In the summer of 1975, while I learned to hold my head up without assistance, (um...because I was an infant, not because of some tragic accident) Steven Spielberg went about creating the summer blockbuster.
Plot summary (with spoilers): On the sleepy hamlet of Amity Island, a group of teenage hippies are having a drunken beach party. A pretty girl asks a pretty boy to go skinny dipping, and they race off to the beach, shedding clothing as they go. The girl is like the world's fastest runner, swimmer, and clothing remover, and is in the water and swimming far out even before the boy reaches the shore. He struggles with his shirt, giggles drunkenly, then passes out. The girl calls to him, laughs playfully, then she somehow misses the super scary orchestral music which indicates an impending shark attack, and is first nibbled on and dips slightly into the water. She cries out, more scared really than in pain. It's pretty awesome. Then she's grabbed again, and the shark has a sense of the dramatic and thus spins her around in circles for awhile while she screams and the sea bubbles and turns red, and then finally pulls her under.
DUN DUN DUN!
The next day, the boy reports to the new sheriff Martin Brody that his girlfriend has gone missing, and he suspects she drowned. Martin and the boy quickly discover her chewed up body on the beach, however. Which is weird, given the size of Jaws. Shouldn't she have been completely eaten? Anyway...
The coroner rules the cause of death to be a shark attack, so Brody shuts down the beaches as a safety precaution. Very quickly though, his decision is overruled by the Greedy Mayor who doesn't want to scare away tourists during the summer season and lose a bunch of money. He strong arms the coroner into saying the girl died in a boat accident, and Brody agrees to keep the beaches open based on the coroner's revised findings, even though he knows or strongly suspects that the coroner is full of it.
The next day at the beach, everyone's swimming and having a good time, except Brody. He sits on the beach, scanning the water worriedly, not letting his kids swim. There are potential targets everywhere. The shark music starts up again, and people weirdly still don't freak out. We see shark POV and see all the dangling, yummy legs and feet ol' Jaws has to choose from. Suddenly, a little boy (!) on a raft cries out while the water gets all bubbly and red around him. Brody sees him from the beach and jumps up. He screams at everyone to get out of the water, and everyone does, except of course the little boy. After a moment, a scared woman in a bathing suit steps forward uncertainly, calling out her son's name, while everyone else stares at her, clinging to their loved ones. It's pretty heartbreaking.
There's a town meeting where a bunch of townspeople are talking all at once, screaming at Brody and the Greedy Mayor. Brody announces they're closing the beaches, and the townspeople...object. Huh? What is this, Springfield? The Greedy Mayor says they're only closing for 24 hours, which upsets Brody. Everyone starts yelling again, until some guy starts literally running his nails along a chalkboard. Everyone turns and looks at the live action version of the Springfield's Sea Captain, named Quint. He talks all folksy and dramatically and has a beard and offers his services to catch the shark for a hefty fee. Everyone just stares at his weird ass mutely, then go back to yelling at the Greedy Mayor. If you think his character is fun and over-the-top, or if you think he's stupid and over-the-top, you're right.
So, the little boy's mom puts up a $3,000 dollar reward for the corpse of the shark who killed her son, which sends a bunch of yahoos into the water. In one pretty cool scene, two old men on a dock manage to hook Jaws with some bait and wind up breaking apart the dock, leaving one of the men stranded in the water. He barely manages to swim back to shore without being eaten.
Meanwhile, Brody hires science marine biologist guy expert Matt Hooper to show up and say science things. Richard Dreyfus is only two years older here than when he was playing a high school senior in American Graffiti, and kudos to him for the convincing transformation. Then some yahoos manage to catch a tiger shark, and bring it ashore. Brody and the Greedy Mayor are thrilled, but Hooper thinks the bite marks aren't big enough, based on the marks left on the girl. He suggests opening up the shark to see if the boy is still in his stomach, as sharks take several days to digest their food. The Greedy Mayor has a point for once, as he thinks a little boy "spilling out onto the dock" would be slightly upsetting to some. And of course the Greedy Mayor wants to reopen the beaches for the 4th of July the next day, so he wants desperately to believe they have the right shark. Brody has his doubts, but is overruled.
The next day, the beaches full of people who at first don't want to swim until the Greedy Mayor basically orders his lackey to take his family into the water. It's pretty funny. Other people get in as well. Then, a couple of kids pull a prank and go swimming with a fake cardboard fin. Everyone screams and gets out of the water, but while that's been going on, in another part of the beach, the real Jaws shows up again and chomps a dude right in front of Brody's kid.
In the aftermath, the now Humbled Mayor swears he thought everyone was safe, and feels super guilty. Brody manages to get him to pay Quint's fee, and then hires Quint to go off in a boat with him to get the shark. Matt Hooper also goes along. The plan is to harpoon the shark and then drag him close and inject him with strychnine that Matt brought.
Matt and Quint don't get along because Quint is Salt of the Earth and Matt is some know-it-all elitist liberal, and Brody's stuck in the middle. At one point, Brody tosses chum into the water without looking and suddenly the shark emerges. I can totally hear the 1975 theatre audience screaming right there. Brody's stunned, walks backwards a bit and says the famous line, "we're going to need a bigger boat". They manage to hook the shark with a harpoon attached to a yellow barrel. They try to use the barrel to track him, but he takes the barrel underwater. That night, the three of them drink and tell tales and bond as men do. Quint tells a long rambling monologue about how he and his fellow navy men were on a boat that sank in the Pacific during WWII and they were surrounded by tiger sharks who picked them off one by one, until two thirds of them were killed. If you thought that monologue was awesome and intense or if you thought is was corny and ridiculous, you're right. Then they sing the song, "Show Me The Way To Go Home" and are having a great time until the shark attacks. The boat shudders and all that, and this seems like the perfect time for the final battle, but instead they just harpoon it again and it disappears again. Hmm...keep it moving, people.
The next day (sigh), Jaws shows up again, and they harpoon it again, and Matt says the shark is much too big for the syringe of strychnine to pierce the shark's skin or whatever, so Quint decides they should drag it into shore and beach it. Brody tries to radio the Coast Guard for help, but Crazy Quint goes all Captain Ahab on his ass, and bashes the radio with a bat. They start trying to pull the shark in, but he's too heavy and too strong, and causes the boat's engines to overheat and die.
The next plan is for Matt to be lowered underwater in a flimsy ass metal cage and then throw the syringe into the shark's mouth when it attacks. This doesn't work because the cage looks like it's made of aluminum, and is instantly smashed to hell by the shark. Quint and Brody think Matt's dead, but he swims over to the sea floor and hides behind some rocks, using his tank to breathe.
By now the boat is falling apart and sinking, so Jaws appears on the hull and OMG, it's not a shark at all, it's some crazy rubbery animatronic thing that's somehow become sentient! What a twist! Quint tries to run away, but the weight of Jaws tilts the hull and forces him to slide feet first into Jaws' waiting open mouth. He's killed very noisily and gruesomely.
Now, even more of the boat has sunk, and Jaws tries to eat Brody, who's hiding as best he can against the far wall. He throws an air tank into Jaws' mouth. Then he climbs up onto the mast, which is the only thing not underwater, and gets off a lucky shot with his rifle, exploding the tank and the shark. Horray!
The boat's completely gone now, so Brody clings to some wreckage and tries to swim ashore. Matt resurfaces now that the coast is clear. Brody's relieved he survived. "And that's not all", says Matt. Suddenly, the little boy from earlier also surfaces. Brody's stunned. "H-How?" "This is a Spielberg movie. Spielberg doesn't kill kids, no matter how implausible it might seem. Didn't you see War of the Worlds? Spielberg likes to undermine and ruin his movies with some takesey-backsey bullshit in the third act".
The kid smiles. "Hey mister, how did you manage to kill that shark with a walkie-talkie?" Brody looks down and sees his rifle has turned into a walkie-talkie.
"I-I don't understand. This is crazy".
"Yes, it is. And stupid. Don't forget stupid".
Review: Of course, that didn't happen. The boy died and grown men sometimes carry guns. But this was obviously a less kinder and gentler Spielberg. And this movie was all the more better for it. I think for its genre it's pretty good, and many of the plot devices here have become enduring staples of most horror movies. Everyone knows the famous story of how the shark didn't work right, so they had to not show it until the end of the movie, and that served to create suspense, and also set the template for 90+ percent of monster movies that have come after. There's also the boneheaded politician character who doesn't care about the people's welfare, as well as the nerdy guy and the tough guy who must work together despite their differences.
But on top of all that, the suspense here is genuine, the scares are great, the way Spielberg played with expectations, making you wonder who was gonna get it next, all great. It was also smart to change up the movie an hour in, and make it about the main three guys and not the whole town, because there's only so many times you can plausibly have people keep getting into the water. Quint was...weird. I really can't decide how I felt about him, or if the movie was making fun of him or not, but I guess he worked in the end as a great foil for Matt, who was my favorite, and it was believable that he would do something stupid and self-destructive like break the radio. At the very least, he wasn't boring, unlike Brody. And then of course, I can't not mention the amazing soundtrack, which is perhaps one of the best ever, right up there with Star Wars, Raiders, and Superman.
All in all, a fun experience, but something I suspect I would've liked a lot more a long time ago, before so many imitators.
Stars: Three and half out of five.
Next, "North By Northwest", and then back to Altman again for some fun with the Mobile Army Surgical Hospital.
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