All right then, it's time for the big one, the grandaddy of all shark movies, the one that kicked the whole genre off in a real way and without which it's doubtful any of the movies on the list would have even been considered, never mind made. There is of course no argument over which is the greatest, the original shark movie, and this is it. It was also, as I mentioned in the intro, sadly, the springboard for a kind of backlash by humans against what they perceived to be – and were shown by the movie to be – deadly killers that had to be eliminated before they ate every human who even so much as dipped a toe in the sea. Finally, it's arguably the movie that made the reputation and careers of both Steven Spielberg and John Williams, set the template for modern horror movies and is considered one of the first original blockbuster movies, making more than fifty times its initial, already huge, budget of just over nine million.
There could be only one movie I'm talking about, and it is of course
Title: Jaws
Year: 1975
Nationality: American
Starring: Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss, Robert Shaw, Lorraine Gary, Richard Hamilton
Directed by: Steven Spielberg
Written by: Peter Benchely and Carl Gottlieb, based on Benchley's novel
Cinematography: Bill Butler
Music: John Williams
Budget: USD 9 million
Box Office: USD 470 million
At a beach party at night, a girl goes for a swim, but unbeknownst to her a shark is in the water, a fact she quickly becomes aware of as she is grabbed and eaten. When she is reported missing the next morning, Police Chief Martin Brody (Scheider) is called in, and shocked to find that her partial remains on the beach. He immediately worries that this is the result of a shark attack and proceeds to order the beaches closed. This is not a good thing to do, when Amity Island is preparing for its annual Fourth of July celebration, but he knows that lives may be at stake. He is aghast to be told that this morning there are a bunch of boy scouts swimming in the water as a pledge, and rushes to the beach. On his way there he is accosted by the mayor, who tells him he can't close the beaches on his own authority, and tries to remind him of the revenue tourists bring in, especially at this time. If he closes the beaches, people will go elsewhere. Besides, he points out, there have been no sharks in these waters before. Probably a boating accident, he shrugs, and the coroner, changing his mind since he spoke to Brody, seems to agree.
While he watches from the beach, jumping at every noise, every scream, every splash, there is suddenly a new scream and a plume of red spreads across the water as one of the kids swimming is taken down. Realising that his worst fears have come to pass, Brody leaps into action, marshalling everyone on the beach to get their kids out of the water, (he can't swim, and has a morbid fear of water) and signalling for anyone else swimming to get the hell ashore. It's too late of course for the kid, who is long dead at this point. His mother offers a reward for anyone who can catch and kill the shark, and things are about to spiral out of control. As the islanders meet, concerned business owners bemoan the closing of the beaches, a necessary precaution in the mind of Brody, the only sane thing to do, but he is overruled by the mayor, who places a limit of twenty-four hours on the closure, to Brody's chagrin. A local shark hunter, Quint, declares he will catch the shark but he wants three times what is being offered. Some other fishermen take up the challenge, and catch the shark, but are unable to hold it, the jetty breaking and throwing them into the water. They barely escape with their lives.
Oceanographer Matt Hooper (Dreyfuss) arrives to try to help, but when a tiger shark is caught, and everyone thinks this is the one that killed the two people, he is less certain. It's smaller, the bite radius isn't right, and he points out that there are likely many sharks in the waters hereabouts. It may be the right one, but he wants to know for sure, and suggests cutting the shark open. Its digestive system, he tells Brody and the mayor, is very slow, and anything it's eaten in the last twenty-four hours will still be in its stomach. The mayor refuses, understandably concerned about the idea of the remains of a boy spilling out onto the dock, especially with the mother present, though in reality he's more worried that Hooper may be right. If this is not the shark, then that shark is still at large and he can't declare the matter closed. Hooper, however, is convinced, and later, with Brody's permission as Chief of Police, they do cut the shark open and his fears are realised: there are no human remains inside the tiger shark. It's not the one. Hooper decides to go looking for the right shark, and Brody reluctantly accompanies him. They find a fisherman's boat, attacked and wrecked, the fisherman dead. Despite all this evidence that the shark is yet at large, the mayor refuses to allow the closure of the beaches.
The Fourth of July proceeds as normal, until suddenly someone spots a shark fin in the water, but it turns out to be just some kids messing about. Panic averted, everyone heads back to the water, but it is in the inland estuary where the shark – the real shark this time – chooses to attack. This just happens to be where Brody asked his son, Michael, to take their boat, concerned for their safety. How ironic: he wouldn't let them go into the water and now his son and his friends are trapped! This is the first time we see more of the shark than a fin; just a glimpse of a big, ugly snout filled with razor fangs and a long back snaking through the water, but it's enough for us to realise how fu
cking BIG this thing is! The shark attacks one of the other kids, allowing Michael and his friends to escape, but Brody's son is badly shaken by his ordeal. In the light of what has happened, the mayor now has no choice but to authorise Quint to go after the shark, and Brody and Hooper decide to accompany him.
After a short time at sea Quint believes he has hooked the shark, but Hooper is less certain. At any rate there's no way to know as the line is quickly broken, and whatever they had snagged is lost. It's not long though before the shark puts in an appearance, in a scene which has by now become iconic. As Brody bitches about having to throw the chum – the mixture of fish guts used to attract the shark – over the side, the shark suddenly rears up, and we can see how big it is. Gasping to Quint that they're gonna need a bigger boat (another iconic line) he helps as the shark hunter shoots a harpoon into the animal, the dart attached to a barrel which they hope will prevent the shark from remaining underwater and will force it to the surface. They stay out till dark, when the shark does indeed surface – and attacks the boat. Quint shoots at it – or as much as he can see of it, which is the barrel, still attached to it (lends new meaning to the term “shooting fish in a barrel” - sorry!) but of course he can't hit it.
Daylight breaks, and as they survey the damage to the boat the shark surfaces behind it. As Brody radios for help, Quint, presumably reluctant to share the bounty, smashes the radio, and now they are on their own as the shark heads back towards them. They manage to hit it a few times, but the shark is enraged now, and sees the boat either as a rival, an enemy or an impediment to its food supply. Either way, it's not going to leave peacefully, and is determined to wreck the little craft. And it can. The guys now find themselves in a desperate struggle for survival, as the hunters quickly become the hunted. Under the immense pull of the shark, the boat begins to break up, and Quint has to sever the line, letting it go free. But the shark goes underneath the boat, ramming it, trying to capsize it. They make a run for the shore, hoping the shallower water will drown the shark, but Quint pushes the boat too far and the engine gives out, stranding them still a long way from shore. With their options running out, Hooper suggests putting together the shark-proof cage they brought along, in order for him to manage to inject deadly strychnine into the shark. It's a long shot but, you know...
As it goes, the shark seems cleverer than they had expected, and as Hooper waits with the syringe, on a long spear, in hand, submerged in the cage, the shark batters it from behind, jolting it and causing Hooper to drop the precious syringe. So much for that plan! The shark now attacks with renewed fervour, smashing the cage and getting into it. Hooper stabs it with his knife and swims out, and the guys try to winch him back onboard, but the winch snaps at the crucial moment and they have to haul him up by hand. When the cage breaks the water though, it is empty. Just then the shark flops almost onto the stern of the boat, pulling it deeper into the water and causing Quint to slide down along the deck, right into its waiting, well, jaws. He fights, kicking at the shark's teeth, but he is soon dead and dragged below the water. Brody is now alone on a boat which is not going to last much longer above the water.
A moment later the shark breaks through what remains of the boat and comes after him as the vessel sinks almost completely under. Scrambling wildly for something to defend himself with, something to ward off the beast, he grabs a pressurised SCUBA tank, and hits out at the shark with it, eventually throwing the cannister into its mouth as the shark temporarily retreats to perhaps investigate this new item. As the shark arrows in for its final attack, as the boat sinks even lower, Brody grabs a rifle and climbs to the top of the mast. After several missed shots, one bullet finds the tank, still in the shark's mouth and it explodes in a shower of blood, guts and scales. The terror of Amity Island is finally dead. Hooper turns out to have made it after all, and the two of them begin swimming home, clinging to inflatable rafts.
Quotes
Brody's secretary: “Now we got a bunch of calls about the kids from that karate school. It seems the kids have been karate-chopping the picket fences!”
(This is a great line; serves to show how, until this moment, sleepy and boring this island is, and the kind of mundane, petty things Brody has usually to deal with. Things are about to get a whole lot more interesting though!)
Mayor: “You yell
barracuda, everyone says huh? You yell
shark, we got a panic on our hands on the Fourth of July!”
Quint: “Shark'll swallow you whole ... tenderise ye ... down ye go!”
(This is early proof that Benchley knew nothing of the feeding habits of sharks. At best, a shark will take an exploratory bite, but as I already mentioned in the reviews of other movies, the taste of humans is not palatable to them and apart from the fact that mostly they would be physically incapable of swallowing an adult human – they're not whales, after all! - they would have no interest in doing so.)
Hooper: “You know those eight guys in the fantail launch? Well, none of them are going to get out of the harbour alive.”
Hooper: “This wasn't any boating accident! It wasn't a coral reef, and it wasn't Jack the Ripper! It was a shark!”
Brody: “Where are you going?”
Hooper: “I'm going out to find him rght now. He's a night feeder.”
Brody: “On the water?”
Hooper: “If we're looking for a shark, we're not going to find him on the land!”
Hooper: “That's it. Goodbye. I'm not going to waste my time with a man who's lining up to be a hot meal. Mr. Vaughan, what we are dealing with here is a perfect engine, an eating machine. It's really a miracle of evolution. All this machine does is swim and eat, and make little sharks. That's all. Now why don't you take a long, close look at this sign: those proportions are correct.”
Mayor: “You'd love to prove that, wouldn't you? Get your name in
National Geographic?”
Brody: “You want to take him home?”
Brody's wife: “You mean home to New York?”
Brody: “No, home here.”
(Ah, New York! Where the only sharks are the ones on street corners...)
Quint: “Bow, front! Stern, back! Get it right, or I throw your ass out the little funny round window on the side!”
Brody: “You're gonna need a bigger boat!”
Quint: “Feel there, under my cap. Knock an old one, St. Paddy's Day, Boston.”
Hooper: “I got that beat. I got that beat. Moray eel, bit right through my wetsuit.” (shows scar on arm).
Quint: “Entered an arm wrestling contest in an Okie bar in San Francisco' See this? (Flexes arm) Can't extend it. You know why? Got to the semi-final, celebrating my third wife's (I have no idea what the next word is; I've tried to get it but despite several run-throughs I've been unable to make it out); big Chinese fella, pulled me right over!”
Hooper (rolling up trouser leg): “That's a bull shark. Scraped me when I was taking samples.”
Quint (rollingup his trouser leg): “See that? That's a thresher. Thresher's tail.”
Brody: “Thresher?”
Quint: “Thresher shark. (to Hooper) You gonna drink to your leg?”
Hooper: “Let's drink to our legs.”
Quint: “Okay! We drink to our legs!”
Hooper: “I got the
creme de la creme, right here. (opens shirt) See that? Right there? Mary Ellen Moffett. She broke my heart!”
Brody: What's that one?
Quint: What?
Brody: That one, there, on your arm.
Quint: Oh, uh, that's a tattoo, I got that removed.
Hooper: Don't tell me, don't tell me..."Mother."
[he roars with laughter]
Hooper: What is it -
[Quint solemnly clamps a hand on Hooper's arm]
Quint: Mr. Hooper, that's the
USS Indianapolis.
[Hooper immediately stops laughing]
Hooper: You were on the
Indianapolis?
Brody: What happened?
Quint: Japanese submarine slammed two torpedoes into our side, Chief. We was comin' back from the island of Tinian to Leyte, just delivered the bomb. The Hiroshima bomb. Eleven hundred men went into the water. Vessel went down in twelve minutes. Didn't see the first shark for about a half an hour. Tiger. Thirteen-footer. You know how you know that when you're in the water, Chief? You tell by lookin' from the dorsal to the tail. What we didn't know... was our bomb mission had been so secret, no distress signal had been sent. Heh.
[he pauses and takes a drink]
Quint: They didn't even list us overdue for a week. Very first light, Chief, sharks come cruisin'. So we formed ourselves into tight groups. Y'know, it's... kinda like ol' squares in a battle like, uh, you see in a calendar, like the Battle of Waterloo, and the idea was, shark comes to the nearest man and that man, he'd start poundin' and hollerin' and screamin', and sometimes the shark'd go away... sometimes he wouldn't go away. Sometimes that shark, he looks right into ya. Right into your eyes. Y'know the thing about a shark, he's got... lifeless eyes, black eyes, like a doll's eyes. When he comes at ya, doesn't seem to be livin'... until he bites ya. And those black eyes roll over white, and then... oh, then you hear that terrible high-pitch screamin', the ocean turns red, and spite of all the poundin' and the hollerin', they all come in and they... rip you to pieces.
[he pauses]
Quint: Y'know, by the end of that first dawn... lost a hundred men. I dunno how many sharks. Maybe a thousand. I dunno how many men, they averaged six an hour. On Thursday mornin', Chief, I bumped into a friend of mine, Herbie Robinson from Cleveland. Baseball player. Bosun's mate. I thought he was asleep. Reached over to wake him up. Bobbed up and down in the water just like a kinda top. Upended. Well... he'd been bitten in half below the waist. Noon the fifth day, Mr. Hooper, a Lockheed Ventura saw us, he swung in low and he saw us. Young pilot, a lot younger than Mr. Hooper. Anyway, he saw us and come in low and three hours later, a big fat PBY comes down and start to pick us up. Y'know, that was the time I was most frightened, waitin' for my turn. I'll never put on a life jacket again. So, eleven hundred men went into the water, three hundred sixteen men come out, and the sharks took the rest, June the 29th, 1945.
[he pauses, smiles, and raises his glass]
Quint: Anyway... we delivered the bomb.
(Yeah, I copied and pasted that. A very important quote, but a bit too long to transcribe by hand, not to mention that Quint tends to drawl, which makes it a little hard to know what he's saying much of the time)
Brody (aiming): “Smile you son of a -”