Movie Minx

Starring: A great big mechanical shark, some red paint and some fake limbs. Plus Richard Dreyfuss, Roy Sheider and Robert Shaw
Directed by: Steven Spielberg, who was quite a young ‘un at the time

Plot: An American seaside town is harassed by a big shark that can play scary music every time it kills someone.

But is it any good?

That depends on whether you find a movie that created mass hysteria and a terror of the sea “good”. I do, so hell yes!

As regular readers may have guessed, I am quite the horror-phile and Jaws was the first scary movie I ever saw (yes, I class this as part-horror). I was about eight, and couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Was that a dead woman’s hands on the beach? Why was the shark so hungry, and so damn smart? Actually I was too much of a wuss to watch it all at the time, but have watched it in its entirety several times since. Unfortunately, I have also watched the woeful sequels.

Anyway, some context. It was the mid ’70s and Jaws was a bestselling book. But it took the vision of young Spielberg (this was his big break), a canny sense of timing (summer vacation!) and a bloody frightening score to launch things into the stratosphere. Be honest now, you think of that shark every time you’re in deep water, don’t you? Well, Americans sure did. It kept many out of the sea for years. Some are still nervously pacing the beach.

Partly what makes this movie so effective, of course, is that the fear you feel is not unfounded. The shark in Jaws is fake (Spielberg often suggests the shark rather than showing it, a Blair Witch-like tactic that works every time, although the reason for it was that the mechanical shark kept breaking down), but sharks are real. Great White ones. Which sometimes eat humans, or at least chomp off a limb. Humans treading water look down at the darkness below and realize with a shiver that no amount of brains can help them fight a hungry fish. It’s nature, baby.

On the other hand, the film kind of gives sharks a raw deal. Okay, they eat meat, but they don’t sit in caves plotting how to psychologically torture humans, and we’re far more of a threat to them than they are to us.

Anyway, what makes this film far superior to its sequels it that something happens between the deaths. We actually get to know the characters and invest some emotion, and the actors are excellent (remember the mother of the boy on the yellow lilo?). From the gripping, silent opening death scene to the three men on the fishing boat at the end, we’re in the movie with them until the bitter (explosive) end.

It’s a simple story really, but there’s the fear, humor, and best of all, suspense. When Brody the aquaphobic cop knows something’s up, so do we. We feel his guilt, his alarm and sense of doom as he surveys the beach, waiting for the inevitable. A girl screams, but she’s laughing. A dog barks, but he’s chasing a stick. It’s just a matter of time… and then the music starts.

My rating: 9.5/10 (the shark looks fake, but who cares? Have you seen Deep Blue Sea? It was crap!)

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