Jaws (1975): Scary or Stupid?

With summer on the way it got me thinking about the film that birthed the summer blockbuster, Steven Spielberg’s 1975 Jaws. It was actually an adaptation of a novel (a snippet I’ve just become aware of) and went onto smash the box office records as well as give people an unrealistic fear of sharks. No doubt I found it unnerving as a kid (the premise along with the foreboding ‘here-it-comes’ score was good enough to spook adults too), but was this film really scary or was it closer to stupid?

“Well, you could tell it was fake.” – My Grandad, 1975

It must be said, for someone who’s prime was in the fifties, to balk at the latest SFX points towards Jaws not having particularly good SFX for the time. Two years earlier crowds had been treated to the visceral brilliance of The Exorcist. Now they were treated to a completely oversized, very stiff looking puppet, for while Jaws is a masterclass in building tension the payoff was apparently having many first time viewers rolling their eyes.

It was also a film that preyed on ignorance.

Perhaps David Attenborough hadn’t schooled us enough yet, but aside from the dodgy appearance of the monolithic fish when one realises what something that big would need to feed on it makes the idea of hunting humans laughable. The average Great White shark, a third of Jaws if that, generally feeds on seals as they have the necessary blubber to satisfy. Instances of attacks on the shore are often the product of a mistaken identity hence why there are many survivors with crescent-shaped scars – they find us too bony and so only bite once.

This does not stop the death of Quint for instance from being disturbing, but because the antagonist lives within the realms of a this world it loses its post-credit power…if you stop to use your noggin.

You would still have to consider Jaws a classic, and it’s still very watchable, but I don’t like how it turned one of nature’s great predators into some insatiable man-eater.

Now Deep Blue Sea (1999) had the right idea with genetically modified Mako sharks…

…unfortunately that film really sucked.