kerble wrote:the scene where O.G. retells the tale of the sunken military ship in sharky waters is better than a lot of whole movies I've seen. It may be more startle-y than scary, but I still get a great rush from this film..

apparently he was actually drunk while filming this scene. i have been told that he continued on for nearly 2 hours after what is in the movie, going in and out of character. at times railing on the other actors, spielberg and the shark, which was not working at the time. i would pay good money to see this footage.

i just had lunch at a burger place that is right next too what was quints shack.


-e

elisha wiesner wrote:the shark, which was not working at the time.

Murray was its name, right? I heard that's why you don't see much of the shark. The mechanics were on the fritz.

The part in which Roy Sheider first sees the shark, when he sits up, lightning speed, facial expression paralyzed, cigarette still in mouth...that's my favorite two seconds in a movie.

they called the shark Bruce.

the book "The Jaws Log" is a fun short read about how half the fucking town was against the movie, pouring sugar in gas tanks of production vehicles and other madness. everything that could go wrong did go wrong and it is amazing they got anything done, let alone a really great movie.

Tree wrote:The part in which Roy Sheider first sees the shark, when he sits up, lightning speed, facial expression paralyzed, cigarette still in mouth...that's my favorite two seconds in a movie.

His was the most difficult/important role in the movie, and he really nailed it. Man. All this talk. Tonight I'll watch it again.

Even as a child I found it tedious to watch this film.
It isn't good. It is bad. Shark problem is easy to solve you just don't go swimming and fuck those who do. Piranna 2 was a better movie. I wish they would have made a Piranna Vs. C.H.U.D movie.

Spielberg's unequivocal peak, IMO.

Great film.

And here's the delivery:

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 12 minutes. Didn't see the first shark for about a half an hour. Tiger. 13-footer. You know how you know that when you're in the water, Chief? You tell by looking 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. They didn't even list us overdue for a week. Very first light, Chief, sharks come cruisin', so we formed ourselves into tight groups. You know, it was kinda like old squares in the battle like you see in the calendar named "The Battle of Waterloo" and the idea was: shark comes to the nearest man, that man he starts poundin' and hollerin' and screamin' and sometimes the shark go away... but sometimes he wouldn't go away. Sometimes that shark he looks right into ya. Right into your eyes. And, you 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 living... until he bites ya, and those black eyes roll over white and then... ah then you hear that terrible high-pitched screamin'. The ocean turns red, and despite all the poundin' and the hollerin', they all come in and they... rip you to pieces. You know by the end of that first dawn, lost a hundred men. I don't know how many sharks, maybe a thousand. I know how many men, they averaged six an hour. On Thursday morning, Chief, I bumped into a friend of mine, Herbie Robinson from Cleveland. Baseball player. Boatswain's mate. I thought he was asleep. I reached over to wake him up. Bobbed up, 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... he was a young pilot, a lot younger than Mr. Hooper. Anyway, he saw us and he come in low and three hours later a big fat PBY comes down and starts to pick us up. You know that was the time I was most frightened... waitin' for my turn. I'll never put on a lifejacket again. So, eleven hundred men went in the water; 316 men come out and the sharks took the rest, June the 29th, 1945. Anyway, we delivered the bomb.

Quint was based on Long Island shark fisherman Frank Mundus.




Mr. Mundus’s stories are as incessant as the lapping of the waves, most circling back to “Jaws” and how in the 1960s he repeatedly took out the author Peter Benchley, who loved the way Mr. Mundus harpooned huge sharks with lines attached to barrels to track the shark while it ran to exhaustion.

He said Mr. Benchley was also fascinated with the 3,000-pound great white the Monster Man harpooned off the bathing beaches of Amagansett, N.Y. in June, 1961, sparking fear along the shore. He took notes and pictures, and later wrote the best-selling book

Jaws may be considered an American classic, but the Italian ripoffs of it are exponentially more entertaining: particularly Tentacoli, Castellari's L'Ultimo Squalo, Margheriti's Killer Fish, and Sergio Martino's Big Alligator River.

I knew when I posted this poll I would likely be in the minority. I'll admit some of the characters are reasonably endearing, but as a horror or suspense movie, Jaws really doesn't cut it. Its classic status is, to me, wholly unearned.

First of all, it's not a horror/suspense movie, it's just a movie, meaning it's not a genre film, as are the other films you mention. Perhaps that's why you didn't like it: You were maybe expecting it to push certain genre buttons.

stephensolo wrote:First of all, it's not a horror/suspense movie, it's just a movie, meaning it's not a genre film, as are the other films you mention. Perhaps that's why you didn't like it: You were maybe expecting it to push certain genre buttons.

Jaws wasn't intended to be a horror movie or a thriller? That's news to me!

In any case, I don't care whether the movies I watch push certain genre buttons, I just like them to be entertaining or engaging. Jaws was neither.