Jaws | First Time Watching!
Added 2025-03-11 01:46:00 +0000 UTCThe way THIS movie had one of the scariest and abrupt jump scares out of any film I've ever seen, was NOT on my 2025 bingo card LMAOOOO
Comments
The reason the shark isn't seen as much in the film is because the mechanical shark kept drowning due to the salt water. I'd be curious how different the film would have been if it worked properly.
Joe Mallard
2025-03-12 06:59:28 +0000 UTCI'd definitely love to see you watch more classics, but also you should watch Godzilla Minus One & Nope. You can see a certain amount of influence this had on those & they're both just great films anyway. You would probably root for the shark in the book, but that's because nearly every character is some degree of not great in the book. Although the decision to keep the beaches open is more understandable in the book. It's less greed & more desperation. Because the winters in Amity are so brutal, the town completely shuts down, so they have to make enough money during the summer to get through the rest of the year. When Quint makes reference to the townsfolk ending up on welfare all winter, that's not meant to be hyperbole. It's made clear that has happened before & could happen again. You hit the nail on the head in the USS Indianapolis speech. Not only is it one of the best cinematic monologues of all time, the only one I can think of that's in the same league is Charlie Chaplin in The Great Dictator, but by giving us only one small piece of backstory, we suddenly know everything we need to know about Quint.
Scott Ikemire
2025-03-12 03:17:09 +0000 UTCI was gonna add this about the mayor if no one else had. Nicely summed up.
G. T. Blackwell
2025-03-12 01:54:53 +0000 UTCWe did a breakdown of this from a legal perspective on my podcast, The Not-So Grand Jury, a while back: Can Ms. Kitner sue the town for her son's death? What ramifications are there for altering the the report of Chrissie's death? What jurisdiction does the Coast Guard actually have in these situations? Can you legally fish with dynamite? It was a fun conversation.
G. T. Blackwell
2025-03-12 01:53:32 +0000 UTCI loved reading the books as a kid. This movie was fun and special to me. I still remember as a young teenager go to San Diego as a kid, to a special pool that had a pool party while they showed this movie on Halloween. Every time someone was bitten they would use fountains to move the water with red dye to mimic blood. It was so much fun.
Dan
2025-03-11 23:57:11 +0000 UTCI admit I messed that fact up. I think I even looked that up before and then forgot about. My bad...
Brian's Dog
2025-03-11 23:19:28 +0000 UTCfunnily enough this is one of the films i watched on repeat growing up in the 90s
FatLittleButterfly
2025-03-11 13:16:51 +0000 UTCI dunno, I think Parental Guidance suggested is the perfect way to describe this film. The casualness of how his son reacts to a big cut on his hand from the swing set shows that blood wasn't much of a big deal for kids at the time. BTW, the PG13 rating didn't come into existence till the mid-eighties.
YodatheHobbit
2025-03-11 08:07:32 +0000 UTCGreat reaction, V! And seeing your empathy for the shark, I finally understand why you have such positive feelings for BCS's Howard Hamlin :) Btw, are you ever going to finish BCS or have you given up on it?
Jeff
2025-03-11 07:35:19 +0000 UTCSorry, Dog, no, they're not related, just the same last name.
Jeff
2025-03-11 07:30:58 +0000 UTCHighly recommend Steven Spielberg's "The Fabelmans" 2022 its loosely based on his childhood and how he got into making movies 😊
Matt
2025-03-11 05:42:11 +0000 UTCHammerheads were my favorite as a kid until I learned about Whale sharks. I love Whale sharks. Very gentle. I volunteered at our local aquarium and took care of and played with the baby leopard sharks too. :) I have some explanation why this is considered PG in the 70s. Part of the zeitgeist at the time was not to protect children from these dangers and to traumatize them a little in order to ensure a more likely outcome of kids being cautious. Remember, Gen X are the "forgotten" generation, meaning we were left to run around town without supervision. Our movies and stories had a little bit of real terror to keep us from FAFO, lol. Neverending Story, Jaws, Dark Crystal, Black Cauldron, Grimm's Fairytales, Hanna-Barbera and WB cartoons. Darkness in our stories was thought to expose us to real things to prepare us better. Additionally, because the human body is natural and this film does respect the science of sharks, it also respects the science of nature, which includes our bodies. If you notice, the blood is mostly seen in the water and the dead body isn't actively bleeding. These specifics met the parameters for the PG rating in the 70s. This is also before the ratings board was taken over by a far more religious and censor-minded group of individuals (i.e. censoring sexuality and normal human bodily functions and behaviors at the highest ratings, often preventing them from being seen in theaters entirely, but violence, guns, smoking, and product placing at much lower ratings and easier to profit off of), the documentary This Film Is Not Yet Rated (2007) goes into details of how the ratings board changed over the years and ultimately is the reason for abolishing the ratings board and adopting the rating system change to the MA ratings we see today. Classics: Conan the Barbarian 1982 12 Angry Men 1957 Stand by Me 1986 Dark Crystal 1982 Willow 1988 Time Bandits 1981 Labyrinth 1986 Short Circuit 1986 Close Encounters of the Third Kind 1977 Empire Records 1995 Total Recall 1990 The Fugitive 1993 Run Lola Run 1998 Raising Arizona 1987 Dark City 1998 Btw, as wonderful as this top is, I can't help but imagine it to be problematic with how often they need to be readjusted...
Raptor
2025-03-11 05:33:52 +0000 UTCQuite right on the parts about "shark behavior" and the concern expressed about there being several "Jaws" movies. Even the characters in the movie were starting to know that this shark was not acting as a normal shark... too smart, too intentional, etc. Right around the time of the pond attack, I no longer see this shark as an animal but as something turned "demonic". Meaning animals can be understood and can be predicted, this one stopped being an animal. PS: Peter Benchley was the reporter in the July 4th beach scene and he later expressed regret for the damage to the reputation of sharks from his book and the movies.
Michael Labs
2025-03-11 05:31:09 +0000 UTCLoved your reaction Vicky! One of my favorite films....I am one of a minority of people who actually read the novel before I saw the movie. mayor larry vaughn IS the real villain for refusing to acknowledge the danger that the shark posed. In the novel, the mayor owes a whole bunch of money to the mob which is part of the motivation for his greedy behavior. The shark is just doing shark stuff like normal, there was plentiful food in the water so why shouldn't the shark move one? In the book, hooper had an affair with brody's wife. It is my understanding that Spielberg cut that part out of the film version because it would have slowed it down to much. The oldest male great white is believed to have been 73 years old when he died. I believe the oldest female is pushing 50 and is still alive. Her name is Deep Blue, she's 20 ft long (movie GW was estimated by Quint to be 25) and weighs an estimated 4500 pounds. I saw on the web where they estimate the oldest living greenland shark to be more than 500 years old which would make it the oldest living vertebrae animal in existence. Peter Benchley, the author of the novel, made a cameo as the reporter on the beach on the fourth of july. he later in live became a passionate supporter of efforts to UN-demonize sharks and actually conserve them. The sequels go downhill in quality. 2 is ok enough to watch, the other pair, I wouldn't bother with. Deep Blue Sea is a little far fetched but I think you would still 'enjoy' it..... I suppose you could watch the Meg. Honestly I can't suspend enough disbelief to take a movie like that seriously. The idea that a megalodon could be alive today is just a little too ridiculous for me to, ahem, swallow......
David Bennett
2025-03-11 05:09:44 +0000 UTCGreat reaction! I hope you get to see more Robert Shaw (Quint). He was grungy here, but in is earlier years he was a very classy and sophisticated Brit. Played in a lot of famous WW2 movies. That scene with the monolgue you said was iconic, is indeed iconic, you can find other famous people doing that monologue. The other guy you liked is Richard Dreyfus, father of the Elaine from Seinfeld, also the Veep lady. He is in a lot of movies too.
Brian's Dog
2025-03-11 04:13:09 +0000 UTCYou can probably guess that beach attendance dropped significantly after this film was released. This made a generation afraid to go in to water. Unfortunately this movie did not help the sharks already bad reputation.
MrDannySteele
2025-03-11 02:07:10 +0000 UTCI've been waiting for this reaction for a few years.
Joe Mallard
2025-03-11 01:49:44 +0000 UTC
