We definitely need a bigger boat!

Rating: 9/10 (16 July 2000)

***SPOILER*** Oh happy days of 25 years ago. Seeing those TV trailers of a girl skinny-dipping at night, followed by the John William's motif dum-dum-dum score, then of Brody's look of dismay on the beach as another young swimmer bites the dust(seaweed?); ending with the "We need a bigger boat" and a brief glimpse of the 20 footer ("25...Three tons of him")
Off I dashed to the local cinema only to find queues doubling around the block eager to see this true blockbuster. The theatre lights dimmed, the packed crowd focussed; the curtains opened. First the Universal motif followed by that awesome
Da Dum....Da Dum Da Dum...dum dum dum dum....and we're off...
As a bratty 13 year old back then, raised on action movies & horror novels prior to this, I have never been so scared in all my life after watching Jaws. It proves you don't have to use loads of gratuitous violence (Halloween, Scream - good movies but reliant on the visual rather than the abstract) to get your message across.
Spielberg gets the ingredients spot on in every dept - the music we already know about, never has the big JW produced a more sinister motif for a movie that stays in your consciousness years after seeing the movie than this.
The Editing deserves special mention because Verna Fields knows how to play with the audience, offering us brief glimpses of the horror from the deep. That's all we need, because William's score lets us know when the shark's around.
The directing also is a tribute to the Big "S" himself. It's a pity he didn't win an Oscar, although I supposed One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (its major rival at the time) won the sympathy vote. But Spielberg really does drive the film forward with a very tight script (pruned extensively from the rather bogged down & overlong "talky" novel) and some keen cinematography that would serve him so well in years to come.
But top honours have to go the three men on the boat. Scheider, Dreyfuss & Shaw all confessed to hating the movie during production especially Dreyfuss who felt it would damage his mainstream intellectual movie status after starring in the acclaimed Duddy Kravitz which he was publicising at the same time as making Jaws.
But the end result is a perfect chemistry between the old sea dog (Quint); the eager young know-it-all rich kid (Hooper) and the ex-New York cop wanting a quieter life in the sticks but hates water (Brody).
This film is still excellent 25 years on. And I still believe it carries one of the scariest moments in all of movieland - the head in the hull of the boat had everyone in the theatre jump in unison and it still makes me whince even now.
My biggest regret though was seeing the shark being blown up at the end. Afterall, the shark is only doing what it does naturally and generally doesn't bother with bathers in real life. And yet after this movie was released back in the late 70s there was an instant backlash against any shark. Sharkhunters culled them and numbers dwindled, and Jaws, initially was to blame for that.
Hopefully with a more environmentally aware audience these days the re-release of Jaws will have more positive effects than before.
Anyway, for those who have yet to see this glorious moment in cinema history, go see it and be scared...very..very scared.
*****/*****