Jaws

To continue “Halloween Month” I will now go into the deep ends of the ocean and get out one of Steven Spielberg’s classic films from 1975, “Jaws.” It’s one of the scariest films of all time, and is still scary to this very day. Since it revolves around the humans that we see develop, we get to know them on a personal level and fear for them. Roger Ebert said that this film is just as frightening as “The Exorcist,” but I think “The Exorcist” is far scarier than “Jaws.” The thing that makes “Jaws” scary is that people may not even go to the beach again because they are afraid a shark might come in and attack. I have never encountered a shark before, but I have heard of sharks that have attacked people. Maybe at an aquarium I have seen shark tanks, but that’s about it.

You probably all know the basic storyline of this film. A series of attacks happen on a beach by a great white shark. Out of fear that the tourism attraction will deteriorate, three men venture out into the sea to find this shark. There are supposed to be a number of meanings in this classic story, but Spielberg being the genius that he is, doesn’t underline any of them. This film stays within its own boundaries, and none of the characters have to give speeches on the meaning of it. Spielberg does present these characters that make them into individuals.

Before the three men hop onto their boat and venture out to kill the shark, we get to know them in a way that we know how they’ll respond. First, we have Brody, played by the great Roy Scheider, who is the police chief of the island, and came from New York for a change. Next is Quint, played by another great actor, Robert Shaw. He is a sailor who has a very personal grudge against sharks. Finally there is the ever loving Hooper, played by one of the most well-known actors, Richard Dreyfuss. Now Hooper is a rich kid turned oceanographer. He is their best resource to ask what a shark can do to man, and he is a daredevil to go into the sea with one.

All three of these characters are just memorable. Scheider is the one that you identify with the most. He has hydrophobia, which shows because he doesn’t like to swim. The first time he sees a shark go past the boat, it’s believable when he says to Quint the famous line from the movie, “We need a bigger boat.” Roger Ebert had this to say about Shaw: “Shaw brings a degree of cheerful exaggeration to his role as Quint, stomping around like a cross between Captain Queeg and Captain Hook, and then delivering a compelling five-minute monologue about the time the Indianapolis went down and he was one of more than a thousand men in the water.” When the rescue had come, two-thirds of the men were already killed by sharks, hence the reason for his vendetta against sharks.

The most memorable of the three has to be Dreyfuss as Hooper the oceanographer. Dreyfuss calls himself an idiot for turning the role down twice, but he got into this role soon after being the titular character in “The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz,” and the college boy from the ever classic, “American Graffiti.” In “Jaws,” he looks just right for the role. Young, engaging, and scholarly, and even mentions what he knows about sharks that channels our fear of them.

Finally, we have the shark. Some of the footage in the film is an actual shark. The rest is of a mechanical shark patterned on the real shark, which completes the illusion. We see the shark close up, we look him dead in the eye, and it feels like we are looking at an actual shark. “Jaws” still holds up well today, and it will still scare you if you watch it. Unlike a lot of horror films that overuses the violence; here Spielberg uses the necessary amount of blood and guts. The story is also brilliantly told throughout. I give this film a solid 10.

What is next for this shark killer? Will they make the smart choice and leave the film where it should be, or make it into a horrible franchise? Wait until tomorrow in my “Jaws-a-thon.”