Steven Spielberg was a genius of film making. He's considered one of the finest directors in the history of film, and is still highly regarded for the work he creates. But, let's go back in time, way back. The year is 1975, and Spielberg is a newly-fledged rookie, barely tested and certainly not the superstar he is today. That year in 1975, he was nervous. His film had gone over schedule and well over budget. The film's production had been long, strenuous and awful in every conceivable manner. But little did he know he had just completed the greatest film of his career, one that would spawn three lesser-quality sequels and dozens of rip-offs, but none would tarnish the reputation of a respected classic horror film, one that still terrifies even today. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you... Jaws.
The Plot: Amity, a beautiful island awaiting its summer crowd, is in trouble. A violent death in the waters just off the coast has caught the attention of Brody, the police chief of the island, who believes it was a shark attack. Despite his insistence, the town's mayor makes the beaches stay open, and in front of dozens of onlookers, a young boy is killed. In a frenzy, the panicked town demands an answer and a call to kill the shark is cried. But this shark is a different breed of beast. It is always hungry, always on the prowl, and never rests. The killing has only begun.
The Cast: Roy Scheider as Brody
Robert Shaw as Quint
Richard Dreyfuss as Hooper
Lorraine Gary as Ellen Brody
Murray Hamilton as Vaughn
The Review:
Ah, the dreaded Jaws theme. How many times have we heard this play in our heads when we're swimming?
The cast is a bunch of A-list stars, real masters of the craft. Shaw, Scheider, Dreyfuss, Gary, so many of these names are legendary.
The problem of not seeing the shark: it's far more terrifying.
The first attack is viscerally intense and viciously scary. It terrified me the first time I watched it, and its still holds a great scare factor.
Brody's premiere scene does a great job of setting up the character. He's police, but pretty cautious.The gruesome remains of the first victim. Pretty harsh for the 70's.
The wonderful way that Amity is set up, one could easily believe this is a real place.
The mayor and his attempts to keep the beach open are believably money-grubbing. What people will do for cash, hiding death seems quite realistic.
Brody's watch of the beach is an interesting scene, as it develops his character further. His fear of water and fear of the unknown shark, not the coming attack, is the focus of this scene.
The watch scene is particularly well-shot scene, as people walking by are used to make a seamless cutaway from beach to ocean."That's some bad hat, Harry." Man, I love that line.
The moment we realize the dog is missing, we know: crap is going down.
I love how the attack scenes are shot, from beneath the victim. Makes for a great angle.
Whoa, that is graphic! The violent death of Alex Kintner is particularly scary as it involves a child in a pretty bloody death.
Again, more money-grubbing. The public officials are definitely not the most likable people in this film.
Quint delivers quite a speech, setting up his character almost entirely, all in one scene. It's a great monologue, and adds to the character's mystique. Not to mention his fingernails on a chalkboard skills are quite impressive.
Brody's family, though not a major focus of the film, are well developed and pleasant characters. They aren't background clutter, something Spielberg is good at avoiding.
The film, while being pretty dark and grim, isn't entirely black. There's some humor in it from time to time.
Good fricking gosh, the dock attack scene scared the living piss out of me when I first saw it. I could easily say this is the scariest moment of the film. When the broken piece of the dock turns around... still gives me shivers.
The activity on the boat docks is believable an entertaining. So many people looking for one shark is way too accurate.Matt Hooper, the guy who made researching sharks cool. Young, brash and fiery, he's a great character, who is developed well over time and is quite fun to watch.
Quint laughing at the "shark fishermen". He knows sharks better than anyone on the island, and he knows the truth.
Mrs. Kintner's tirade at Brody. It's a grim reminder that through all the blood and hectic chaos that comes from a shark attack, it is a personal and violent scar on the people it affects. Something we don't always keep in mind.
Brody's scene with his son is touching, merely because that no matter what we do, a child can always bring us out of our sadness.
Hooper's story of how he got interested in sharks is hilarious, and develops his interest in the creatures.
Problem: The shark is still alive and well.
Yes, cutting open a shark is even more disgusting than it is portrayed in this film.
Finding Ben Gardner's boat is wonderfully eerie, with unnerving music from John Williams and a creepy environment making it sublime.
Now that I'm thinking about it, Williams' score for this film is fantastic. Not just the Jaws theme, but the rest of the score is very well done.
Wow, the acting is... just incredible. I need to watch more of these people's work, especially Scheider and Shaw.
Holy friggin' CRAP, that corpse jumping out is awful! I HATE that scene cause it almost always gets you!
The mayor versus Hooper is great entertainment as we see two personalities clash in terrific form. Hooper is a wonderful character, particularly when he gets mad.
The mayor shows his true colors in a blatant defiance of the truth in an attempt to rake in cash for the city. Little does he know...
All the tourists entering Amity is a wonderfully upbeat scene, in direct contrast to the situation that is unfolding.
Peter Benchley cameo! Do you know who he is? Cookie to whoever knows it without looking it up!
The summer crowd already knows about the attacks, as people are highly unwilling to enter the water. It takes a little push from the mayor to send people out into the waves.I love how the shark is always introduced: with the theme music every time.
So, armed with that knowledge, we know that the fin in the water that terrifies people is not the shark, despite the panic that ensues.
If I ever started a panic with a fake shark fin, I would be killed. Instantly. Please, never do something this stupid.
But when the shark shows up, the theme music starts up, and we know the attack is on. What's worse? It's heading straight for the boat of Brody's son.
Our first glimpse of the shark is quick, speedy and efficiently scary. A sudden, violently gruesome attack is all we need to scare us half to death.
With a near-miss of Brody's own son, killing the shark becomes a personal matter to Brody. The shark has to die, now more than ever.
The mayor, despite being in shock and proven totally wrong, still maintains a last shred of defiance. Brody's barely contained anger is all that he needs to be convinced to hunt the shark down.
Quint is a splendid character, particularly when he's in an environment that suits him, such as his boathouse and his ship. He's extremely funny and is a wonderful old salt.
Quint's personality clashes well with Hooper's, whom Quint believes to be a city slicker. The two work great alongside each other, but they aren't great at getting along.
Quint also has a disdain for Brody, who he believes (with justifiable reason) is kind of a wimp. Brody's fear of water is put to the test as he goes out on the water with a shark hunter and a scientist.
I absolutely love Quint's songs and limericks. Makes me laugh every time I hear them. Heck, just about anything Quint says is great entertainment.
And with a heave ho, the hunt for the killer shark is on. The adventure begins!
Quint immediately puts Hooper through his paces, setting a bar that the young man has to keep up with. It's a lot of fun to see Hooper try to one-up Quint.
With just a hint of music, we know exactly what is about to go down: The shark is here, and the hunt is on.
The tenacity of the actors themselves when they filmed this was remarkable. I know for a fact that Shaw got extremely seasick during a scene where he had to start screaming his lines. That's tough stuff when you feel like you're gonna die.
Another great jump-scare. Bet people leaped right out of their seats.
"You're gonna need a bigger boat."
The first full-body reveal of the shark is magnificent. We finally get to see the villain of our film in the flesh!
I've heard people complain about the shark, and how it looks fake. I dare them to think of a different way to portray the shark in 1975. In fact, Benchley never thought they would make the novel into the film because no one could train a shark. Instead, we got a pretty well-made mechanical shark that worked well for its time.
Williams shows his greatest variety in the final act of the film, going from a high seas adventure feel to terrifying horror in a heartbeat.
I love the "comparing scars" scene, with Hooper and Quint in full form. I could watch this all day.
Quint's monologue about the USS Indianapolis is gripping and brilliant. The scene wasn't part of the script, it was just Robert Shaw at his very best. The scene reveals why Quint hunts sharks, and also unravels a deep-seated fear he has of the beasts.
I love the song, "Show me the way to go home". Great bar song, really.
And then the shark is back, ready to attack!
Just kind of a little easter egg, but does anyone notice the shooting star in the background after the attack? It's not added in, the filmmakers just got lucky, extremely lucky.This film never runs out of jump scares.
Quint IS certifiable to the nth degree. Completely nuts.
A quick technical note, but Brody's shooting is pretty good. Just one bullet didn't nail the shark.
The technical prowess of making the mechanical shark work is tremendous. This film is a landmark in the fact that somehow got the thing to work.
Quint asking Hooper to kill the shark is the penultimate in humiliation for the weathered sea captain. It is the last straw for what little sanity he has left.
The shark attacking Hooper's cage is vividly shocking and extremely scary. If anything like this ever happened to me, I would have a complete meltdown. (Quick little production note: Originally, Hooper was supposed to die like he did in the book, but due to a snag in filming the scene with a live Great White, in which the shark destroyed the cage without a fake dummy in the cage, forced them to rewrite the scene).
The shark capsizing the boat initiates one of the most violent and intensely terrifying scenes I have ever or will ever see: Quint's death. It absolutely horrified me as a kid and I still get scared watching this moment.
By now, one is pretty much rooting for the shark to die. This brutal villain must be killed!
One last chance: the shark, with a highly explosive oxygen tank in its mouth, versus Brody, who is armed with a spear and a rifle. One shot is all it takes...
And the shark is down!
Cool little technical note: the death cry of the shark as the corpse falls to the ocean bottom is the same one used in Spielberg's film "Duel", a film that the director himself calls a land-based version of Jaws.
With Hooper still alive, and Brody having finished the shark, the two swim back to shore, ending the film.
The Bottom Line: Everything that could've gone wrong in making this movie went wrong. The shark didn't work, the film went far too over budget, crewmembers and cast got seasick, scenes that took forever to shoot would get screwed up and have to be reshot... anything and almost everything.
But it was all completely worth. The success of Jaws is legendary, becoming the first-ever summer blockbuster in Hollywood history. The film was the first film to ever earn more than $100 million dollars, and in its full theater run, would earn $470 million worldwide. A movie making such money in that day and age was unbelievably successful, and would've made a person's career for life. The fame of working on Jaws would easily boost a person's career. In fact, if it were not for Star Wars coming two years later, Jaws would've remained the highest grossing film ever till ET arrived in 1983, the film that would outgross A New Hope.
The crowd loved Jaws, in our usual fashion, as we are strangely fixated with violence and death. When watching Jaws, people vomited in the seats because it was so bloody for its time. When there was a scare, the crowd reacted as a single body and shrieked in terror. And when the shark was killed, I have confirmation from my own Dad that people stood up and cheered.
But pushing aside all the awards and money and success and fame, Jaws has produced a very dark legacy, one that Peter Benchley, the author of the novel, never intended. The shark of Jaws was so brutal and savage, and so fixated on eating human beings, that people were severely terrified of the ocean in general, and sharks in particular. Suddenly, as the true effects of the film spread, people decided that sharks had to go. For public safety, all sharks had to be destroyed. Fishermen hunted sharks with gusto, taking down dozens of the killers in one fishing trip. Sharks were killed by the thousands in tournaments, and the populations of the animals began to plummet. Adding to the increasing pressure on shark populations, Oriental markets, China in particular, increased their shark fishing, hunting the creatures down for their fins. "Finning" a shark is a brutal process, cutting of the creature's fins and throwing the crippled shark back into the water to struggle and die. As the intense hunting of sharks continued, the worldwide population of sharks plummeted.
As of right now, the world's shark population is extremely low. On a yearly average, around 100 million sharks are killed each year. Critical species such as the Blue shark and the White shark are at low populations. Jaws, a film made to entertain, had inadvertently caused a nightmare for the natural world.
I must confess: I am a shark fanatic. I love these beautiful creatures. I'm terrified of them, but I absolutely adore these beasts. They are mysterious, powerful, and confident supreme masters of their world. They can hurt us, and even kill us, but they more often choose not to, or more often they avoid us. I don't consider these things cold, hardened monsters; the shark is the lord of his domain, a domain in which we are aliens.
Now, being a Christian, I know that everything that has been created was made for a purpose, though I do not understand mosquitos or wasps. But a shark? They're valuable predators, cleaning up the world's oceans. They can live or years on end, and seem to never get sick. The value God has put in the shark is worth keeping them around, and learning to co-exist with the animal.
Peter Benchley once said that he never would have written the book if he had known what effects it would have, as Benchley himself is a fanatic aquarist and shark lover. Jaws may have caused needless bloodshed, but the character Hooper accidentally caused many of today's top shark scientists to study the "monster" that hunted man. Jaws is forever a fantastic film, but the true violence was found outside the film, not in its running time.
Well, that was the 3rd greatest film, audience. Two more films are left to review, and they will be discussed this very week! Come Wednesday, I will review the 2nd greatest, and finally, on Friday... the greatest film of all time. Keep reading, people, the end is almost at hand!
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