Welcome to Shark Week (in November, i know), where I'm going to be spending the next seven days reviewing shark-themed horror movies. The idea for this came from a conversation with a friend a few weeks ago, where we were discussing the most ridiculous shark movies out there, and he insisted that I review at least one of them. I countered that, if I was going to be reviewing such potential dreck like that, I would also need to review some actual good "sharksploitation" movies as well to balance it out. And thus was born the idea of Shark Week. And we're starting things off with the film that pretty much started this whole subgenre off - Jaws.
Amity Island is a small island on the east coast of the US that relies heavily on the tourists who visit its beaches every year to keep things running. So when a half-eaten corpse washes up on the beach one morning just a few days before the town's July 4 celebrations, newly-arrived police chief Martin Brody is immediately under pressure from the town's mayor to write it off as just an isolated accident. Unfortunately for Amity Island, a great white shark has decided to make their waters its new hunting ground, and it's not going to leave any time soon - not when there are so many tasty people splashing about in the waters. As the body count rises, Brody is left to team up with a local fisherman and an oceanographer to hunt down and kill this predator before it can claim more victims...
Jaws brought a lot to the horror genre. It kickstarted the "killer shark/killer animal" subgenre for a start, obviously. In the 50s and 60s there had been plenty of B-movies involving giant creatures of one form or another, usually mutated to giant size by some sort of Science! gone wrong (often an A-bomb test), but Jaws came at it from a different angle - that nature was more than deadly enough on its own without the need for Science! to make it scarier. It also spawned several sequels and a lot of rip-offs that continue to this day. Finally, it also gave us things like that infamous Jaws theme music that everyone can recognise after only a few bars; and the well-worn movie cliches of the town mayor who is more interested in the town's profits and reputation than in the predator hunting people, and the grizzled old hunter who offers to take care of the beast... for a price. Not to mention that infamous, much-quoted line: "You're gonna need a bigger boat."
Another interesting - and important in the terms of the horror genre - aspect of Jaws is the way in which the shark is portrayed. It is almost anthropomorphised by the camera and the story, with POV shots from the shark's viewpoint as it hunts and devours its victims - the same killer's eye view we see in films like Psycho, Peeping Tom, Black Christmas and, post-Jaws, Halloween and Friday the 13th. It's almost as though the shark is being portrayed as one of those stalk-and-slash killers, instead of being "just" a shark. This concept is also aided by the fact that we don't even get a truly good look at the shark until nearly three-quarters if the way through the film, akin to the real of a hidden killer in a more traditional slasher movie. Of course, part of the reason for this is that the animatronic shark, affectionately named "Bruce" (after director Steven Spielberg's lawyer) by the crew, was prone to malfunctioning in the salt water and did not look particularly realistic up close - although tight editing and storytelling hides this well for the most part.
Jaws has the honour of being one of just five horror films to be nominated for a Best Picture Oscar, and it was a well-deserved nomination (although it lost out to One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest). After Jaws came out, the number of tourists going on package beach holidays went way down, while the number of people going on shark fishing tours went up - clear evidence of how this movie had caught the viewing public's imagination. And of course, the sheer number of sequels, homages, rip-offs and even a porno parody or two (yes, really!) continue to demonstrate why its legacy has endured for 41 years and counting.
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