I had already watched the original “Jaws” again, in honor of the 40th anniversary of summer’s first blockbuster, and as I idly scrolled through the program listings Friday night, I noted that American Movie Classics (or AMC, I suppose, since their programming is no longer 100% American, movies, OR classics) was serving up all four shark pictures in marathon style. Having never sat through ANY of the sequels of the franchise, I blithely set my DVR to record and decided to devote a fairly non-eventful July 4th afternoon to sitting through this aquatic buffet.
Let’s start by talking a bit about the original classic from 1975. Much like the aquatic antagonist is depicted as the perfect killing machine, so too is Steven Spielberg’s homage to his own earlier picture “Duel” the perfect horror/suspense film. Frame-by-frame, this movie holds up as a master work, from the camera angles, to the uniformly excellent performances. As suspenseful as this film is, it is leavened in just the right places with a sly sense of humor, often times JUST before horror strikes (“We’re gonna need a bigger boat!”).
Roy Scheider is pitch perfect as the beleaguered Chief Brody, a recent transplant from the big city, now mostly relegated to getting cats out of trees and investigating general hooliganism in Amity, prior to the fishy buffet. Richard Dreyfus and Robert Shaw provide support for the final third of the film, which details the final showdown between man and fish. Lorraine Gary, as Brody’s wife Ellen, had to be disappointed that the character’s affair with Dreyfus’ from the book didn’t make the film, but Spielberg wisely chooses to drop that Benchley subplot overboard to focus on the story.
Sadly, “Jaws 2” drops precipitously in quality. In place of Spielberg, our director is Jeannot Swarcz, a veteran of Rod Serling’s “Night Gallery,” who is about as subtle as a sledgehammer when it comes to foreshadowing elements of plot. It’s four years later in Amity, and once again the sleepy oceanfront community is terrorized by a great white, and once again Murray Hamilton’s sleazy mayor doesn’t believe Scheider. In fact, neither does the entire town council, and Brody is fired. To be fair, this chapter DOES have a fairly suspenseful closing act, but it takes SO long in getting there, and the screaming mimi children in peril get so grating that you almost find yourself rooting for the shark. In any event, I was reaching for the Tums.
Scheider wisely bailed on “Jaws 3,” previously released in 3D. Randy Quaid plays a grown-up Mike Brody and John Putch his younger brother Sean. The location is now Florida’s Sea World. Bess Armstrong and Louis Gossett, Jr., sporting a really BAD southern accent lend support to a made-for-USA Network quality script. I have one of those nifty 3D ready Samsung TV’s, so I went ahead and turned on the 3D effect, and some of the underwater photography was actually pretty good. Now I switched from Tums to Pepto.
Wearily, I settled in for “Jaws: the Revenge.” It’s Christmas time in Amity, and Sean Brody is out on patrol in the waters when a shark chows down on his arm. His screams for help go unnoticed, drowned out by a Christmas choir. Ellen Brody is now a widow, still portrayed by Lorraine Gary, largely because she was married to the head of the studio. She becomes convinced that this particular shark is nursing a grudge, and is specifically TARGETING the Brody family. Yeah. Especially when it follows her and her granddaughter to the Bahamas, where she cuddles up to Michael Caine who looks like he wandered in from another movie. I would love to tell you how this wraps up, but quite frankly the Pepto wasn’t helping my indigestion, and I could tell that sitting through the rest of this dreck wasn’t going to help my situation. I’m still trying to figure out the whole grudge angle. I mean the FIRST shark was blown up … the SECOND was electrocuted … the THIRD was … I forget, but dead … so with no survivors, how does the vendetta start? Do these sharks sit around a campfire and exchange boogeyman stories about the big bad Brodys? Hmmm.
“Jaws: the Revenge” still sits ominously on my DVR, and I MAY revisit it. Once my shipment of Maalox arrives …
