Jaws Review

In 1975, when Steven Spielberg's film version of Peter Benchley's shark-attack novel Jaws was released, I was only 12 years old.

This, of course, meant that if I wanted to go see Jaws in theaters - as many as my friends did or claimed they did - I had to go with either my mom (on her day off from work) or with my older sister, who was then 25 and wasn't too keen on the idea of going to the movies with her pest of a younger sibling.

Now, my mom isn't one of those narrow-minded parents who reject everything that is new or "in" as far as movies go; she even got into Star Wars when she went with me to see Star Wars - Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back in May of 1980.

But Mom, like most of us, isn't too keen about sharks even though the chances of being attacked by one are very remote, so when I asked her if she would go with me to see Jaws she said, in no uncertain terms, "No. Ask your sister if she'll go with you, but I'm not taking you or dropping you off to see it on your own."

I asked my sister, but like I said, she was in that "I'm too cool to play Big Sister to a snot-nosed 12-year-old boy" stage, so we didn't go.  (She went by herself, though.)

The upshot of all this is that while everyone was talking about that summer's big blockbuster and how many millions it was making, I sat on the proverbial sidelines, listening to people humming John Williams' two-note "Shark Motif" and hearing how scary that movie was.

I eventually did see Jaws six years later; one of our neighbors had a very early-edition VHS VCR and had a copy, so she invited me and a few others to watch it at her house, but to this day I rue the fact that the first Spielberg film I saw in theaters was Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Jaws: The First Modern Blockbuster

 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.

It's summer in Amity, a sleepy Long Island town that depends on "summer dollars" from thousands of tourists who come to stay in seaside cottages (the summer dinks, they are called). When a young girl goes skinny dipping in the nearby sea and is fatally attacked by a shark, Chief Martin Brody (Roy Scheider) is coerced by the mayor and town council to keep the incident under wraps. He reluctantly does so, though he will regret it, for a few days later, the shark claims another victim, a young boy named Alex Kintner.

Mayor Vaughn: Fellows, let's be reasonable, huh? This is not the time or the place to perform some kind of a half-a--ed autopsy on a fish... And I'm not going to stand here and see that thing cut open and see that little Kintner boy spill out all over the dock.

Finally convinced that there is a shark out there, Amity's politicians and citizens take action...but not wisely. When shark hunter Quint (Robert Shaw) bids for a contract to catch and kill the shark, the town elders "take it under advisement" and the shark hunt becomes a wild free-for-all seagoing circus.

When shark expert Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss), called in by Chief Brody to help in the investigation and shark hunt, arrives and sees the shark (which he identifies as a tiger shark) caught by local fishermen, he examines the remains of the first victim. What he deduces is chilling: the deadly creature prowling out to sea is a great white shark.

Brody: You're gonna need a bigger boat.

My Viewpoint: Jaws is one of those rare movie adaptations that is better than its source novel. The screenplay is crisp and taut, yet with enough light moments and scenes of sometimes wry humor that ease the ever increasing tension, particular when Brody, Hooper and Quint set out to hunt the great white shark....becoming the hunted in the process.

Spielberg, only 27 at the time, overcame the difficulties of shooting a movie on the water and dealing with a balky mechanical shark (nicknamed "Bruce"). Jaws also put composer John Williams on the map with movie audiences with his now-famous "shark motif" and would earn him his second Oscar for Best Score.

What I find particularly effective is the bond that develops between Brody, Hooper, and Quint. Yes, we've seen it before in countless movies, most of them war films -- three guys from different strata of society and apparently with nothing in common are thrown together into a dangerous situation -- but the scenes aboard the Orca, particularly when Quint tells the story of the USS Indianapolis, are the true heart of this picture.

The only downside to Jaws -- and it's not something in the film itself -- was its own success. Not only did it inspire three sequels that proved once and for all that Hollywood truly is ruled by the Law of Diminishing Returns, but a whole menagerie of Nature Strikes Back films was let loose on unsuspecting audiences.

I was only 12 in 1975, but I still vividly remember such knock-offs as Shark's Treasure, Day of the Animals, and a variety of other creature features about snakes, bears, and even -- some nine years later, a rabid dog named Cujo. Spielberg himself didn't touch the horror/man vs. toothy beast genre until 1993's Jurassic Park, but he was blamed (unfairly) for Jaws 2, a film which he had wisely turned down.

The 2000 25th Anniversary Edition DVD is excellent. The movie is presented in letterbox format, and the sound and image are above average. The documentary on the making of the film is also first-rate. All in all, a must-get for Spielberg (and action film) fans.