Jaws (1975) - the thing about a shark …

Review by Jack Kost

Movies, in general, are just movies – nothing more.
You see them – you forget them.
However, some movies are so good – you never forget them; they stay with you forever and get better every time you watch them.

Jaws (1975) has always had a special place in my heart.
It was the movie that made me fall in love with movies.
During my early teens, it was the first movie I saw on rental VHS video cassette.
When I was fifteen, I bought a four-hour video cassette and recorded Rollerball and Jaws when they were screened on TV.
Already a dyed in the wool movie fanatic, it felt great to have my own copies of two movies I love, and that video cassette was like gold to me – a treasure!
Both movies were released in 1975 – a great year for movies – and I will post a blog on Rollerball in the future.

I went through the usual precautions concerning prized video cassettes: broke the small, square plastic tab on the base of the cassette, preventing accidental erasure … affixed a label to the base of the cassette, on which I wrote ROLLERBALL & JAWS in bold, felt-tip-pen capitals … then hoarded it away in my bedroom.

Unless I was watching some other late-night movie on TV, then the double-feature of Rollerball and Jaws was my late-Saturday-night-into-the-early-hours-of-Sunday-morning treat.

During that period, settling to watch movies was something of a ceremony:
More coals on the fire to keep the room temperature comfortable … check!
Draft-excluder covering the gap at the bottom of the lounge door … check!
TV angle realigned, parallel with the rug in front of the fire … check!
Seat cushions banked with my bed pillow against the base of the couch … check!
Fresh mug of coffee … check!
Snacks … check!
Me laid on rug … check!
Cushions behind my shoulders … check!
Pillow behind my head … check!
TV screen perfectly positioned with my direct line of view … check!
TV remote strategically placed to the right of my coffee mug … check!
The ceiling light and corner lamps out; room lit only by the glowing coals and TV screen … check!
My German Shepherd dog stretched out asleep on the couch behind me … check!
Yep! You read that right! I was laid on the floor; my dog was on the couch. I spoil my pets.
Over the years, I’ve watched both those movies less frequently, but each new viewing has always felt like a special event and my appreciation for them has never waned.

I’ll focus on Jaws for this blog.

Jaws was released in the United States on June 20, 1975.
The plot, based on the novel by Peter Benchley, is simple: the locals in the summer resort of Amity Island have their livelihoods – along with their lives! – threatened when a Great White Shark makes a smorgasbord of the swimmers.
Police Chief, Brody (Roy Scheider), Oceanographic expert, Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss), and shark fisherman, Quint (Robert Shaw), eventually team up and set out on Quint’s vessel, the Orca, to hunt down the shark and kill it.

There is so much to love and admire about this movie: superb script, beautiful cinematography, fully developed characters, suspense and humor.
I can’t choose one particular favorite scene – I love the entire movie and can’t find a fault with it.
From the classic opening, starting with those marine sounds, leading into John Williams’ now timeless and brilliant theme music:

Beach party tragedy:

Official report:

MAYOR VAUGHN:
Martin, it's all psychological. You yell barracuda, everybody says, "Huh? What?" You yell shark, we've got a panic on our hands on the Fourth of July.

The moment of shock, zoom shot:

HOOPER:
This was no boat accident!

Dinner conversation:

Covert autopsy:

Sunken boat:

MAYOR VAUGHN:
(pointing to the billboard as he talks to BRODY):
Brody! Sick vandalism! That is a deliberate mutilation of a public service message. Now, I want those little paint-happy bastards caught and hung up by their Buster Browns!

Author, Peter Benchley’s cameo as the news reporter:

Estuary victim:

Working out differences and setting terms:

Gone fishing:

Keeping the chum line going:

False alarm:

BRODY:
"Slow ahead." I can go slow ahead. Come on down here and chum some of this shit.

BRODY:
You’re gonna need a bigger boat.

The first barrel:

Quint’s story:

HOOPER:
You were on the Indianapolis?

BRODY:
What happened?

QUINT:
Japanese submarine slammed two torpedoes into our side, Chief. We was comin' back from the island of Tinian to Leyte. Just delivered the bomb – the Hiroshima bomb. Eleven hundred men went into the water. Vessel went down in twelve minutes. Didn't see the first shark for about a half an hour. Tiger. Thirteen-footer. You know how you know that, when you're in the water, Chief? You tell by looking from the dorsal to the tail. What we didn't know, was our bomb mission had been so secret, no distress signal had been sent. They didn't even list us overdue for a week.
Very first light, Chief, sharks come cruisin', so we formed ourselves into tight groups. You know, it was kinda like old squares in the battle, like you see in the calendar named: The Battle of Waterloo, and the idea was: shark comes to the nearest man, that man he starts poundin' and hollerin' and screamin' and sometimes the shark would go away... but sometimes he wouldn't go away.
Sometimes that shark he looks right into ya, right into your eyes. You know, the thing about a shark, he's got lifeless eyes, black eyes, like a doll's eyes. When he comes at ya, doesn't seem to be living ... until he bites ya, and those black eyes roll over white and then ... ah, then you hear that terrible high-pitched screamin', the ocean turns red, and despite all the poundin' and the hollerin', they all come in and they ... rip you to pieces.

You know by the end of that first dawn, lost a hundred men. I don't know how many sharks, maybe a thousand. I know how many men, they averaged six an hour.
On Thursday morning, Chief, I bumped into a friend of mine, Herbie Robinson from Cleveland. Baseball player. Bosun’s mate. I thought he was asleep. I reached over to wake him up. He bobbed up and down in the water just like a kinda top. Upended. Well, he'd been bitten in half below the waist.

Noon, the fifth day, Mr. Hooper, a Lockheed Ventura saw us. He swung in low and he saw us ... he was a young pilot, a lot younger than Mr. Hooper. Anyway, he saw us and he come in low and three hours later a big fat PBY comes down and starts to pick us up. You know that was the time I was most frightened ... waitin' for my turn. I'll never put on a lifejacket again.
So, eleven-hundred men went into the water; three-hundred-and-sixteen men come out and the sharks took the rest, June the 29th, 1945. Anyway, we delivered the bomb.

NOTE:
Although the story of Jaws is fiction, Quint’s story of the USS Indianapolis is rooted in fact.
Stacy Keach and Richard Thomas starred in a 1991 TV movie of the story: Mission of the Shark: The Saga of the U.S.S. Indianapolis.
Jack L. Chalker’s fictionalized novel of the event: The Devil’s Voyage, was published in 1981.
In 2016, Mario Van Peebles directed USS Indianapolis: Men of Courage, starring Nicolas Cage, Thomas Jane, Tom Sizemore, and James Remar.

Shark attack:

The shooting stars in this scene were real:

Man against shark:

Final battle:

BRODY:
Smile, you son of a bitch!

For me, Jaws remains the best of the genre.

The sequels to Jaws didn’t come near the magic of the original and sank (pun intended) into the depths of the cinematic pit of movies so bad – they are woefully BAD!

There have been numerous other shark-themed movies, not connected to the Jaws franchise: Open Water … Shark Night … Deep Blue Sea … Red Water … Bait … The Reef … The Shallows …

Oh … yeah … and let’s not forget the cinematic classic that is Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus … and I still can’t believe I actually sat through it!!!

… but I have yet to see another shark-themed movie as exciting or entertaining as Steven Spielberg’s 1975 original: Jaws.

If you’re ever thinking of buying a suitable vessel for a shark fishing trip … always opt for the bigger boat!