Beach Week: The Game of Jaws (Ideal)

I was in kindergarten the September after Steven Spielberg's Jaws (1975) premiered in theaters, and I'll never forget that for Halloween, one of my best friends showed up costumed as Bruce, the great white shark. 

I also very vividly remember that at the book-mobile sale that year, I purchased a joke book based on Jaws.

Yep, America was in the clutches of Jaws-mania. 

Even though I didn't see the film at the time (I was five...) everybody was talking about it.  I remember my Aunt Vivian describing the movie to me in vivid terms when I saw her at my Granny's house.  Vivian was always great for that kind of thing.  While I was too young in the 1970s to watch R rated horrors like Halloween (1978) or Alien (1979), my aunt Vivian was great at giving me blow-by-blow descriptions of the movies, and let's just say I appreciated her devotion to providing ALL the details.

So for me, Jaws -- at least in 1975 -- came down to an appreciation of a joke book...and of this toy: the Game of Jaws (from Ideal). 

Designed for 2 to 4 players (ages 6 and up), the game box noted: "It's you against the great white shark...One wrong move, and the JAWS go snap!"

The goal of this game was to use a probe to fish the contents (yuck...) out of the shark's stomach, without those fierce jaws a-snappin'. 

Some of those contents included a human skull, a fish skeleton, a tire, a camera, a pistol, a glove, a boot, a walkie-talkie, and a wagon wheel (!).  In the version of the game I own, these delicacies are all molded in white or blue plastic, but the game box shows different colored items.

Jaws' snapping mouth was held together by two rubber bands, and alas, those are the only parts of this game that have not survived the intervening decades. 

When Joel and I play this game in my office, our shark is sort of slack-jawed, unable to close his mouth, unless we slam it shut.  

Every time I look at this Ideal game, I remember being a little kid, playing this game, and wondering what on Earth the movie Jaws could possibly be like...

Beach Week: Jaws: The Revenge (1987)

During a funeral for a shark victim in Jaws: The Revenge (1987), a character notes that “to everything, there is a season.” 

That observation also applies, alas, to the later sequels to Steven Spielberg’s Jaws (1975). By the time of this final, gloriously awful sequel to the first film, the franchise had long endured past its season, and freshness date too.

Ironically, at some level, the filmmakers seem to understand this fact. 

Either that, are they are spectacularly unaware of the dialogue being spoken in their own film, and just plain hapless. Early on, for instance, a pilot named Hoagie (Michael Caine), asks Mrs. Ellen Brody (Lorraine Gary) if she has ever been to the Bahamas.  She answers that she has not.

At which point Hoagie says the following: “The first time’s the best for everything.  After that, you know too much, and nothing’s quite the same.”

I agree 100% with Hoagie. 

He’s right, and he’s insightful (and he’s a really cool character, because his clothes don’t get wet even when’s submerged for minutes at a time underwater...).

As per Hoagie’s wit and wisdom, the first Jaws remains the best, and the more times we go back into the water to see Brody family fighting sharks, the less impressive the sight is.  At some point, it just gets old...and stale, and the screenwriters must use desperate tactics to maintain interest.

Jaws: The Revenge is an object-lesson in this wisdom, as it concocts an absurd, incoherent, inconsistent plot about a shark’s plan to kill the family members responsible for its own death.

My God...what did I just write?  

Yes, that’s right -- per the movie’s dialogue -- “The shark [singular] that killed Martin and Sean” has returned from beyond the grave to murder the other Brodys, to avenge itself. 

Technically, that makes Jaws: The Revenge a zombie shark movie.

At the very least, it’s dead in the water.

“It came for him. It waited all this time, and it came for him.”

Sometime after the death of Sheriff Brody in Amity, Sean Brody has become a police deputy. Near Christmas one year, a great white shark sets a trap for him in the harbor, lodging a piece of wood near a buoy.  As Sean attempts to clear the debris, the shark strikes, and kills him.

In mourning, Ellen Brody (Gary) becomes convinced that the shark that killed both Brody (by heart attack…) and Sean is after the whole Brody family.  

Accordingly, she wants her other son, Mike (Lance Guest), to quit his job as a marine biologist and stay away from the water.  Instead, Mike invites his Mother to visit his family -- his wife and daughter -- in the Bahamas, where he is working on a grant.

She agrees, and in the Bahamas romances Hoagie (Caine), a local pilot.  But before long the shark shows up, threatening Mike, and Mike’s daughter, Thea, when she rides on a banana boat.

Ellen takes to the sea alone aboard a ship, Neptune’s Folly, and decides to meet the shark on its own terms…

“I know it’s coming…”

I must confess, it’s tough to know where exactly to begin with this film. 

I suppose the best starting point is Ellen Brody.  She tells us herself that Martin Brody (Roy Scheider) died from a heart attack (brought on “by fear”) and yet she blames the shark explicitly for his death. I guess Martin's exercise and eating habits had nothing to do with his condition. The shark made his heart fail.  

Ellen also appears to possess some kind of psychic link with the attacking shark, and knows when it is nearby, and what it wants. She possesses the certainty of the devout in “knowing” these ridiculous things, and yet the movie validates her by making everything she believes absolutely true. Yes, the shark is killing Brodys! She is right...and righteous!

The shark that killed Ellen's husband (and was killed by her husband), and that also killed her son is indeed after her family. In fact, it has traveled from Amity to the Bahamas in about a day, without benefit of airplane, and it operates, essentially, like a Brody-seeking missile, able to detect (by smell?) when a Brody is in the ocean.  Alas, the Brody-sensing, avenging-angel zombie shark has one flaw: it is clumsy. It doesn't get Thea on the banana boat. It gets her neighbor, seated directly beside her.

Missed it by that much...

In short, Ellen Brody makes a series of very dumb, even ridiculous assumptions about the shark, and the movie validates all of those assumptions. This isn’t just a shark, it’s a shark back from the dead…with a vendetta!

Ellen is special in other ways. She has the Marvel-esque ability to flashback (in sepia-tone coloring) to events that she could not possibly have witnessed. She remembers Sean’s death, though she was not in the boat with him when he died.  And she remembers Martin’s execution of the shark, though she was not aboard the Orca with him at that time.  The movie actually cuts to images of these scenes, as Ellen wages war with the zombie shark.  So she has the power to connect not just to her enemy, psychically, but to access the memory of all shark-fighting Brodys in history!

Quite a lady, I’d say.

Let’s move on to the shark next. 

This shark can sense people of the Brody clan, has returned from the dead, and feels anger and resentment towards those who ended its life the first time around. 

My question, of course, involves shark intelligence.  Could a shark understand that it died, and came back to life?  If so, would it really devote its new life to killing off human enemies?  I mean, a shark always has to swim forward, doesn’t it?  Well, this is one shark obsessed with looking back.

This one-of-a-kind shark is -- uniquely -- able to swim the approximately 1,100 mile distance from Amity to the Bahamas in a day.  A typical shark can swim about 35 to 50 miles a day, if memory serves, so this guy is lightning fast.

And when challenged by Ellen on the open sea….the shark roars at her. You read that right, too.  It roars like a lion at its nemesis.  Maybe it is trying to prove it is king of this watery jungle.  But the problem is that sharks, unlike people, do not possess vocal cords. A shark is physically unable to roar like a lion.  But hey, this is a zombie shark, right?

Then, during the final battle, this one-of-a-kind shark jumps onto the bow of Neptune’s Folly and fatally explodes into a million pieces. There’s only one explanation: a great white shark self-destruct sequence.  If you are a zombie shark, back from the dead and seeking vengeance, it’s a given that if you fail, you have no alternative but to explode. It's a rule.

Allow me to continue this discussion regarding the behavior of other characters in the film.  Hoagie – he who does not get wet even when submerged in the ocean – flies his perfectly functioning plane into the ocean and scuttles it, so that he, and others, can swim to Ellen’s location, on Neptune’s Folly.  Does that sound smart to you?

And Mario Van Peebles' character, Jake, speaks with the worst, most stereotyped Caribbean accent you've ever heard. It's a relief when the shark gets him, and a disappointment when he shows up, miraculously alive, after the final battle. 

And Mike?  Well, he has a mother who can’t stop talking about the fact that a great white shark is out for revenge against his family, but when a great white shark actually shows up in the Bahamas -- for the first time in recorded history, according to Mike himself -- what does Mike do? He keeps it a secret.  

Of course. 

Because then it has a better chance of killing his daughter on the banana boat.

Again and again, over and over, Jaws: The Revenge proves itself ape-shit crazy in terms of logic, characterization, and even the basic details of the movie's narrative.

Still, almost nothing in the film’s silly story is as deflating as the moment at the kitchen table with Mike and Thea, aping the moment from Jaws (1975) when Sheriff Brody’s son imitates his movements at supper.  Aww, isn’t that sweet?  Thea is imitating her Dad during a shark attack crisis just like another Brody imitated his father during a shark attack crisis!  

It’s a charmless, derivative moment that adds nothing to movie.  Instead, it reminds us how good the original Jaws really was.

And what's up with the famous ad-line, "this time it's personal?"  I would wager that for every shark victim in the previous Jaws movies, the attacks were also pretty damn personal. It's not like the shark was handing out business cards and making appointments for carnage.

Jaws: The Revenge is a terrible movie, starring an extremely limited actress, Lorraine Gary, but at least it is audacious in its stupidity.  The movie is so over-the-top dumb that you can’t help but giggle your way through it.  

In my opinion, this unintentional humor gives Revenge a leg (or fin…) up over Jaws 3-D.

Beach Week Trailer: Jaws the Revenge (1987)

Beach Week: Trading Cards of the Week: Jaws 3-D (1983)

Beach Week: Jaws 3-D (1983)

The last two films in the Jaws franchise are terrible. We all know this fact.

What isn’t settled, perhaps, is the question of which entry -- Jaws 3-D or Jaws: The Revenge -- actually takes the crown as the very worst installment of the bunch. 

Traditionally, I have favored Jaws: The Revenge (1987) as representing the absolute nadir of the saga.  But a recent re-watch of Jaws 3-D (1983) suggests that maybe I had it wrong. Though Jaws: The Revenge is consistently, unceasingly dumb and ridiculous, it somehow manages to be entertaining in its stupidity. You can laugh at it at the same time you acknowledge how bad it is.

Jaws 3-D is dull, over-long and unceasingly dumb too...only without the unintentional laughs.  That makes it a bigger drag to sit through.

In short, Jaws 3-D is a horrible, ill-conceived mating of the disaster film format and the shark attack film.  

Most 1970s disaster flicks are set in one scenic locale (a tall building, a ship at sea, etc.) and chart how chaos progresses there, often following some form of usually-natural threat, whether an avalanche, an earthquake, or a storm in the ocean.  

The Jaws films, by contrast, have focused on the Brody family and its ongoing travails with great white sharks.  Aiming for originality, Jaws 3-D blends the two approaches.  Here, the Brodys contend with a great white shark at an amusement park populated by thousands.  

And hey, isn’t that the plot for this summer’s Jurassic World (2015)?

Anyway, a very young Dennis Quaid here plays the older Brody son, Mike, and John Putch is the afraid-of-the-water Sean Brody. 

As the film begins, preparation are underway for “Preview Week” at Sea World (replete with “The Undersea Kingdom,”) a new amusement park/attraction owned by controversial entrepreneur Calvin Bouchard (Louis Gossett, Jr.). Mike is the chief engineer there, and his girlfriend is a marine biologist, Kathryn Morgan (Bess Armstrong) whose job it is to tend to dolphins.

A small great white shark is soon detected in the Sea World lagoon, and publicity hound and D-list celebrity FitzRoyce (Simon MacCorkindale) wants to hunt and kill it for the paparazzi. But Kathryn, realizing that there are no great white sharks in captivity, sees that this incident represents an opportunity for the park, and for science. Sensing dollar signs, Calvin agrees, and the shark is captured rather than killed.  It later dies in captivity.

Unbeknownst to any of these individuals, however, the shark’s angry mother is already in the Sea World lagoon too, ready to strike back…on Opening Day.

It’s a cliché, for certain, to say that a Jaws film lacks “bite.”  But -- what the hell? -- Jaws 3-D really lacks bite. 

The 1983 sequel never generates a real sense of terror, in part because the visual special effects are so bad that they take your attention away from the characters and their predicaments. For instance, a model, or miniature shark is used on several occasions, and it swims right at the screen, in full view, looking absolutely immobile and unreal.  A better director might have sought ways to hide the model shark, or feature it more judiciously. It's baffling that the Spielberg approach -- a reliance on P.O.V. and the genius of John Williams -- isn't repeated here, since the effects are so clearly lacking.

The moment when the shark strikes a plate glass window is perhaps the worst use of the aforementioned great white miniature. A fake shark, matted against a background, appears to strike  a fake window.  It's layers upon layers of incompetence here, one of the worst composites you'll ever see in a major motion picture.

The shark carnage -- body parts, bones, and so forth -- is similarly rendered in a lame way, with sizable matte lines showcasing for posterity their unreality.  Even something that should have been simple -- making a run-of-the-mill submersible look "real" while underwater -- is utterly botched here.

The silliest moment in terms of effects, however, arrives in the finale, as two dancing dolphins are matted into the respective corners of the frame while Mike and Kathryn swim to safety. The results are so atrocious that they look like a bad Hallmark card come to life. 

Notice below, how you don't even see the entire dolphin bodies, and how they don't seem to be in the water (making ripples or waves), but standing in front of the water.

Beyond the terrible, movie-destroying effects work, the editor on Jaws 3-D tries desperately to gin up tension, and largely fails.  The main technique used is slow-motion photography.  So suddenly, during the finale, we get exaggerated, interminable close-ups of Louis Gossett, Jr., Dennis Quaid, and Bess Armstrong dropping their jaws in terror, their eyes popping at some off-screen menace.  

But the shots last so long that they are kind of funny.

Jaws 3-D  also attempts to ape the naturalistic, staccato dialogue made famous by the first two films, but never gets anywhere in the same ball-park. No real human connection is made with the characters here, and so the banter about leaving the park for another country, or Mike and Kathryn getting married largely falls flat.  Similarly, Sean’s attempts at pitching woo with Lea Thompson’s character -- a water-ski performer -- seem unimpressive. All these moments reminded me of a bad Friday the 13th film of the 1980s; one populated by interchangeable teenagers who would later serve as victims for Jason.

One can  also that the filmmakers hoped to create a new triumvirate here, to replace the classic Brody-Hooper-Quint threesome of the 1975 original. We’ve got our Brody (two for the price of one, actually...), our fish-loving scientist (Armstrong), and the self-confident, somewhat amoral hunter, FitzRoyce (MacCorkingdale).  

Suffice it to say that it’s a weak B-team by comparison to the trio we met in Jaws.

Also, the film’s final moments are lacking suspense, and silly to boot. We’re to believe that FitzRoyce -- killed by the shark two-thirds of the way through the film -- is still whole and intact (though not alive) in the shark's mouth, still clutching a grenade for the finale.  

So the weapon is right there, on the shark’s tongue, I guess, waiting for Mike to detonate it in time for a happy ending.  

Do sharks not chew their food? 

Do they just let it sit in their mouths for hours on end, slowly but passively digesting it like a sea-going Sarlacc?

And would not the water loosen the grenade at some point, anyway? 

Heck, what about the movements of the shark?  Wouldn't they cause the bomb to detonate?  And if Fitzroyce's corpse is just lunging there, unchewed inside the shark, how does the shark have room for her next victim?

Let’s just say it’s extremely convenient that when the chips are down, and the shark is in the room with the heroes, that Mike has an easy way to kill it. 

Just pull the ring and dive for cover.

One of the few scenes that I liked in Jaws 3-D, or which I felt achieved the desired effect, involves Mike and Kathryn discussing his family history, and the event that changed the Brodys forever: the shark attacks his father dealt with.  He talks about the repercussions of those shark attacks in Amity, and the moment serves not just as a call-back to better (and beloved) films, but as an acknowledgment of how a tragedy can change the path of one’s life forever.

But for most of its run, Jaws 3-D is a tired, poorly visualized disaster, with unlikable characters, plenty of clichés, and almost no scares whatsoever. 

The film is a suspense-less effort in three dimensions or two.  It is unbelievable to me not only that another film in the saga was produced after this floater, but that the follow-up is arguably as bad (if not as dull) as this sequel is.

Beach Week Movie Trailer: Jaws 3-D (1983)

Beach Week: Jaws 2 Coloring Book (Treasure Books; 1978)

Beach Week: Comic Book of the Week: Jaws 2 (Marvel; 1978)

Beach Week: Jaws 2 (1978)

I once wrote regarding Jaws II (1978) that your enjoyment and appreciation for this sequel may depend, finally, upon which end of the pool you’re swimming in.

If you’re in the deep end of the pool, having just finished a viewing of Spielberg’s superb Jaws (1975), you may find the 1978 Jeannot Szwarc sequel a serviceable horror film, perhaps only lacking a bit in terms of inspiration and execution. It’s a step down from greatness, for certain.

But if you’re swimming in the shallow end of the pool, having recently watched Jaws III (1983) and Jaws: The Revenge (1987), this first sequel may rightly be considered an unqualified home-run.

Unlike either of those later sequels, Jaws II features some strong horror set-pieces, and re-connects the viewer powerfully with Roy Scheider’s Chief Martin Brody, and his family.

Importantly, this sequel also seems to occur in a reality viewers can identify with, and not in some fantasy land in which sharks growl like lions or jump headlong onto the pointed masts of passing ships.

But while Jaws was a remarkable human story -- made doubly so by the unforgettable friendship of Brody, Hooper, and Quint -- and a great adventure set on the sea to boot, Jaws II adheres to a less awe-inspiring template. 

Essentially, the film is precisely what critic Roger Ebert called the slasher film sub-genre: a “dead teenager” movie.

Only this dead teenager movie happens to feature a great white shark in the role of Jason or Michael, and is set at sea instead of in suburbia or at a summer camp. 

The crazy thing is that on these terms, Jaws II is actually a pretty good slasher movie.   It’s just -- again -- a come down from the brilliance of Spielberg’s picture.

“I think we’ve got another shark problem.”

In the waters near Amity a great white shark prowls again. 

The first victims are two vacationers that are attacked near the underwater wreckage of the Orca.  The next victims are a water skier and her mother, but their death is ruled accidental.

Amity’s sheriff, Chief Martin Brody (Roy Scheider), however, becomes obsessed with the notion of a great white threatening the peaceful town, much as one did a few years earlier.

But the town officials all think he is simply Chicken Little, insisting that the sky is falling.  When Brody causes a panic on a public beach in front of potential real estate investors, the town officials take his badge away, declaring him a menace.

Soon, however, Brody learns there is even more at stake than his job. His sons Mike (Mark Gruner) and Sean (Marc Gilpin) join a group of teens on a boat race to Lighthouse Island. 

They change course for Cable Junction, however, unaware that a great white is shadowing the convoy’s every move…

“I don’t intend to go through that Hell again.”

To examine Jaws II as a “dead teenager” or slasher film, let’s take just a moment and unpack the slasher paradigm a bit, as I defined it in my book Horror Films of the 1980s (2007).

All good slasher movies begin with an organizing principle, and then a set of related elements in orbit around that organizing principle. 

The organizing principle is a “hook,” the key aspect to connect every element of the film together, and in Jaws II, our organizing principle is not unexpectedly summertime in Amity, a beach town. 

This umbrella provides us our primary settings (the beach and the ocean).  It also gives us a sturdy victim pool, in this case not the unsuspecting swimmers of Jaws, but rather a gaggle of teenagers sailing at sea in their rag-tag boats.  This flotilla comes under attack by the menace, a great white prowling the waters nearby.  We also get, under this same umbrella, water-skiers and other summertime revelers.

In addition to the victim pool, another common element of slasher films comes into play in Jaws II. In particular the “crime in the past” plays a kind of oblique role in the action of the film. Chief Brody wonders if this shark has arrived in Amity because it is the mate of the one he destroyed in Jaws.  Perhaps it has come looking for its opposite number? 

If that is indeed the case, then the shark picks the right victims by going after Brody’s family.  The crime in the past is the death of the shark from Jaws, and Martin -- the only survivor of that “murder” is the overall target of the apparent rage spawned by that crime.

You see, this time it was actually “personal” as well…

If we break down the dramatis personae of Jaws II, we see that it consists of “types” also dramatized often in slasher films. For example, the killer in slasher films is almost universally defined as “the other” by appearance and nature. That appearance generally includes a mask, but may also include a blue collar uniform (garage overalls) of some type. 

In broad terms, the shark in Jaws II is certainly easily defined as an “other” since it is a fish. Also like a slasher it depicted with near-supernatural powers.  It always knows the right place to be to seek the weakest or most vulnerable victim.

Jaws II also gives us the common slasher movie archetype of the Cassandra Figure, named after a figure in Greek myth that could see the future but was never believed about her visions.  In many slasher films, we meet a character whose warning are dismissed, even though he or she speaks the truth, and knows that danger is imminent. 

In Halloween that figure is Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasence).  In Friday the 13^th (1980), the Cassandra figure is Crazy Ralph.

Oddly enough, Jaws II’s Cassandra Figure is heroic Chief Brody himself, who loses his badge over the (correct) assertion that another great white shark has arrived in the waters of Amity.

Jaws II distinguishes itself from the typical slasher film largely in its heroic depiction of the teenagers who encounter the shark. One teen jumps into the shark’s path and saves Sean Brody.  Others pray aloud, seeking fellowship and grace in prayer. Sure, some of the kids act as the stereotypical “bitches, practical jokers and jocks” that I note in my book, but overall these teens aren’t so dislikable that you root for them to be killed. Sure they want to score and have fun, but they aren’t rotten or indulged to the point that we despise them.

In terms of film grammar, Jaws II -- much like its predecessor -- frequently employs the P.O.V. subjective shot, as it bears down on victims.  In other words, our eyes are the killer’s/shark’s eyes, and indeed this is a crucial aspect of the slasher format, though for different reasons.

The P.O.V. in the Jaws films relieves the director of having to deploy a malfunctioning robot shark for several compositions, whereas the P.O.V. in slasher films is deployed so audiences will be surprised by the killer’s identity when it is revealed in the last act.

By breaking down Jaws II into the slasher paradigm, we can note, at the very least, that the film seems far more formulaic (and thus predictable) than its predecessor did. 

For example, there is no moment in the film with the raw, human power of the Indianapolis scene aboard the Orca, and no death here that carries the same weight as Quint’s, or even Hooper’s (apparent) demise in the shark cage.   

In some sense, the sheer number of teens in the victim pool here also renders Jaws II less scary. We never get to know the teen characters all that well, and so it matters not very much when a few of them die.  They aren’t differentiated to such a degree that we are knocked back on our heels and left in shock when we lose them.

That said, Penelope Gilliatt writing in The New Yorker pinpointed the sequel’s great virtue.  She wrote. “It lies in the performance of Roy Scheider as the kicked-out police chief, an underdog with a nose for danger and with real tenacity.”  She further notes that Scheider is a born actor and “seems always to be contemplating the temper of things.”

Scheider is Jaws II’s most valuable player because he invests the material with real humanity and real passion, even when the screenplay isn’t entirely up to snuff.  In 1978, we might have termed his emotional state “shell-shocked” but we can see today that Chief Brody suffers from PTSD.  He’s never gotten over that encounter with the great white in Jaws, and so Jaws II very much concerns him confronting his own state of fear, his own demons.

Finally, Jaws II is a bit less effective than its predecessor because of the carnage candy factor (see: Scream 2 [1997]). In this case, that means not only are there more victims to kill (and therefore less identification with each individual), but also much more elaborate death scenes, including ones that strain believability.  The deal killer in Jaws II is the moment that the shark brings down a helicopter. 

I can readily imagine and believe that Brody and company fight a supernaturally-powered giant shark once, in Jaws.  But the next shark he encounters is also so powerful and vicious that it can down a helicopter, without being killed itself?

This, my friends, is Jason Voorhees territory, and that brings us back to the movie’s structure. It’s a (wet) slasher film.

Not that there is anything wrong with that.  Jaws II is an entertaining horror movie, but it does not endure as a classic like its predecessor does.

That said, I will happily watch this sequel over and over again if the alternative is Jaws III or Jaws: The Revenge.

Finally, there's one scene I'd like to mention here that continues the amusing cinematic sea animal war begun by Orca (1977). There, you will recall, the killer whale saved Charlotte Rampling from a shark, dispatching the great white with relative ease.   In Jaws II, there is a rebuttal to that moment.  Here, we get a scene where the corpse of a killer whale is seen on the beach...ripped apart by a great white.   

Too bad there was never an Orca II to continue this pissing contest between Jaws knock-offs.

Beach Week Movie Trailer: Jaws 2 (1978)

Beach Week Gear: Jaws Halloween Costume (Collegeville)

Beach Week: Jaws (1975)

A modern film classic, Jaws (1975) derives much of its terror from a directorial approach that might be termed "information overload." 

Although the great white shark remains hidden beneath the waves for most of the film -- unseen but imagined -- director Steven Spielberg fills in that visual gap and the viewer's imagination with a plethora of facts and figures about this ancient, deadly predator.

Legendarily, the life-size mechanical model of the shark (named Bruce) malfunctioned repeatedly during production of the film, a reality which forced Spielberg to hide the creature from the camera for much of the time. Yet this problem actually worked out in the film's best interest. Because for much of the first two acts, unrelenting tension builds as a stream of data about this real-life "monster" washes over us. 

In short, it's the education of Martin Brody, and the education of Jaws' audience.

After a close-up shot of a typewriter clacking out the words "SHARK ATTACK (all caps), images, illustrations and descriptions of the shark start to hurtle across the screen in ever increasing numbers. Chief Brody reads from a book that shows a mythological-style rendering of a shark as a boat-destroying, ferocious sea monster.

Another schematic in the same scene reveals a graph of shark "radar," the fashion by which the shark senses a "distressed" fish (the prey...) far away in the water.

Additional photos in the book -- and shown full-screen by Spielberg -- depict the damage a shark can inflict: victims of shark bites both living and dead. These are not photos made up for the film, incidentally, but authentic photographs of real-life shark attack victims.

Why, there's even a "gallows" humor drawing of a shark (with a human inside its giant maw...) drawn by Quint at one point, a "cartoon" version of the audience's learning.

Taken together, these various images cover all aspects of shark-dom: from reputation and lore to ability; from a shark's impact on soft human flesh, to the macabre and ghastly.

This information overload about sharks also comes to Brody (the audience surrogate) in other ways, through both complementary pieces of his heroic triumvirate, Hooper and Quint, respectively. 

The young, enthusiastic, secular Hooper first becomes conveyor of data in his capacity as a scientist.

Hooper arrives in Amity and promptly performs an autopsy on shark attack victim Chrissie Watkins. He records the examination aloud into a tape recorder mic (while Brody listens). Hooper's vocal survey of the extensive wounds on the corpse permits the audience to learn precisely what occurred when this girl was attacked and partially devoured by a great white shark. 

Hooper speaks in clinical, scientific terms of something utterly grotesque: "The torso has been severed in mid-thorax; there are no major organs remaining...right arm has been severed above the elbow with massive tissue loss in the upper musculature... partially denuded bone remaining..."

As Brody's science teacher of sorts, Hooper later leads the chief through a disgusting (and wet...) dissection of a dead tiger shark (one captured and believed to be the Amity offender). Again, Hooper educates not just Brody; he educates the audience about a shark's eating habits and patterns. All these facts -- like those presented by illustrations in the books -- register powerfully with the viewer and we begin to understand what kind of "monster" these men face.

Later, aboard the Orca, Quint completes Brody's learning curve about sharks with the final piece of the equation: first-hand experience. 

Quint recounts, in a captivating sequence, how he served aboard the U.S.S. Indianapolis in 1945. How the ship was sunk after delivering the Hiroshima bomb, and how 1100 American sailors found themselves in shark-infested water for days on end.

Over a thousand sailors went into the water and only approximately three-hundred came out.

As Quint relates: "the idea was: shark comes to the nearest man, that man he starts poundin' and hollerin' and screamin' and sometimes the shark go away... but sometimes he wouldn't go away. Sometimes that shark he looks right into ya. Right into your eyes. And, 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."

This testimony about an eyewitness account is not the only "history" lesson for Brody, either. Brief reference is also made in the film to the real-life "Jersey man-eater" incident of July 1 - July 12, 1916, in which four summer swimmers were attacked by a shark on the New Jersey coast.

This "information overload" concerning sharks -- from mythology and scientific facts to history and nightmarish first-person testimony -- builds up the threat of the film's villain to an extreme level, while the actual beast remains silent, unseen. When the shark does wage its final attack, the audience has been rigorously prepared, and it feels frightened almost reflexively. 

Spielberg's greatest asset here is that he has created, from scratch, an educated audience; one that fully appreciates the threat of the great white shark. And a smart audience is a prepared audience. And a prepared audience is a worried one. We also become invested in Brody as our lead because we learn, alongside him, all these things. When he beats the shark, we feel as if we've been a part of the victory.

Another clever bit here: after all the "education" and "knowledge" and "information," Spielberg harks back to the mythological aspect of sea monsters, hinting that this is no ordinary shark, but a real survivor -- a monster -- and possibly even supernatural in nature (like Michael Myers from Halloween).

Consider that this sea dragon arrives in Amity (and comes for Quint?) thirty years to the day of the Indianapolis incident (which occurred June 30, 1945). Given this anniversary, one must consider the idea that the shark could be more than mere animal. 

It could, in fact, be some kind of supernatural angel of death.

Thematically, the shark could also serve as a Freudian symptom of guilt repressed in the American psyche. The shark attack on Indianapolis occurred thirty years earlier, at the end of World War II, when a devastating weapon was deployed by the United states.

Now, in 1975, this shark arrives on the home front just scant months after the fall of Saigon in the Vietnam War (April 30, 1975) -- think of the images of American helicopters dropped off aircraft carriers into the sea. 

This shark nearly kills a young man, Hooper, who would have likely been the same age as Quint when he served in the navy during World War II.

Does the shark represent some form of natural blow-back against American foreign policy overseas? I would say that this idea is over-reach, a far-fetched notion, if not for the fact that the shark's assault on the white-picket fences of Amity strikes us right where it hurts: in the wallet; devastating the economy. 

It isn't just a few people who are made to suffer, but everyone in the community. And that leads us directly to an understanding of the context behind Jaws.

It Was Only Local Jurisdiction

President Nixon resigned from the White House on August 9, 1974...scarcely a year before the release of Jaws.

He did so because he faced Impeachment and removal from office in the Watergate scandal, a benign-sounding umbrella for a plethora of crimes that included breaking-and-entering, political espionage, illegal wire-tapping, and money laundering.

It was clear to the American people, who had watched the Watergate hearings and investigations on television for years, that Nixon and his lackeys had broken the law, to the detriment of the public covenant. It was a breach of the sacred trust, and a collapse of one pillar of American nationalism: faith in government.

In the small town of Amity in Jaws, the Watergate scandal is played out in microcosm. 

Chief Brody conspires with the town medical examiner, at the behest of Larry Vaughn, the mayor, to "hide" the truth about the shark attack that claimed the life of young Chrissie. 

Another child dies because of this lie. 

We are thus treated to scenes of Brody and the town officials hounded by the press (represented by Peter Benchley...), much as Nixon felt hounded by Woodward and Bernstein and the rest. 

We thus see a scene set at a town council meeting which plays like a congressional Watergate hearing writ small, with a row of politicians ensconced for a long time before an angry crowd. The man in charge bangs the gavel helplessly.

These were images that had immediate and powerful resonance at the time of Jaws. If you combine the "keep the beaches open" conspiracy with the Indianapolis story (a story, essentially, of an impotent, abandoned military) what you get in Jaws is a story about America's 1970s "crisis of confidence," to adopt a phrase from ex-president Jimmy Carter.

Following Watergate, following Vietnam, there was no faith in elected leaders, and Jaws mirrors that reality with an unforgiving depiction of craven politicians and bureaucrats. 

The cure is also provided, however: the heroism of the individual; the old legend of the cowboy who rides into town and seeks justice.

Brody is clearly that figure here: an outsider in the corrupt town of Amity (he's from the NYPD); and the man who rides out onto the sea to face Amity's enemy head on, despite his own fear of the sea and "drowning." 

Yes Brody was involved in the cover-up, but Americans don't like their heroes too neat. Brody must have a little blood on his hands so that his story of heroism is also one of redemption.

Why is Jaws so enduring and appealing? 

Simple answer: it's positively archetypal in its presentation of both the monster -- a sea-going dragon ascribed supernatural power -- and it's hero: an every-man who challenges city hall and saves the townsfolk. 

This hero is ably supported by energetic youth and up-to-date science (Hooper), and also wisdom and experience in the form of the veteran Quint. 
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You're Gonna Need A Bigger Boat
You can't truly engage in an adequate discussion of Jaws without some mention of film technique. The film's first scene exemplifies Spielberg's intelligent, visual approach to the thrilling material.

This introduction to the world of Jaws -- which features a teenager going out for a swim in the ocean and getting the surprise of her life -- proves pitch perfect both in orchestration and effect. Hyperbole aside, can you immediately think of a better (or more famous) horror movie prologue than the one featured here?

The film begins under the sea as Spielberg's camera adopts the P.O.V. of the shark itself. We cling to the bottom of the ocean, just skirting it as we move inland. 

Then, we cut to the beach, and a long, lackadaisical establishing pan across a typical teenage party. Young people are smoking weed, drinking, canoodling...doing what young people do on summer nights, and Spielberg's choice of shot captures that vibe.

When one of the group -- the blond-haired seventies goddess named Chrissie -- gets up to leave the bunch, Spielberg cuts abruptly to a high angle (from a few feet away); a view that we understand signifies doom and danger, and which serves to distance us just a little from the individuals on-screen.

With a horny (but drunk...) companion in tow, Chrissie rapidly disrobes for a night-time dip in the sea, and Spielberg cuts to an angle far below her, from the bottom of the ocean looking up. We see Chrissie's beautiful nude form cutting the surface above, and the first thing you might think of is another monster movie, Jack Arnold's Creature From The Black Lagoon (1954). 

Remember how the creature there spied lovely Julie Adams in the water...even stopping to dance with her (without her knowledge) in the murky lagoon?

Well, that was an image, perhaps, out of a more romantic age. 

In this case, the swimmer is nude, not garbed, and contact with the monster is quick and fatal, not the beginning of any sort of "relationship." 

In a horrifying close-shot, we see Chrissie break the surface, as something unseen but immensely powerful tugs at her from below. Once. Then again. After an instant, you realize the shark is actually eating her...ripping through her legs and torso. She begs God for help, but as you might expect in the secular 1970s there is no help for her.

The extremely unnerving aspect of Spielberg's execution is that recognition of the shark's attack dawns on the audience as the same time it dawns on Chrissie. She doesn't even realize a leg is gone at first. It's horrifying, but -- in the best tradition of the genre -- this scene is also oddly beautiful. 

The gorgeous sea; the lovely human form. The night-time lighting.

Everything about this moment should be romantic and wonderful, but isn't. 

Again, you can detect how Spielberg is taking the malaise days mood of the nation to generate his aura of terror; his overturning of the traditional order. Just as our belief in ourselves as a "good" and powerful nation was overturned by Vietnam and Watergate.

The more puritanical or conservative among us will also recognize this inaugural scene of Jaws as being an early corollary of the "vice precedes slice and dice" dynamic of many a slasher or Friday the 13th film. A young couple, eager to have pre-marital sex (after smoking weed, no less...) faces a surprise "monster" in a foreign realm. 

That happens here not in the woods of Crystal Lake, but in a sea of secrets and monsters. It's also no coincidence, I believe, that the first victim in the film is a gorgeous, athletic blond with a perfect figure. Chrissie is the American Ideal of Beauty...torn asunder and devoured before the movie proper has even begun.

If that image doesn't unsettle you, nothing will.

I wrote in my book, Horror Films of the 1970s (McFarland; 2002), that, ultimately the characteristics that make a film great go far beyond any rudimentary combination of acting, photography, editing and music. It's a magic equation that some films get right and some don't. Jaws is a classic, I believe, because it educates the viewer about the central diabolical threat and then surprises the viewer by going a step further and hinting that the great white shark is no mere animal, but actually an ancient, malevolent force. 

The film also brilliantly reflects the issues of the age in which it was created. And finally, Jaws updates the archetypes of good and evil that generations of Americans have grown up recounting, even though it does so with a distinctly disco decade twist. The Hooper-Brody-Quint troika is iconic too, and I love the male-bonding aspects of the film, with "modern" men like Brody and Hooper learning, eventually, to fall in love, after a fashion, with the impolitic Quint...warts and all.

Finally, you should never underestimate that Jaws depends on imagination and mystery. 

It is set on the sea, a murky realm of the unknown where the shark boasts the home field advantage. Meanwhile, man is awkward and endangered there. We can't see the shark...but he can see us. With those black, devil eyes. 

When you suddenly realize that the only thing standing between Brody and those black eyes is a thin layer of wood (the Orca); when you think about all the information we've been given about great whites and their deadly qualities, you'll agree reflexively -- instinctively -- with the good chief's prognosis.

We're gonna need a bigger boat.