JAWS

REVIEWED BY CHARITY BISHOP

Our rating: 3 out of 5

Because of: mangled corpses, blood, gore, thematic elements

Rated:

I have had two predominant fears since childhood, and sharks is one of them. From the moment I first saw one in a book on marine biology, I possessed an unholy terror of them. The rows of razor-sharp teeth, those blank, black eyes that roll into white whenever they bite their prey... all if it gave me the creeps. For this reason, I justifiably held off seeing Jaws for a long time.

The small island community of Amity is preparing for the summer beach rush. Every year, the 4th of July brings in millions in revenues to the fishing and boating district. Most of the problems locals deal with are insignificant and minor, from kids spray-painting billboards to the occasional dispute over a neighborhood fence. Police Chief Martin Brody (Roy Scheider) has a quiet life with his wife and two kids. Retired from New York, he likes the beach but hates the water. Still, his job is fairly quiet until one night when a woman goes skinny dipping just off the coast, and her remains wash up the next morning. Most of her body is gone, and there is evidence of a massive shark attack. Sharks are such a rarity in these waters that the town mayor tries to convince Brody that it was a boating propeller accident instead, but he calls the mainland and requests assistance anyway.

Refusing to shut down the beaches, the mayor continues to ignore the problem until there are two more victims: a dog and a boy floating on a rubber raft. A massive hunt clutters the bay with eager fisherman, desperate to reap the $3,000 reward for capturing and killing the shark. Marine expert Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) arrives just as a shark is hoisted onto the docks and the town celebrates its triumph. Only there is a problem. The bite marks of the first victim do not match the tiger shark's teeth, leading Hooper to believe they are searching for a "gigantic" great white. They enlist the assistance of a local bounty hunter (Robert Shaw) to bring the shark in.

Two things stand out about this movie: the magnificent film work involved and the fact that it sticks with you a long time. It has been over a week since I first watched the film, but I can remember every suspenseful and scary scene with perfect clarity, even though I spent a few of them with my hands half covering my eyes. What was initially a disaster on set (namely, that the animatronics shark they created failed to work properly) became an enormous benefit to the director, since he was forced to film alternative sequences that are much, much more suspenseful. Thus, instead of seeing a shark moving silently towards people in the water, we see things from the shark's perspective -- churning waves, arms and legs foundering about as unaware swimmers have fun, and our stomach ties up in knots wondering just who is going to get jerked underwater.

Yes, towards the end the animatronics shark is nothing spectacular but by now we've generated such fear of this creature that doesn't really matter, since we see what we don't want to believe. In short, it's amazing but the film somehow makes up for its deficiencies with mental manipulations, and is probably one of the scariest movies I have ever seen. That being said, I cannot say that I'll ever watch it again, or even encourage friends to see it, because it does stay with you so long. Filmed in an era before the PG13 rating was invented, this is a very brutal, very bloody film that could stand up against just about any other shark attack movie's gore factor (it might even get an R).

While you only actually see one man being eaten (which is one of the most gruesome things I have ever seen), there are numerous implications of others -- all with blood spurting up out of the water, or turning the tide red. The fact that one of the victims is a little boy makes it all the more horrifying. A woman makes horrible faces and screams as she is pulled underwater, after being bitten once or twice (implied, not shown). There are other frightening and/or suspenseful moments, such as a shark tearing apart a shark-proof cage with a man inside; a diver finding a dead body in a sunken boat, and a swimmer desperately trying to get to shore before he's attacked at night. A dead shark is shown hanging above the dock; later, Hooper cuts it apart and tosses out the stomach contents. We see a dismembered leg floating to the ocean bottom. A woman's hand is shown buried in the sand, covered in crabs. Numerous bullets and spears are lodged at the shark, with gruesome impact.

There's also quite a lot of foul language (including four GD's, and five of Jesus' name, along with general expected profanities), a rude arm gesture, and a harrowing story about sharks picking off over 1,000 marines in a sunken boat off the coast of Japan during the second world war. In some DVD releases, the film quality has been improved enough that you can make out nudity on the female skinny dipper, both in a deep-water silhouette and from behind as she runs into the surf. On its face, it is one of the most impressive movies every made simply for its ability to scare the audience, but it's not for anyone with a fear of the water, a dread of sharks, or especially impressionable kids. It may cause them nightmares. I know one thing: I'll never look at the coast with quite the same enthusiasm again.