Something in the Water

Jaws

Director: Steven Spielberg

Cast: Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw, Richard Dreyfuss, and a mechanical shark dubbed Bruce

Released: June 20, 1975

Oscar nominations:

Best Picture (lost to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest)

Best Editing (won)

Best Dramatic Score (won)

Best Sound (won)

This movie recently celebrated it's 50th (!!!) anniversary and what better time to review it? Jaws is a very revolutionary movie, being known as the first summer blockbuster. It really is that quintessential summer movie, being set on an New England island beach town during the Fourth of July with a killer shark lurking in the water. This was Spielberg's third movie he directed (well, technically fourth, but the very first movie he directed was only shown at a theater in Phoenix where he grew up called Firelight when he was only 17. (Yes, I got all this information from Wikipedia.)) Anyway, I'm not counting that one. 

I had only seen this movie once before. I think I was in middle school when my brother rented it. There were a few things I remembered, like the very first scene when the young woman goes for a midnight swim and becomes a midnight snack for the shark.

New York native Martin Brody (Roy Scheider) is the police chief of Amity Island. We're never really told where Amity Island is, we just know it's off the coast of New England. We do know that the movie was filmed on Martha's Vineyard, a place I've visited! Now I was only in Oaks Bluff (shout out to Stephanie Wolf Designs, this amazing store with these beautiful earrings I'm obsessed with!) and the movie was filmed in a town called Edgartown which is just south of Oaks Bluff. Now I was thinking it was probably an hour drive from Oaks Bluff, but no, I just Googled the distance and it's an eighteen minute drive! Obviously my view was seriously distorted!

Back to the movie! Brody and his wife live in a cute little house by the water with their two young sons; Michael, who is around 12 and his brother, Sean who is four or five. They also have this really cute dog, who, I'm not gonna lie, I was really worried about. Yes, I'm the person who is more worried about the pets than the kids! 

The boy who was with the girl the night before called the police to report her missing. I'm kind of surprised he did this because he had passed out on the beach from too much drinking after she went in the water, so I don't think he even saw her get attacked. Wouldn't he had just assumed she made it out of the water? And it's not like this was his girlfriend and he hadn't heard from her the next day and that's what made him call the police. These two had just met the night before at a bonfire fire when she went frolicking by him and motioned for him to follow her. I'm probably giving this too much thought. 

On his way to the beach, we see Brody pass a big sign welcoming tourists to Amity for the "50th Annual Regatta." There's a painting of a girl relaxing on a floaty lounger in the water. This sign will have an amazing callback later.   

It doesn't take long before another officer finds the girl's remains that have been washed up on the beach. According to the sickened look on his face, it isn't pretty. We just see her hair and a hand and later we will find all that is left of her fits in a small box the size of a basin so there's not that much left of her. Brody puts her cause of death as "shark attack" in his report and buys supplies to make signs to tell the public the beach. is closed. 

It's almost July 4th and when the Mayor finds out that Brody wants to close the beaches, he's not too happy. Amity is a tourist hot spot where many people come to enjoy the beach and spend their money at the local stores (especially around the Fourth!) and he suggests that maybe the girl's body got mauled by a boat propellor instead of a shark. For some reason, the medical examiner is also present for this conversation (small town, I guess) and when Brody questions him about that, he says he was wrong and he'll amend his report. Why does the medical examiner care if the beaches are open/closed? Does the Mayor have something over him? The Mayor tells Brody if people find out about a shark, there will be a panic and no one will want to come to their island for the Fourth (and then they won't want to spend all their money!). This was the first moment I thought FOR SURE the mayor was going to become fish food for the shark.

So the beach remains open and Brody is there with his family with many other people. There's only a few people in the water. A kid around twelve named Alex Kitner who had just asked his mom if he can swim for another ten minutes, goes back out with his inflatable lounger, which, in my opinion, should only be reserved for the pool. How can you relax in the ocean on an inflatable lounger? A guy is on the shore playing fetch with his black lab, throwing a stick into the water for the dog to chase. I was thinking, Spielberg, I swear to God, if you kill off that dog...

Brody is just surveying everything and we get a few faux shark moments: 

-a woman is floating on her back with her eyes closed and something gray pops up near her, b
ut it's just some guy in a swimming cap who seemed to come out of nowhere. Seriously, where did he come from? 

-a young woman starts screaming, but then we see her boyfriend pop up from under her and she's on his shoulders. 

All of a sudden, a BUNCH of people go into the water and I'm thinking, all this splashing is going to attract and alert the shark to this area. I'll find out later I'm right about that. Brody's two sons also are in the water, or maybe it's just his oldest son, I don't remember. 

The guy with the black lab is calling for his dog and since we never saw the dog getting attacked, I'm going to tell myself the dog got thirsty and ran home to get a drink of water. Yes, that is totally what happened! The dog is okay! And anyway, if the shark had already had a doggie snack, why would he attack a human next (which is what he will do)? The dog is okay, folks! No body, no shark attack, is what I say! 

Alex Kitner, the twelve-ear-old kid, is the one who is viciously attacked. Now, if this movie were made today, they would have introduced him to the audience a little earlier, perhaps have him be a friend of Michael's so his death would hit a bit harder. Not that it wasn't horrific a young boy is attacked by this shark. There is A LOT of blood, it's like a fountain. If I were there that day, there's no way in hell I would ever set foot in any body of water ever again! Oh, yeah, did I tell you that this movie is rated PG? What kind of parent would take their young kids to see this? This was before the PG-13 rating was a thing (like a decade before), but this definitely would be a PG-13 if it came out today. 

Everyone is scurrying out of the water and there's a terrible moment when Alex's mother is calling his name, but of course he doesn't answer her and his ripped floaty washes up to the shore. 

Soon after, there'a a town meeting at the school for a discussion about what had happened and what they're going to do about it. Brody tells them they're going to put "shark spotters on the beach." When asked point blank if they're going to close the beaches, he tells them they are and everyone starts grumbling. Who are these people? A young boy is killed by a shark and they still want to go back in the water? The f***? He tells them they'll be bringing in an expert from Oceanographic Institute from the mainland. 

The Mayor tries to calm the people down by telling them this will only be for twenty-four hours and Brody tells him he didn't agree to that, but everyone ignores him. They're still pissed even about the twenty-four hours. These people really only care about their money and making sure people are spending money at their shops. 

While everyone is arguing, we get the introduction of  Quint (Robert Shaw), which is my least favorite scene of the movie because he gets everyone's attention by scraping his fingernails down a chalkboard and, ugh! I HATE that whole sensation/sound. It just mades me SHUDDER. That scene was way worse than any shark attack! Quint is a fisherman and tells them he can catch this shark. He'll find it for $3,000, but wants $10,000 to kill it. Okay, so of course I had to go to the conversion calculator! Three thousand dollars in 1974 (the movie came out in '75, but it's set the year before) would now be $19,608 (I rounded up) today in 2025. Ten grand would now be a whopping $65,360! (Again, I rounded up.) This guy would be making out with nearly $85,000 today! I guess thirteen thousand dollars was a lot of money back in the mid '70s! Too bad he won't be around to enjoy any of it (spoiler alert!)! He wants that much because he knows it's not going to be easy (spoiler alert: he's right about that!)! The Mayor tells him they'll take his offer under advisement.  

Later that evening, Brody is at home, studying a book about sharks at a desk when his wife sneaks up right behind him and leans in over his shoulder. He clearly sense something and jumps, startling her and she tells him that he scared her! Lady, why would you sneak up on someone like that? You clearly started him! 

Brody realizes that his youngest son is sitting in a boat tied to the dock while the older one is sitting on the dock (or maybe it's the other way around). He yells at whichever son to get off the boat and when he tells his wife he doesn't want the kids in the ocean, she replies he's not in the ocean, but on a boat. Lady, do you not realize that a shark could easily just tip this little row boat over? She looks at his shark book and sees an illustration of a shark crashing into the bottom of a boat and yells at her son to get off the boat. 

After the death of her son, Mrs. Kitner had posted an ad (that was put in the back of the newspaper) rewarding $3,000 for the person who killed the shark who killed her son. It's evening when we see two guys looking to collect their bounty. They have an idea to entice the shark with one of the men's wife's holiday pot roast. He says they better catch something since they're using it. (Something tells me the wife didn't give him permission to use it!) The other guy joke that $3,000 will buy him a lot of roasts. Side note: who the hell has a pot roast for the Fourth of July? That is a day reserved for hot dogs and hamburgers, grilled chicken perhaps. NOT a frickin' pot roast! That's something you have for Christmas. What kind of American are you if you're not eating grilled hot dogs on the Fourth? Look, I honestly don't care if you have hot dogs on the Fourth, but POT ROAST? The hell? Am I the only one who thinks that's weird? 

Anyway, the two guys have tied the roast to a buoy, then have tied the chain connected to the buoy around one of the dock's posts. Some time has passed and we see the buoy moving and the chain on the dock starts to uncoil so they know they have caught something. The shark is so strong that part of the dock falls off, taking one of the men with him. The guy starts swimming back, then we see the dock turn around (I guess to show that the shark is following him, even though it doesn't make sense why the shark would be attacked to the dock). I did laugh when his friend calls out to him, "Charlie, take my word for it, DON'T look back! Just swim!" I thought FOR SURE Charlie was going to be the main course after the little appetizer of the pot roast for the shark, but he manages to make it back unharmed. This guy doesn't seem like he's in great shape; there's no way he could out swim a shark, so the shark must have just been toying with him. 

The next day, on the docks, we see a bunch of people who have seen Mrs. Kitner's ad and are out hunting for the shark. We also meet Matt Hooper (a young Richard Dreyfuss) who is from the Oceanographic Institute. He wants to see the remains of the girl on the beach, the first (known!) victim of the shark. He reads the girls' cause of death as "probable boating accident" as the medical examiner takes her remains out. This is the scene I was referring to earlier when I said what's left of her fits in a small box. From what Hooper examines, he tells them this was clearly not a boat accident nor the cause of a propellor. 

We see many of the men who are trying to catch the shark out on their boats just being so careless and I thought FOR SURE at least one of them was going to become shark chow. They obviously didn't know what they were doing and weren't even equipped to kill it. One of these dummies didn't even know what "chumming" was. However, someone has caught a shark and thinks it's THE shark. This shark is pretty small and I know it's not our guy. (Plus, there's more than an hour left of the movie so of course it's not the shark!) Hooper takes measurements of its mouth and tells Brody that they don't align with the wound bites found on the victim. He wants to cut the fish open since the digestive system of a shark is very slow and if they cut it open, they can see what it's eaten in the last 24 hours (how long has it been since the boy was killed?). Speaking of which, Mrs. Kitner has arrived from her son's funeral, dressed in all black. She approaches Brody and slaps him, telling him she found out about the girl who was also killed by a shark and how he knew it wasn't safe to go in the water. The Mayor is standing next to him during this whole exchange and he seems to have no remorse because he knows he is the one who convinced Brody not to close the beaches. By now, I'm one hundred percent convinced this guy will be a victim of the shark's. (Spoiler alert: he's not! If this movie was made today, he totally would be.)

That evening, Hooper and Brody do cut the shark open to make 100% sure it's not their shark. All they get are some fish, a can, and a license plate. There's a joke about how it came up from the Gulf Stream in souther water because it's a Louisiana plate. 

They go searching for the shark at night (no, thank you!) and come across fisherman's Ben Gardner's boat drifting in the water. Hooper wants to check the under the boat. There is absolutely no reason for him to do that right this instance since they're going to haul the boat to the shore anyway. But he does and we quickly see why this scene is here: it's for the jump scare (which totally worked on me; it scared the sh*t out of me!) we get when Ben's ghoulish corpse pops out from the boat. This startles Hooper too and he drops the shark tooth he had collected from the boat. 

They both tell the Mayor about this great white shark. The Mayor still isn't budging about closing the beach and doesn't seemed all that concerned. As they're walking, we see them stop in front of the sign we saw earlier. The girl on the sign has painted on wide eyes and a painted on open mouth. There's a dorsal fin in the water near her and above her an air quote bubble with the words "Help!!! Shark". The Mayor is not amused by this and already he has people painting over it. He doesn't need any advertisement of a shark! 

Brody tells him they could still save August if they close the beach now and start shark hunting, but the Mayor just laughs at him and tells him they WILL be open tomorrow for the 4th. He adds that Brody can do whatever he needs to do to make sure the beach is safe if he's so concerned...just short of actually closing the beach. 

The ferry arrives crowded with tourists ready to spend their money and swim in the ocean! It's unclear to me if they know about the shark attacks. I don't think they were making the national news, much less the local news. 

On July 4th, the beach is packed, but nobody is going in the water. Hmm, perhaps these people know that humans can get attacked by sharks in three feet of water, about ten feet away from the shore; a fact that Hooper confirms for Brody in an earlier scene.

There's a reporter on the beach (played by Peter Benchley, the author o
f the book this movie is based on) who's talking about Amity Island and the shark. 

The Mayor orders suggests to somebody he knows (it looked like an older couple with their grandkids) to get in the water. The two adults, especially the woman look pretty scared, but they go in with the two kids. Once they go in, more people go in. There are several boats out on the water with men who have guns and are watching the water with binoculars. 

Brody sees Michael and his friends about to take a sail boat out and he tells them to use the pond instead...the pond that is connected to the ocean! How is that going to help? This is probably one of the dumbest things Brody does in the movie. 

We see the Mayor giving an interview of how he wants to reiterate that they "caught and killed a large predator that supposedly injured some bathers." First of all, yes they caught A large predator, but not THE predator. Second of all what is this "injured" nonsense? That shark straight up ripped them apart and all his victims died. How did this a**hole not die (I'm talking about the Mayor!)?

There's a lot of underwater footage of legs thrashing around in the water which I'm sure look like a tasty treat for a shark. A dorsal fin pops up right behind two oblivious girls. Another girl sees the fin and starts screaming, causing a panic. The lifeguard starts blowing his whistle and Brody tries to get him to stop since the noise will just attract the shark (although I think any shark would already be attracted to this area with all the splashing). I guess there was no contingency plan for what to do if a shark appeared! But that whole scene reminded me when Sam Neill is telling everyone to stay still around the T-Rex in Jurassic Park.

Once it is revealed that it was actually two young brothers snorkeling underwater with a cardboard fin, I wondered if I was a terrible person for hoping the real shark would show up and make a snack out of one or both of them. But on the other hand (fin?), also kudos to them because these people do need to be scared out of the water. If you know there's a blood thirsty shark in the water, why would you go in the ocean? There is an amusing moment when the two boys look up and see all these guns pointed at them from the people on one of the boats. The little brother points at his older brother and tells them, "He made me do it." 

A girl standing near the estuary sees a fin and yells, "Shark!" Well, guess where it's headed for? That's right: the pond! The very pond that Michael and his friends are in! The very pond that Michael and his friends are in that is CONNECTED to the ocean! Well done, Brody, well done! :::slow clap:::

Michael and two of his friends are on the boat working on a sail. Some guy in a boat rows up to them and behind him you can see a fin. It's almost comical how obvious there is a shark in the water and nobody seems to notice it. The guy is asking the boys a question when he falls into the water and gets his leg bitten off and becomes the shark's latest victim. One hour and four minutes into the movie and this is the first time we see the shark. Previously, we had only seen his dorsal fin. 

Michael and his friends make it out of the water, but Michael has passed out from shock and is taken to the hospital. Now the Mayor realizes he's messed up and Brody wants him to hire Quint to kill the shark, which he does.

That was the first hour of the movie. Now the second hour of the movie will focus on our three main characters (Brody, Quint, and Hooper) out on Quint's shabby fishing boat attempting to find and kill their shark. 

Before he leaves, Brody's wife asks him what she should tell the kids and he replies to just tell them he's "going fishing." I mean, he's not totally wrong!

Once they're out to sea, Brody starts chumming the water to attract the shark. We get some foreshadowing when Brody accidentally unties the wrong knot (I forget what he was trying to do) of a rope that was holding canisters with compressed air. Hooper tells him, 'If you screw around with these tanks, they're gonna blow up." 

There's a passage of time (there will be a lot of these!) until Quint gets the sense that the shark is near. He straps himself into a chair that is bolted to the boat and hooks the pole to the contraption. Despite all that, I feel like that still wouldn't hold him in! He knows he has something and is reeling the line, but can't see anything. My question is, would a fishing pole really work on a shark? Especially one so big? 

Every time someone would get super close to the edge of the boat, I would scream at my TV, "What are you doing? GET AWAY FROM THERE!" Seriously, sometimes they would lean over, like they weren't expecting a huge shark to pop out from under the water. In one scene, that does happen and it made me jump a mile! 

There's more passage of time and Brody chums the water again. His back is towards the water as he's throwing chum in the water and this is that famous scene when the shark pops up right behind him. You see this scene in every retrospective or TV special about Jaws, so I knew it was coming, otherwise, it would have probably made me jump! I love Brody's reaction. He quickly stands up and stares at the shark, then walks to the cabin and tells Quint, "You're gonna need a bigger boat," unquestionably the most famous line of the movie. Hell, one of the most famous lines in cinematic history! 

Now they all see the shark swimming near the boat and Quint measures it to be 25 feet. Now, I Googled how big a great white shark gets and females are 15/16 feet while the males are 11 to 13 feet, so I guess this means this is a female shark? (Even though I constantly refer to it as a male.) Isn't one of the sequels one of this shark's offspring getting revenge on the people who killed its parent? IDK, that sounds pretty ridiculous, but I've heard the sequels are pretty bad. I've only seen the one that takes place at an aquarium (?) and even then I barely remember it. 

There is a very narrow strip of wood (it reminds me of a plank) at the front of the boat that looks very unsteady and is surrounded by a railing that doesn't look like it will keep you from falling into the water. From there, Quint shoots at the shark with a harpoon and a barrel is attached. I guess the barrel is so they know where the shark is. 

The barrel disappears under the water and more time passes as darkness starts to fall. The three men are in the cabin, having just eaten dinner when Quint tells a harrowing story of how he was on the USS Indianapolis during the war which delivered the Hiroshima bomb to the island of Tinian (yes, I had to look this up on Wikipedia!). After it was delivered, a Japanese submarine "slammed two torpedoes into [the] side" and 1100 men went into the water. The vessel sunk in twelve minutes and they didn't see the first shark, a thirteen-foot tiger shark, until half an hour in. Because their mission was top secret, no distress signal had been sent. The men huddled into groups and tried to fight the sharks away, but that didn't work and 100 men were lost after the first night. So if anyone has a vendetta against sharks, it's Quint! 

It's the next day and they have shot a second barrel at the shark. Brody wants them to lead the shark to shore instead of the shark leading them out to sea. The shark is so strong, it's able to tow the boat where he wants to go. Honestly, I'm not that surprised because Quint's boat is the shabbiest thing. It's not that they needed a bigger boat (though that certainly would have helped!), they needed a better boat. The Orca is a terrible boat for this kind of excursion. 

The shark had rammed into the bottom of the boat so now it's starting to flood and they cut the barrels away so the shark doesn't cause any more damage. They start heading towards the shore and the shark is following them.

One thing that baffled me is that when Brody attempts to call the Coast Guard, Quint takes the receiver from him and smashes the radio. Dude, what are you doing? The boat is flooding, there's black smoke coming from the cabin, the engine is about to run out of gas, and while you can see the shoreline, you're still pretty far from land. Oh, and let's not forget there's a very LARGE and very HUNGRY shark out there. (Actually, he was probably more vengeful.) Maybe he's thinking he won't get the money if the Coast Guard comes and this is his best shot to kill the shark. 

Soon half the boat is underwater because of the flooding. Quint gives the other men life jackets. Hooper wants to "pump 20 ccs of strychnine nitrogen into [the shark]." He won't be able to stick the needle into the thick skin, but if he gets into a cage underwater, he can get him in the eye or mouth. He makes it sound so easy! (Spoiler: it won't be that easy!)

The cage with Hooper is lowered into the water and here comes the shark, but it passes by him and disappears into the dark murky water. Hooper has a spear fashioned into a needle and is ready to jab the shark, but unlucky for him, the shark sneaks up from behind him and rams into the cage, causing Hooper to drop the spear. Oopsie daisy! The shark is biting at the cage and bending the bars and soon Hooper is exposed. The shark's jaws are so huge he could swallow a person whole, no problem. Yikes! Hooper fights against the shark and manages to escape and hide behind some rocks while the shark is thrashing against the cage. The other two men bring up the cage and when they see it's all mangled with no Hooper, they think the worst. 

Now the shark has leapt onto the boat's stern like he's my cat leaping up on my bed. Quint starts sliding towards the shark's upper jaws and even though Brody is doing his best to hang onto him, he slips from his grasp and slides down towards the massive jaws of the shark. He's kicking his legs against the shark, but he is no match against the aquatic man-eater and soon everything below his sternum is in the shark's jaws. While I was watching this, I couldn't help but think, That looks like fun! Not the getting mauled by a shark part, but the acting part of being in this scene and having a mechanical shark thrash you around, back and forth. It really did look like fun! Okay, yes, there's blood squirting everywhere and Quint is screaming, but it's so obvious the shark is fake and the whole thing is ridiculous, it's hard to be horrified by it. They both disappear under the water and the boat is sinking even more. Not even a minute has passed when the shark pops up again. He sure ate Quint really fast! 

Brody throws one of the canisters (remember, they're full of compressed air) into the open jaws of the shark. For some reason, the shark is trying to chow down on this metal container. For a shark who's been outsmarting the humans for most of the movie, this is the one time where he's just an idiot for the sake of the plot. 

Brody has now climbed onto the the crow's nest, the highest point of the boat, which is now almost parallel with the water and aims his gun at the shark, trying to get the perfect shot. As he finds the perfect aim and shoots, he says, "Smile you son of a -", then the canister is hit and it blows up and the shark blows up. He's 100% dead. Hooper pops up and Brody is surprised but relieved to see him and they both laugh. I guess they're going to split Quint's reward money. Actually, I wonder if they even did get paid. I can see the Mayor or whoever was supposed to hand over the reward money, refusing on a technicality since they promised it to Quint and he's gone. 

They use the barrels to swim back to shore...which still seems pretty far from where they are. But I know Roy Scheider is in the sequel so at least we know Brody made it back!