hold of this film was for the promise of a terrible movie, a concept that, as this season has gone on, is pretty questionable now, but in hindsight a genre that is usually extravagantly made turned into such a minuscule budgeted, Christian film was also a fascinating proposition. This kind of melding of genres and concepts in unexpected ways is like viewing abstract Non-Euclidean geometry within a HP Lovecraft story, trying to imagine all of its parts working together without going insane. The film itself is, well, what I have sadly come to expect from The Asylum company; as much as I want to love them, it feels like I keep going back to them like an idiot, as all of us who have reviewed their films, as they secretly praise us for the reviews even if they are negative ones.

When he is transferred to a new school, and away from his adored choir and friends, Zachery (Chris Chatman) finds it difficult to connect to his environment. His grades are failing, the choir at his new school are hopeless in terms of their musical abilities, and the church of his old choir is in danger of closing because of finance issues. However, it is possible that, through joining together the choirs, and winning a competition, that every problem can be solved, all the while he slowly connects to the leader of the new choir Savannah (Candine Lakota) who has to overcome losing her mother only a few months earlier. In the film’s favour, the cast for the most part, especially Chatman, have musical talent; it is great that for such an ill advised take on a musical that there are people in front of the camera who can sing and have charisma, and there are moments where the music they are singing too is trying to be good. Unfortunately, for most of the film, it is also music at its most generic and sterilised rather than really good songs. This could be only my personal taste, but when songs have the same tone and sound to each other it is not a good sign. For the most part, it is merely bland and innocuous, but as with the song set around a bench, it can become terrible.

Sunday School Musical outside the music is worthless. Chatman had the potential to be someone special, if he had made anymore films after this 2008 production, but the rest of the film is cheap looking. It is sad that the practices of former exploitative film companies have not been continued for the most part this era; at least Roger Corman and Italian film producers would hire talented directors and film making personal and let them make whatever they want as long as it could be marketed for cinemas. Even Godfrey Ho had a sense of fun. In this era – where blockbusters hog the cinemas, and digital film cameras and computer effects are cheap – laziness has sadly been allowed to come into this sub culture of cinema. Even straight-to-video films from the yesteryear could attempt to be great works, and while there are still great films made today, wading for them in the mass is even more difficult.

Sunday School Musical is bland looking; unnecessarily frequent and choppy in its editing, and just dull to sit through. I am more likely to sleep through another viewing of this than feel pain. As a cash-grab for High School Musical, which I admit to having not viewed alongside its sequels, it is a half-hearted attempt at a musical that could have been special even if it was a failure. The Cannon Group, back in the 1980s, would have tried something special even on a pittance. The Aslyum group, from Almighty Thor (2011), which I reviewed for this blog, to this, are exceptionally lackadaisical in their attitude.

And what makes this even more disconcerting is that this is supposed to be a Christian film. There is very little in the film that really delves into faith or Christian values at all. It has choirs as it main plot and Savannah’s father is a preacher, but this seems arbitrary. It could be argued that these types of films don’t have to directly tackle issues of faith, but this is pointless as there are films already made that Christians enjoy and gain a lot from, and if there wasn’t, they could make their own films rather than rely on someone like The Asylum. A Christian film for me, as it stands now, should tackle the issues of faith in ordinary life, which Sunday School Musical fails to do at all and instead panders to a lame interpretation of R&B and hip-hop music lacking the bite and meaning to it. Alongside 2012 Doomsday (2008), another of these faith based films by the company I’ve seen, there is something exceptionally wrong about The Asylum’s attitude to these films that Corman or an Italian producer, even Ho, is completely innocent of. Not only are they making lazy rip-offs of blockbusters rather than fun ones like the Italians could make, but it can be argued that they are conning Christians, who would want movies for them, without any attempt at making something interesting. As an agnostic^[1], I can see how something like Sunday School Musical, in its lifelessness, would be insulting to the Christian god, like offering a turd to Him as some kind of sacrificial gift and excepting to be lavished with praise.

And the worst part? I am dumb enough to review another film from them after my bile for Almighty Thor. Admittedly, I had hope for this to be something interesting from The Asylum, and I still want to see Mega Piranha (2010) and their take on the Halloween films, but I have tricked myself again even if I spent only 50p for a second hand disc. Are all of us who review these films, even mock them, just encouraging this sort of filmmaking paradoxically? For all the criticisms I’ve had with the film, I’ve just encouraged more people to watch this film when it should be ignored and vanish from existence. I could have scrapped this review to do this, but to both stroke my ego and out of need to write about this film, I have to post it. If the phrase ‘fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me’ ever applied to any context, this is the perfect time to use it. On my part, I may go for three and please The Asylum again, or actually have some common sense next time.

From https://mojtv.hr/thumb.ashx?path=/images/cc47f58c-fd9d
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[1] Pass six years, I'm also not an agnostic as I wrote this review but a spiritual person, as a result of discovering that I had entirely misinterpreted what "agnostic" meant. Being "Agnostic", which I didn't know writing this review, is actually closer in spectrum to atheism rather than not knowing what a divine godhead might be, but with some philsophical differences of importance, if you research its theological and philosophical beginnings even on Wikipedia. That does leave me in the annoying position of believing in an entity upstairs and soul, but not with any organised religious ship to anchor myself to. Also "spiritualist" doesn't roll off the tongue and just evokes charlatan Victorians Harry Houdini particularly hated, so its a position in dire need of a marketing department to come up with a name for. 

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Bonus: Fist of the North Star (Director: Tony Randel, 1995)

My knowledge of Fist of the North Star is very limited, but a British Kenshiro who looks like the muscular brother of Benedict Cumberbatch, who can still make your head explode, was not what I was expecting but utterly hilarious.

Despite being part of the wave of pop culture films from the 1990s that I am obsessed over, visually part of the era and crammed with the obsessions (end of the world scenario, a cast with everyone from director Melvin Van Peebles to pro-wrestler Vader), it is pretty tedious however. Even if Chris Penn steals every scene he is in, the film’s narrative is incredibly generic and for a film that needs good fight scenes to work, the compromise to their presentation, and the gore from the original manga removed for the most part, undermines the whole project. I’ve never been a fan of Tony Randel, especially of his second Hellraiser film, and I wonder what this’ll been like if it was allowed to be good or as insane as a film like Street Fighter from the same era.

The Amazing Bulk (2012)

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Director: Lewis Schoenbrun

Screenplay: Keith Schaffner and Jeremiah Campbell

Cast: Jordan Lawson as Henry Howard; Shevaun Kastl as Hannah Darwin; Terence Lording as General Darwin; Randal Malone as Dr. Werner von Kantlove; Juliette Angeli as Lolita Kantlove; Jed Rowen as Detective Ray Garton; Deirdre V. Lyons as Detective Lisa Tuttle

Obscurities, Oddities and One-Offs

This is the first of Obscurities, Oddities and One-Offs, which will retire the Non-Abstract Abstract reviews in favor of tidying the blog up and add more elegant style to the work, mainly aesthetically and a title for these non-abstract films I'm covering that rolls off the tongue more.

Made in 2012, I first learnt of The Amazing Bulk through Obscurus Lupa, a female web video host (real name Allison Pregler) who probably did the sardonic review of bad obscure films long before most; I'm not a fan of these types of videos, but to Lupa's credit, rather than soft targets she had the decency (and still does) to dig the deepest, to never given in to the obvious, once a huge fan (and still admiring her work to this day) just for how her reviews in particular covered the prolificness of cinema from the 2000s onwards, an entire cultural flotsam-and-jetsam few of us would probably watch unless by chance that she delved into deliberately, an entire catalogue that could easily be forgotten and lost but, chronicled by someone like Lupa, is just as strange as great canonical weird work if absolutely painful to sit through. Few of them will probably be remembers, and even the few know like David DeCoteau's A Talking Cat?! (2013) feel like they're skirting the fringes of fame, without judging their merits, based on irony only, but, whilst they exist, it's worth covering such examples to gauge what the 2010s in particular were like for these curious cheap creations that were released just before and during streaming becoming popular. So, like a perverse tribute to first learning of The Amazing Bulk from one of her videos, here I am much later covering it.

The notable thing about The Amazing Bulk is not the amazing coincidence that its similar to the Incredible Hulk, a comic book series of interest, but that barring the actors and an occasional prop (a fake purple monster hand too), the entirety of this film is set in green screen with animatiom which looks like it's from a mid nineties video game. It's not even Ralph Bakshi's Cool World (1991) in terms of the interaction between the actors and the sets as, shot only over five to six days, this feels equivalent to visual decor to a theatrical performance of a very peculiar sort rather than a great integration of the two sides.

The premise is generic, the kind that you can boil some superhero films down to, openly borrowing from the Incredible Hulk how scientist Henry Howard (Jordan Lawson) is like Bruce Banner, working for General Darwin (Terence Lording) to create an experimental super serum that, after many ill fated tests on CGI rats which caused an alarming amount to vanish into puffs of CGI smoke, finally works but turns Howard into a CGI purple monster of varying sizes, something just big and other times large enough to make a helicopter a toy he can pluck out the air. Whenever he gets angry or mildly constipated¹, the Bulk causes destruction to CGI vehicles in the vicinity. Why this is not like most superhero films is that, looking like the world of an edutainment game from my past, The Amazing Bulk was created with a lot of pre-existing models and materials. Characters don't even run or walk for large amounts of time, only gyrate on the same spot as the background moves instead.

From https://i1.wp.com/psychodrivein.com/wp/wp-content/
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The film never transcends to a state of true weirdness because, whilst many will already be put off by its quality, the worst part for me is that for all its irony, director Lewis Schoenbrun has openly admitted The Amazing Bulk was more a challenge to make an ultra-low budget superhero film and thus it plays itself safe in plot. The thing is, growing up once hating a lot of these no-budget films, now admiring them but picky, that it is never the technical or aesthetic quality now that was then and now the true issue with many of these films, but how so many feel so stridently obsessed with recreating plots that I found predictable in higher budgeted work, let alone with the factor of whether they could actually recreate them (if at all) on lower budgets. The Amazing Bulk does feel mercenary as a result in its creation, where even factors like its bizarre choices of animation, bought from the likes of eBay, Digital Juice, Animation Factory and Turbo Squid Inc. among others, are never implemented in a way showing actual risk or a sense that the director is an eccentric.

Probably the most fascinating thing about director Schoenbrun instead is his claim to have assisted on Richard Williams' The Thief and the Cobbler (1993), notorious an animation feature film which first started production in 1963 and, after a bastardised 1995 Miramax theatrical release alongside various re-edited versions in existed, had to have three bootleg "Recobbled" cuts made available by fans up to this current day to try and bring Williams' work to existence. I cannot help but wonder, speculate, if that ever had a subconscious influence on Schoenbrun's mix of various "found" props and a desire not to be stuck in a scenario of an endless, arduous production as, for better or worse, the production time was so short in terms of shooting everything.

Sticking to its plot, it does mean any real sense of eccentricity is lost baring a few grasps of pleasurable weirdness. It's thankfully not a pain to sit through, strong enough to tolerate this type of film now, but it's with good reason few would watch The Amazing Bulk without having an allergic reaction. This means that, in terms of the story rather than the production values, the few moments of eccentricity offer what I wish the film should've been in a drought for most of the film. Introducing our villain Dr. Werner von Kantlove (Randal Malone), with his fake German accent and beau Lolita Kantlove (Juliette Angeli), the film offers some much needed absurdity in how, for all his bad hamminess, in his best mock Dr. Strangelove/poor man's Tim Curry performance, you still have an interesting joke character who is explicitly impotent yet in a loving relationship with the simple minded Lolita, both having found a way around this by blowing up national monuments, depicted with stock photos with small CGI missiles turning into CGI explosions over them. Then there's General Darwin, the Thunderbolt Ross of this world, who at times sounds like he's an older man losing his marbles, either improvisation or the script, which as a result manages at least some actual laughs from his abrupt shouting of lines.

Between Darwin's abrupt hatred of dust to Dr. Strangelove and Lolita's ongoing love, the deviant scientist wanting to blow up the Moon (regardless of it destroying the ecosystem if he did) with his bubble headed girlfriend by his side, these joke characters are so much more interesting than a film that wants to be sympathetic with our lead and his romantic interest, a Betty Ross stand-in Hannah Darwin (Shevaun Kastl). And yes, Stanley Kubrick references in the text may stand out; Schoenbrun is a huge Kubrick fan, and whilst the references are embarrassing at times, it's at least a quirk of interest as, in one of the few virtues of the film technically, the director wisely chose good (and public domain) classical compositions²; anyone who wanted to heard Also Sprach Zarathustra over a CGI science bench being shaken about and a fake purple monster had popping up behind it will be able to knock it off their bucket list if they watch this film.

The idea of cinema which makes so many bad decisions it transcends and becomes unique is one I find has weight as the Millennium has encouraged a greater sense of irony to our viewing but also a greater sympathy for filmmakers, as technology allowed for more homespun productions which have to struggle and sometimes overcome their limitations or the circumstances in their making. The surrealist in me sees this in lieu of what is called the "marvellous", celebrating the try-hard as much as taste which transgresses middlebrow mainstream culture, but there's a difference between the absurd from the bland and merely bad. The Amazing Bulk is not Things (1989) or After Last Season (2009) sadly.

The closest moment is when the Bulk, when the US Army turn on him, goes on the run from explosions; its established early, as to get to Kantlove's CGI castle, a literal one barely guarded by male extras in mock Medieval helmets borrowed from a heritage site gift shop, our lead crosses past a golf course and immediately a leprechaun afterwards among details in the background, something which is taken further with Lewis Schoenbrun eventually using even the least appropriate animated figures regardless of tone and logic. Scored the 1812 Overture by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, the chase scene is ridiculous but also compelling as a CGI Bulk flees across various (tonally different) locations. CGI tanks, CGI Robin Hood archer, CGI superhero, CGI pug dog superhero, CGI gecko using a CGI computer in a CGO desert, CGI submarine, CGI children playing with CGI footballs blissfully ignorant of the CGI Bulk nearby being attacked with CGI explosions, all CGI gaudiness but, whilst un-defendable in terms of good taste or quality, the only moment something actually strange takes place for an entertaining level of absurdity. The rest of the film, though, is a low budget superhero film that, whilst breezes past with pace that never slogs, is still a really bad and bland production. For every CGI car smaller than a cast member crushing them, The Amazing Bulk never finds a well of personality to compensate, never finding a charisma more interesting and instead more concerned with normal plotting despite that being innately the worst part of the production.

From https://i0.wp.com/psychodrivein.com/wp/wp-
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1) I apologize to actor Jordan Lawson for such a joke, probably too cruel for my usual writing, but with his stern look a constant, it cannot help but remind one that even two actors like Eric Bana and Mark Ruffalo probably had to struggle with even just making anger and repressed rage look credible in any movie, let alone ones where they turn into the Jolly Green Giant on steroids.  

2) Barring an awful MIDI version of Ride of the Valkyries, but that's the least of the film's issues.

The Last Shark (1981)

From https://i.ytimg.com/vi/
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Director: Enzo G. Castellari

Screenplay: Vincenzo Mannino

Cast: James Franciscus as Peter Benton; Vic Morrow as Ron Hamer; Micaela Pignatelli as Gloria Benton; Joshua Sinclair as Governor William Wells; Giancarlo Prete as Bob Martin; Stefania Girolami Goodwin as Jenny Benton

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #133

Amongst the various attempts to cash in on the success of Jaws (1975) - from a killer whale with Orca (1977), to a bear on land with Grizzly (1976), to actual shark related films - none are as infamous as Italy's The Last Shark as, taking the template of Jaws' plot blatantly, it had a few days of success at the American box office only for a cease and desist from Universal Pictures, owners of Jaws, to have it yanked off screens for plagiarism. For me, the issue of the "mockbuster" compromising another major film has never seemed that fair. Call it a natural suspicion of Hollywood, but particularly as this wasn't like Bruno Mattei's infamous TV movie Cruel Jaws (1995), which did "borrow" shots from Jaws sequels and has made it a licensing nightmare. Even then, like certain Turkish or East Asian movies, I'm still going to fight on the side of these rip-offs as it's like picking on an underdog which, even if it made money, are never going to be as big as the Hollywood films. Especially as Hollywood should be more concerned with issues like if the box office has dipped drastically or the general quality of their work has sunk, factors which are more likely to make anyone worry than a small Italian shark film.

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For me, the issue of these films being suppressed by large Hollywood studios is actually cruel and unfair especially if it lasts into the modern day, where these films would no longer be credible threats but works whose audience are now a select group fascinated by them. It's also the case that many of these films, even if they outright stole music or clips from other films are so vastly different in tone and/or plot. Abby (1974), suppressed as a rip-off of The Exorcist (1973), is a great example of this as it's taken the plot of the more lavish production but is a drastically different narrative and type of film, make it arbitrary bullying from the major studio to still keep a film like it out of public availability. Even if The Last Shark openly rips off the narrative structure of Jaws, you wouldn't confuse it with Jaws, an entirely different language in terms of production style from the Italian golden period of genre films and how Jaws was made. Instead you get a fascinating snapshot of mid-seventies American cinema, still tinged in naturalistic drama and grittiness of adult storytelling even for a blockbuster, against the colourful madness of the Italians in the early eighties, who could still have a great production and technical style to them for even the lowest budgeted, scuzziest of films. Surprisingly, contrary to most film cash-ins from the Italians which upped the gore and weirdness, this is meant to be a serious audience friendly shark film, which makes the contrast even more fascinating.

The Last Shark, as expected from this initial introduction, follows the premise of Jaws almost exactly, although frankly you can make an argument this plot template even found its way outside of natural horror in films like Don Dohler's Nightbeast (1982). A shark so rotund you could roll it down a hill, like a cheese wheel in some obscure English customs, terrorises an American coastal town, American actor Vic Morrow standing in as Robert Shaw, playing a grizzled shark hunter who teams with author Peter Benton (James Franciscus) to take down the aquatic beast, all the while a mayoral candidate for the next local election Governor William Wells (Joshua Sinclair) is trying to hide the shark problem so his giant publicity event, a windsurfing competition, isn't ruined.

From http://manapop.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02
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A film like The Last Shark shows how a lot of Italian genre cinema lives in its own world. Films which can be shot on location in the United States, even stealing eye wateringly good location scenes in places the US productions of the time couldn't afford, but show the cultural differences between Italy and the States within little details. That windsurfing is a major cultural event for this town, which has more of a sense of the producers trying to capitalise on what they themselves believe is a trend in popular culture. That and weird details like a booth on a beach dune where, when a coin is put in the slot, an actual person acts like a mechanised automaton playing a banjo. It doesn't detract from its sun-kissed, real American locations or tone, but it also shows that a lot of the charm and love for these Italian films is that they fully exist in their own realities, a pocket dimension whose various tales viewers like me will gladly watch and collect on physical media where reoccurring, frequent actors play multiple individuals and there's always a style, or score, that's worth even rewatching duds.

I openly admit The Last Shark is the poor man's version of Jaws, as while other rip-offs like Abby are very different in story and can bear the brunt of their bigger genes, this is an attempt to remake Jaws with the Giant White Shark in the room being how good Jaws was. Its particularly unfair as having yet to mention him, director Enzo G. Castellari does feel restricted here. Castellari is one of those names from the golden era of Italian genre film who was a working director, not a figure given auteur status like Dario Argento or even Lucio Fulci, but one whose name become known and iconic due to the good films in his prolific career, how even the flawed films in his career had a charm and virtues. Barring The Last Shark, his killer shark film, a giallo Cold Eyes of Fear (1971) and The House by the Edge of the Lake (1979), he rarely directed horror at all. He is known as an action director instead. For westerns. For crime films. For post apocalypse sci-fi. For war films, his most well known Inglorious Bastards (1978) the film that's helped his status become more canonised as Quentin Tarantino made a film in tribute to his work called Inglourious Basterds (2009).

From http://s1.dmcdn.net/i04HO/x240-BYa.jpg

Here with The Last Shark, a director who can make incredible genre films like Street Law (1974) is stuck in a difficult position of trying to outmatch a legendary Steven Spielberg film. An impossible task which is difficult for any director of any status with any budget let alone him. He tries and you can see he's a solid craftsman, but for someone loved for his slow motion action scenes, seeing slow motion for a woman running down a beach like an episode of Baywatch isn't doing his talent justice. We still have a memorable film in appearance - the early eighties era of Italian cinema is colourful, bright and fun with the American locations actually shot in the US - but considering its premise, the potential for Castellari to show his action chops isn't fully appreciated, probably not helped by the likely fact, aping (sharking?) Jaws, that he was forced by producers to make a film like the Hollywood one and not using his entire talent.

Where The Last Shark works is in that aforementioned charm. An attempt at an already failed idea which was still executed. Guido and Maurizio De Angelis cannot recreate a score as good as John William's from Jaws, but they are great, rightly praised composers of Italian genre films, and whilst this isn't their best work they still bring a solid disco-hazed score. And the shark itself is hilariously memorable. Ironically, they decided to rip-off a Hollywood production where notoriously their elaborate, expensive mechanical shark was as reliable as a shark cage made from papier-mâché, leaving Spielberg to have to shot scenes with it emphasised off-screen or minimally, raising greater tension. There's no tension in The Last Shark, but you do get a very puffy shark¹. So large it's both absurd but also appropriately menacing for a film which decides, instead of tension, to have a Great White that bludgeons sea fairing boats and windsurf boards into oblivion. One that, when they use stock footage of real sharks, changes species noticeably. There's a pleasure in one scene of a boat being propelled into the air by quite a few feet, the dummy stand-in for a cast member propelled as if shot in the air from a cannon, that's impossible to adore. Castellari, even with a production doomed to legal suing, made a solid work and no matter how cheesy and absurd the finished result is, the best of this Italian cinema whether its legitimately great or entertaining for its failings has a higher class to it in how absurd it can be, better made cheese then everyone else's. Cheese that's taken seriously rather than half arsed like modern films.

From https://thecreaturefeaturebleachers.files.
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In context of the early eighties, The Last Shark is a well made film. Even the fact they had to use obvious models doesn't detract from the film. In fact said model work, a remote control toy clearly being used for a shark versus helicopter sequence, is actually a lot better now in terms of age. When one witnesses the awful TV film level CGI that's used for killer animal films, a higher production quality is now found as that scene, one of the most memorable, has an actual helicopter toy and a prop shark involved, including the most gruesome sequence of gore in a film that's pretty much bloodless like Jaws was. Also worth mentioning, especially for the dubbed version, how the use of American actors alongside Italian actors from Castellari's other movies does help this film. The late Vic Morrow does dub himself with a bizarre reflection in his voice, vaguely Scottish at points, but he does contribute a lot especially against a weaker lead in James Franciscus trying to replace Roy Scheider. The Italian film industry's obsession with casting known American and British actors did add a lot of personality for the films, against Italian or European actors who, even if dubbed in various voices, develop their own cults from how many films they popped up in, Castellari using a lot of regulars from his other films. Even his own daughter (and future Second Unit Director) Stefania Girolami Goodwin as a member of a teenage shark hunting club, Peter Benton's daughter whose friends make the ill advise attempt to hunt the shark with meat strapped to the end of their boat, and just shotguns and arms from their parents weapons cabinets.

Altogether The Last Shark is not one of Castellari's films by a long shot. Against the likes of Inglorious Bastards, Keoma (1976), Street Law etc. it's the curiosity in his career made infamous due to its legal suppression. But knowing this, and keeping expectations low, its entertaining. Ironically, it's better than most shark and killer animal films made now, for whilst its attempt to replicate Jaws' plot is a huge issue, the ending diminishing returns, it's such a scale higher in production quality and entertainment compared to the god-awful likes of Sharktapus (2010), irony far less interesting than a sincere attempt to rip off Jaws.

From http://dailygrindhouse.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/
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1) Find episode 110 of The Gentlemen's Guide to Midnight Cinema, from December 2010, which covers The Last Shark. It was that episode where I first heard of the film and first heard the "puffy shark" joke from, making the time seven years later when I finally see the film worth it as the episode review is even funnier now with visual context. Particularly as they take the film seriously too, finding stuff to love as much as criticise as Castellari fans who find it one of his considerably weaker efforts.