Great White is a blues-rock band which came out of Southern California in 1984. They received a Grammy Award nomination for Best Hard Rock Performance for the song, Once Bitten, Twice Shy.
A pyrotechnic accompaniment to their performance at a nightclub in Rhode Island caused a disastrous fire that took the lives of 97 people, including Great White's guitarist, Ty Longley.
Major Members: Jack Russell, Mark Kendall, Michael Lardie, Audie Desbrow
Biography
While one infamous nightclub show eclipses their previous achievements, the hard rock/heavy metal band Great White would much rather you remember their Grammy nomination for Best Hard Rock Performance, the over six million records they sold, and their double platinum album ...Twice Shy.
Formed in the early '80s by vocalist Jack Russell and guitarist Mark Kendall, Great White were regulars of the L.A. club scene, playing their Led Zeppelin- and AC/DC-influenced metal to a quickly growing fan base. Local radio play and more gigging helped sell 20,000 copies of their independent releases, the Out of the Night EP and the full-length Shot in the Dark, both released in 1983.
The EMI label took notice, signed the band, and released its self-titled, major-label debut a year later. Shot in the Dark would be reissued by the label in 1987, the same year as the new album Once Bitten... appeared with the hit single "Rock Me." The album went platinum, but 1989's ...Twice Shy took things even further thanks in no small part to the massive success of the single "Once Bitten Twice Shy," a cover of a Mott the Hoople song written by Mott member Ian Hunter.
Long tours with Ratt and a co-headlined tour with Tesla kept the band out of the studio until 1991 when the polished Hooked appeared with two different album covers, one a provocative side shot of a mermaid hanging off an anchor in mid-air and one less scandalous with the mermaid still submerged. Hooked went gold while their 1992 follow-up, Psycho City, sold less, leading to EMI saying goodbye to the band with the 1993 compilation The Best of Great White.
Sail Away from 1994 found the band on Zoo, while 1996's Let It Rock was released by Imago. A live set of cover tunes featuring the work of their favorite band appeared as Great Zeppelin: A Tribute to Led Zeppelin, released by Cleopatra in 1999. That same year, Can't Get There from Here on the Portrait label gave fans their first taste of Russell's new writing partnership with longtime friend and former Night Ranger member Jack Blades. Another set of covers formed the 2002 Cleopatra album Recover, but this time the choices were surprising, with the Cult's "Love Removal Machine" and X's "Burning House of Love" getting the Great White treatment.
Forgotten by the mainstream, they were brought back into the limelight when pyrotechnics used by the band sparked a fire in a Rhode Island nightclub on February 20, 2003, killing 100 people, including the band's guitarist, Ty Longley. The 2004 reissue of Recover drew some media attention, since the Horizon label had given it a new and now morbid title, Burning House of Love. Trials concerning the fire continued on into 2006 as questions concerning who authorized the pyrotechnics were being investigated. The band spent the rest of the year touring and playing some benefit concerts for victims of the fire. In early 2007 they began celebrating their 25th Anniversary with some West Coast shows that were tied to the release of VH1 Classic Presents: Metal Mania - Stripped, Vol. 3. ~ David Jeffries, All Music Guide
This program offers information about the most feared predator on Earth: the great white shark. Like most creatures with a hold on the darker side of human imaginations, the great white has suffered from many misconceptions about its motives and habits. This program seeks to overturn some of those myths. Some discussion is given to the rising incidence of shark attacks worldwide, and experts offer tips to avoid such attacks. ~ Rob Ferrier, All Movie Guide
The plot is a classic of the Jaws-like genre: an enormous and angry 35-foot Great
White Shark takes revenge on humans when they build a beach just for swimmers by a coastal town. Despite the several shark
attacks, the mayor does nothing to stop it as he doesn't want tourists to hear about it and quit coming. Enter the heroes: Peter
Benton (James Franciscus), a novelist who writes a book about sharks, and Ron Hamer (Vic Morrow), an old seadog who has a
personal grudge against the shark and wants it dead. They set sail in order to stop the monster.
Criticism
The movie's similarities with Jaws are very obvious to anyone who has seen Steven
Spielberg's classic. Not only is the premise similar to the latter, but the
characters are quite too, and several scenes look to have been essentially copied from the original movie (such as the
buoy-attached-to-the-shark scene). This especially infuriated Universal Pictures, who
sued to have the release of this movie in North America blocked because they claimed it was a Jaws rip-off. Universal
Pictures won the case, and the movie was pulled from North American theaters shortly after its release. This also has meant that
the film has never been legally released on video in North America, nor shown on North American television.
The special effects are very cheap. Only the head of the shark is seen in the film,
and it looks very plastic-like and stiff. When the victims are being attacked, they are obviously dummies.
Stock footage from aquatic life documentaries is used in underwater shark scenes. Not
only is the film quality different, but the shark depicted is often of a different species. While the film concerns a Great
White, the stock footage variously depicts a catshark (this one just after it appeared as a
Great White), a Hammerhead shark, and even a dolphin.
As is a typical trait of Castellari's movies, slow motion is heavily used.
The name of one of the heroes, Peter Benton, may have been inspired by real-life shark enthusiast and author,
Peter Benchley. Benchley was the author of the novel Jaws.
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