Bonus Monster Movie of the Week: Jaws (1975)

JAWS (1975)
Director: Steven Spielberg
Genre: Nautical Horror

THE MOVIE

While there were hit movies in the 70’s such as The Exorcist and The Godfather, 1975’s Jaws was a phenomenon unto itself and-for better or worse-helped to create the summer blockbuster mentality that rules Hollywood. However, unlike many of today’s blockbusters, which are produced via corporate committee and probably some sort of Hollywood supercomputer that calculates which star will appeal to what demographic to put in which vehicle that remakes or relaunches which franchise resulting in X amount of dollars at opening and X percent of drop off on the second weekend and X number of DVD units sold, Jaws comes from a relatively unsophisticated time in terms of movie marketing. Certainly, it was an adaptation of a best selling novel and there were certain expectations of it in terms of box office performance, but you don’t get the idea that was conceived from the ground up as an exercise in making revenue. The movie retains some of the characteristic 1970’s auteurism, and is heavy on character and suspense and light on special effects and frenetic editing. Compared to today’s popcorn movies, it is very slow moving and offers a typically cynical post-Watergate commentary on government and authority, although in this case said government is extremely local.

Jaws tells the story of a small Mid-Atlantic beach community plagued by a Great White shark and the town’s new police chief’s attempts to protect the people from the ocean predator. The problem is compounded by the fact that the town is economically dependent on the beaches and the powers that be are trying their best to downplay and deny the shark’s existence. Ultimately Sheriff Brody teams up with a grizzled fisherman and a young marine biologist to track down and kill the shark. There are lots of good and quirky performances such as Roy Scheider as an a hydrophobic New York cop who moved his family to a small island community to “make a difference.” Robert Shaw steals many scenes as Quinn, a veteran of the infamous U.S.S. Indianapolis, which sank in shark infested waters during the Second World War.



A very young Richard Dreyfuss plays Matt Hooper, a wealthy shark expert who uses a lot of (at the time) high tech equipment. The last quarter of the movie is the three of these characters at sea attempting to track and kill the shark. There is a lot of tension built into the story between Quinn and Hooper, with Quinn relying on almost 19th Century technology and Hooper representing a newer, 20th Century way of exploring the sea.

If the movie were made today, it would be George Clooney, Keanu Reeves and Ryan Reynolds.

Jaws also launched the career of a young Steven Spielberg who had prior to this movie only made Sugarland Express and the TV movie Duel about a motorist plagued by a monstrous semi truck on an abandoned stretch of highway which actually shares some thematic similarity with Jaws. After Jaws, Spielberg went on to such classics as Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and E.T. He has gone on to win an Academy Award for his work on Schindler’s List and is one of America’s most respected motion picture directors as well as one of the most popular.

On a personal note, although Jaws was released a few months prior to my birth, it was a movie that I grew up with thanks to being part of the first home video generation. As odd as it may seem, there was time not too long ago when there were no DVDs or even video cassettes and if you wanted to see a movie you had to either go see it in the theater or catch it on a TV broadcast. In the early 1980’s this all changed drastically with the affordability of VCRs and the ability to rent movies or tape them off TV or later premium cable channels (until the mid 1990’s it was still prohibitively expensive for most people to buy a video of a movie as most “official” videos of movies cost anywhere from $75-$125 a pop. They eventually started releasing selected hit movies on VHS at an affordable price and when DVD became the standard now all movies are released at an “ownable” price point). Jaws was a movie that was on heavy rotation in my household when I was growing up and consequently I pretty much know it by heart (along with Rocky, Caddyshack, Ghostbusters, and The Godfather) so it was weird and bittersweet for me to pop in a DVD of this movie and watch it after not having seen it for fifteen years or so.

THE MONSTER/EFFECTS

Another hallmark of when this movie was made and another reason that it earns my respek is that the monster is basically a realistically proportioned shark. It is estimated by one of the characters to be about 25 feet long, which is large but not impossible. If they were to make this movie today, the shark would be at least 100 feet long and probably some kind of mutant. As a matter of fact, there has been a movie in development hell since the 1990’s by the name of Meg based on a novel-or rather a screenplay disguised as a novel-that would be a de facto Jaws update. Meg features a giant prehistoric shark that literally eats a tyrannosaur in one bite in the novel’s prologue. This gives you a pretty good idea what a contemporary Jaws would be: lots of showy effects and a creature bigger and more spectacular than anything we’ve seen before: The American Godzilla syndrome in full force.

Who are you calling a son of a bitch?

Spielberg’s movie on the other hand barely shows you the shark until the end but it’s presence is felt through out the whole movie, whether it is seen or not. I won’t pretend this is due solely to artistic reasons or an attempt to be Hitchcockian. After all, Steven Spielberg has given us plenty of visual excess in his long career. Anyone who knows anything about this troubled production knows that the animatronic shark didn’t work half the time and the filmmakers had to work and edit around it. Spielberg repeatedly refers to it in the DVD extras as “The Great White Turd.” But the movie is better and more suspenseful for it.

DVD AVAILABILITY

Widely available as a 2 disc 25th anniversary edition originally released in 2000.

Sadly, not yet on Blu-Ray.

MOST MEMORABLE SEQUENCE

It’s funny. What I remember most about the movie are the little mundane details that have absolutely nothing to do with the shark. Spielberg’s early movies have this great ability to capture detail of life in the 70’s and 80’s, especially regarding child life. I love the little scene in this movie where Brody and his younger son are mimicking one another’s faces. It is a short little scene with no dialogue but it is so evocative of a small boy’s world. Spielberg was a master of capturing these kinds of little moments and details.

I also love Roy Scheider getting slapped by the woman in the veil.

And the girl who yells, "Sh-shark!"

Also, this movie features one of my favorite clichés in which the Hero Studies a Well Illustrated Book about the monster he will later face.

SEQUELS

There are three sequels to Jaws each one more improbable and of worse quality than the last one. Although, Jaws 2 was pretty good.

ORIGINAL TRAILER


SEE ALSO
Orca 1981