A Bloody Good Time 7.02.09: Jaws

Posted by Joseph Lee on 07.02.2009

Time to cool off with a dip in the water. Don't mind the giant shark.

Welcome to A Bloody Good Time.

Last week I managed to get several 411 Movies writers together and we discussed what got us into horror. I asked you all to do the same, if you chose. So here's some feedback from the readers.

Mario's tale goes like this: I share a similar experience with Trevor Snyder. I think I was 9 or ten at the time and my brother and I were staying at my Grandparents house for the weekend. USA was showing Night of the Living Dead, and after a small protest, my grandma allowed us to watch it. It started about 10 oclock or so, and about 30 minutes into it, my grandma and brother had both fallen asleep. I watched the rest in a mix of awe and terror. I have been in love with it ever since. I still find time to watch it every Halloween, whether it be on cable or one of the many video and dvd copies of it I own. A few years later I grew out of horror a little bit. One of my best friends at the time was a huge Halloween fan, so he subjected me to a double feature of Halloween and Halloween 2(I still content that these two films would make a killer dvd release edited together as one film). I was hooked all over again and have never looked back. As far as my best experience with horror on the big screen, it would have to be The Blair Witch Project. I was dragged by my friends to the midnight premier screening of the film. I wasn't familiar with the film, so I didn't know what to expect. I remember fondly that it was playing in two theaters, and one of my friends was in the other one. Immediately after it ended, we ran out and met in the lobby and we both said "Holy Shit!!" We went back and saw it again the very next night. After it was all said and done, I saw it 7 times in the theater. I know a lot of people didn't like it, but it will always hold a special place in my heart, even if I still can't forget the wretched sequel.

That's a neat idea about the Halloween films. Too bad they're owned by different people now.

SoulGlo mentions what scared him: My older brothers showed me Nightmare on Elm street when i was 5 years old and at that age it was an insane experience, i no longer was interested in my cartoon videos, luckily my dad was never bothered about me watching these films and i used to love it when he would take me to the local libary when i was about 7, and he would get me these films i picked out like Friday the 13th, Fright Night, Vamp and the Poltergeist series. Now that am older, horror films don't scare me, but ONE character still gives me a chill and that is Reverend Kane from Poltergeist 2, the film isnt so good but Rev Kane is just evil.

Count me in on Reverend Kane...although I didn't watch the Poltergeist movies until much later in my life, he's still a creepy guy.

JMAC said: My first was also Night of the Living Dead. For some reason, PBS in their infinite wisdom decided to show old drive-in horror flicks (like Day of the Triffids, Pit & Pendulum and such) on Saturday afternoons when I was around 10 or 11. So I checked it out and it has stayed with me ever since. In fact, even to this day, I have recurring dreams of trying to survive a zombie holocaust. The fun thing is that people who died in a previous dream would return in a later dream as a member of the undead. I guess that's how awesome my subconscious mind is.

Wait, when did PBS do that? The better question to ask is, how come they still don't?

Lisa replied with: I was desensitized to Freddy early, and he was always my go-to guy whenever I wanted to rent a good slasher flick. The first really horrifying movie I saw was IT when I was 6 years old or so. I didn't sleep that night, couldn't look at the moon, and still to this day refuse to walk by storm drains or associate with clowns.

I read the book before I watched the film...what I could understand scared me, and I too avoided storm drains.

guest had a question: Where is the love for Salems Lot. That movie scared the $()!+ out of me when I was about 5 years old. One night me and my brothers watched it. All 3 of us in one chair scared to death. After it was all over my Dad asked us to go out and get some firewood. that was the last thing i really wanted to do but you don't tell dad no. My brother was in the process of loading us up when something came flying out at us in white. I threw the wood down and jumped over a 4 foot wood pile and hauled for the house. It turned out to be my dad in a white sheet. He was always scaring the crap out of us as kids. My daughter is almost 3 years old. Another couple years and I'll be doing the same thing to her. Ha haha hahhahahah hahahahahah! (evil laugh)

I'm guessing that the reason no one mentioned Salem's Lot is that no one watched it as a kid. I didn't, and to be honest, it bored me to tears when I finally got around to watching it. Of course as a kid it would probably be scarier.

Finally, Mikel says: The first one I remember seeing was "Island of Terror" - but the first one that really scared the shit out of me was "Jaws". We were vacationing in Victory, BC and staying in a tent trailer at our cousins farm. The night of seeing the movie, I jumped up out of bed, screamed at my brother not to eat me, and subsequently ran out and down the road screaming. My parents had to chase me down.

Speaking of Jaws...

That's the topic of this week's column. It's summer, which means that blockbusters are out in full force. Big-budget adventure films like Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen or Terminator: Salvation owe a lot of credit to Steven Spielberg for making the summer a viable time for a motion picture. Just think, he did it with a horror film about a shark that stays hidden for the majority of the picture.



Just how big was Jaws? Watching the movie now you may wonder what all the hype is about. I know I did, so I sat down to watch it a number of years ago. My personal thoughts can be summed up like this. The first half is one hell of a ride from the quiet opening scene of a teenage girl being attacked while swimming, to the less subtle but more terrifying scene of a boy being swallowed completely while on a raft in broad daylight. Plus the shot of everyone running and screaming out of the water is historic, among other things.This movie also made me feel for the characters involved. Whether it was the main star, who just wanted to help everyone but didn't have the respect or the support, or the shark expert, or even crazy man Quint. All characters had something about them to make you genuinely care whether or not Jaws had them for lunch or not. It built them all up solidly, even Quint who before he went after the shark didn't have much screen time. The finale is also quite explosive (see what I did there?) and memorable. But it does have it's flaws. It tends to go too long. Running at a span over a little over two hours, there's a lot that could have been cut out to make it a smooth shark movie. Some of it was character development, and I understand that, but some of it was scenes that felt stapled on or just felt out of place. The scene where the three men sing together comes to mind. Not to mention some of them were repeats of scenes produced earlier. Mainly most of the flaws were in that middle portion, once Brody and crew go to find the shark.

Now, I'm obviously in the minority there and I understand that. Obviously it's just my opinion, and time has shown that Jaws is one of the most influential and highly-regarded horror films of all time. First of all, it started the trend of films opening in wide release. Before Jaws, films would slowly open in multiple cities and open in more as they became more successful. Jaws received a wide release and ended up being a huge hit. It became the first film to reach $100 million in box office totals, and ended up making $470 million worldwide (which translates to about 1.9 billion now). Thanks to Jaws (and Star Wars two years later), the summer blockbuster was created. The summer was seen as the most viable time to market big studio films, a trend that still happens today.

The film also had critical acclaim in addition to making a ton of money. It won Academy Awards for film editing, original score, and sound. It was nominated for Best Picture. This was a film that really did scare people as beach attendance in 1975 was down because of it. It also created a number of stereotypes towards sharks and made them the feared ocean creatures they are today. It was the highest grossing film ever made for two years (until Star Wars came along).

Like any successful film (and this one is one of the most successful films ever), it was bound to get a sequel.



I didn't get into the story for the original because everyone pretty much knows it by now. If you don't know what this Jaws movie is, then stop reading this and go see it. Considering how Jaws ends, how would they get a sequel going? Bringing back Roy Scheider is a start, even if Richard Dreyfuss didn't come back too. The film opens like the original, with a great white shark attacking people and Chief Brody having to come up with a way to stop it. It's essentially the same movie as the original, only without Dreyfuss and the crazy shark hunter Quint. Brody is seemingly all alone this time as no one will believe him that another shark could possibly be attacking, even after the events that occurred before.

You know things are bad when Spielberg outright refuses to have anything to do with your film. Such was the case this time, as he didn't even respond to producers. It was reported he felt he already made the definitive shark movie. Later he offered to come back, but got caught up in directing Close Encounters of the Third Kind and couldn't. The scripts and directors kept changing consistently, and it was a troubled production. The final product was not well-received. The film had mixed reviews, at best, although it was called the best of the sequels (doesn't bode well for the other two entries, does it?). Critics praised the performance of Scheider yet again, and the film went on to gross only 40% of the original's take, with 187 million. Sure, the original made a lot more money, but considering this film's budget was 20 million, that can be considered a success. For the record, it was the highest grossing sequel of all time, until it was defeated by The Empire Strikes Back two years later. Funny how that works.



The next in the series capitalized on the 80's 3-D craze (not unlike our current trend right now) with Jaws 3-D(1983). This sequel starred Dennis Quaid. The story is at least different from the other entries, in that it's set at Seaworld, not Amity, and the giant great white attacks because they've captured it's child. Of course, Quaid is playing a Brody, as Mike Brody, Martin's oldest son. I always found it funny that the Brody family could not seem to avoid monstrous great white sharks throughout this series. You'd think after their father survived two sharks of that size, the entire film would move to Nebraska or Kansas (somewhere in the mid-west).

The film made extensive use of the 3-D techniques of the time, particularly at the end for the shark's destruction. Like the other two big horror films of the time (Amityville 3-D and Friday the 13th Part III), it was marketed using the 3-D as part of it's title, in addition to it being the third film. The tagline was "the third dimension is terror". Even with this marketing and the 3-D technology, Jaws 3-D wasn't as successful as it's predecessors. Of course, it was successful, considering it made $87 million on a $16 million budget. But the series was starting to decline both in the money it was making back and critical acclaim. While not considered the worst of the series Jaws 3-D did receive almost completely negative reviews. Critics agreed that while the 3-D worked, that was the only thing that did, and when it went to home video that aspect was removed.

Like I said, it wasn't the worst of the series.



That dubious honor(?) belongs to Jaws: The Revenge(1987). This film not only killed the Jaws franchise dead, but it turned shark films in general into something of a joke. When's the last time you watched a scary movie about sharks? Most of them end up either direct-to-video, on the Sci-Fi channel or both. This is considered one of the worst sequels, one of the worst horror films, and even one of the worst films ever made. A lot of people hate this movie. The plot, for what it is, concerns Martin Brody's widow claiming that the sharks are hunting her family...and it turns out they are. One follows her to the Bahamas (again, this could be solved by moving to the middle of a country!)

Why do critics hate this film so much? Well first of all, the idea that sharks somehow want revenge and are hunting this family is just absurd. I mean you're pushing it when you stretch the series out and have us believe this family just happens to be magnets for these sharks anyway. But to imply that sharks now have the idea of vengeance is stupid. They're sharks. The second is the inept filming which lead to a number of reshoots and changing things on a whim based on audience reactions. One example of this is Mario Van Peebles' character...who comes back alive at the end of the movie even though he was mauled previously. This is because test audiences liked the character. That's just stupid, in my humble opinion. Roger Ebert's review is particularly great as he tears this film apart, calling it "stupid" and "incompetent".

The film did manage to make it's budget back (making $51 million on a $20 million budget), but the fact that this was a third sequel and the overwhelming negative reviews caused this once great series to fall. There has never been another Jaws film, and unless someone remakes it (no, I'm not advocating that), there probably never will be. The closest we've had to any new Jaws related material was Jaws Unleashed, a video game released in 2006 to negative reviews.

That's it for this week. Before I sign off, I want to mention that I'm still accepting logos from you. The winner will be announced next week and the new logo will be unveiled. What do you get for designing the logo? Besides credit (as in your full name if you choose), I'll pimp any website you may have with that logo and your name. You'll also get to choose the topic for an upcoming ABGT and contribute to it, giving your thoughts. Send any logo attempts to [e-mail].

Now, even though I'm not advocating a Jaws remake...next week I'm going to present a list of films that I do want to see remade. Will your favorite make the list? Will I drive away readers? Tune in to find out!