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!
