2011-08-15
Movie legends: JAWS
Watching Jaws the other day – inspired and based on Peter Benchley’s acclaimed and scary novel – it didn’t seem possible that the film had first hit the silver screen in 1975. Gripping and still more than convincing, this fright-fest featuring the turmoil of a small fishing town besieged by a shark burst onto the scene and made an impact right from its first showing. The reasons why were obvious. Daring and compelling in more ways than one, the film unleashed a potential for horror films which many people just hadn’t seen coming. A potential which, to this day, is rarely matched with similar intensity.
Besides that it was about one of the most feared creatures in the world, a modern day dinosaur: the Great White shark. And at the time nothing was more terrifying, especially seeing as this was well before the truth about sharks really emerged.
I couldn’t get past the bit where Brody and his side-kick discover the girl’s hand sticking out of the sand dune, covered by squirming masses of crabs
The first time I watched Jaws, I couldn’t get past the bit where Brody and his side-kick discover the girl’s hand sticking out of the sand dune, covered by squirming masses of crabs. I had to turn it off and run upstairs. Watching it again just the other day, that part – and many others – had the exact same effect (although this time I didn’t run upstairs, of course). I’d seen the film many times over the years, but if you give it some time then Jaws is a film which will creep back on you...
As a child, my dad worked in Personal Injury Trusts compensation and he always joked with me that getting bitten by a shark wasn’t something which he had ever heard someone claim for, and he had heard everything under the Sun. He would then follow this up by saying that he probably hadn’t heard of them because they were lying dead somewhere at the bottom of the ocean. Those words used to keep me up at night, I can tell you!
So, with all the remakes happening right now, and a culture of remaking every single successful film that ever was, I wonder if Jaws will get the remake treatment? I personally hope it doesn’t, because in my opinion Steven Spielberg went above and beyond what was possible in movie-making at the time. Somehow I doubt that the film could ever be as good, even if we do have CGI now and all kinds of other tricks that they didn’t have then.
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