Jaws 1975

Cast:
Roy Scheider – Police Chief Martin Brody
Robert Shaw – Quint
Richard Dreyfuss – Matt Hooper
Lorraine Gary  – Ellen Brody
Murray Hamilton – Mayor Larry Vaughn
Carl Gottlieb – Ben Meadows

Jaws (1975) is a masterful, visceral and realistic science-fiction suspense/horror-disaster film that taps into the most primal of human fears – what unseen creature lurks below the dark surface of the water beyond the beach? The tagline for the tensely-paced film, “Don’t go in the water,” kept a lot of shark-hysterical ocean-swimmers and 1975 summer beachgoers wary (similar to the effect that Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) had on shower-taking).

The screenplay, mostly written by young, 27 year-old director Spielberg himself and Carl Gottlieb, was provided in part by Peter Benchley who wrote a trashy action novel by the same name (but originally titled A Stillness in the Water) about the fictional New England coastal town of Amity, Long Island – a summer resort that is terrorized by a menacing Great White Shark (known as the genus/species Carcharodon carcharias).

Peter Benchley’s chilling novel was an instant best seller, so it was only a matter of time before someone attempted to make it a movie. At the time this film was made, Spielberg was still relatively unknown except for a few TV projects including the cat and mouse thriller Duel. Steven Spielberg brought his genius directing style and mixed it with the words of Benchley’s great novel to make the first ever summer blockbuster. What I like most about this film is that it’s not really a horror, and it’s not really an action. There’s actually a story to it. The intelligent dialogue makes the movie interesting to watch because of its blend of humour, fear, and desperation. Of course, there are two other main things that add to the effect of this movie. The first is the chilling score by John Williams. You don’t even have to see the movie to know where it’s from. The second is the fact that you don’t really see the shark until the end. The tension just keeps building.

This was Steven Spielberg’s second-directed feature film (following his poorly-received The Sugarland Express (1974)) with Goldie Hawn, but it was more similar in theme to his earlier Duel (1971) – a 73-minute ABC made-for-TV movie (and released theatrically in 1983) about a relentless, sinister and face-less driver in a demon gas tanker-truck in pursuit of a salesman’s (Dennis Weaver) rented car. The same technique of delaying a glimpse of the dangerous force was employed in this film – a full view of the shark is not provided until over an hour into the film (although there are a few brief glimpses).

Spielberg’s film was a huge summer box-office blockbuster in the mid-1970s, although the filming suffered technical problems (the film was dubbed “Flaws” by the crew), costly delays in the schedule on Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts where the set was located (the on-location shoot escalated from 55 days to 159 days), and difficulties with malfunctioning, hydraulically-operated mechanical sharks (one was nicknamed ‘Bruce’ after the name of Spielberg’s lawyer) after they were placed in the salt-water. Hollywood realized that it could increase its profits by advertising this new release on television and promoted the film with a massive, revolutionary TV marketing campaign (of $700,000) for the film.

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