JAWS (shark film)

[grassbath]

The deleted scene with Quint in the music shop is hilarious.

[Kelvin]

I like how, because he was a shit actor, Quint's little mate only appears in the town hall meeting scene. His subsequent disappearance from the film suggests an unseen subplot where Quint murders him after they have a massive drunken argument about the best way to boil a shark's jaws.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNuKSWLguBs

Just watched those deleted scenes again, and my God, SGN, you're not wrong. The young long-haired guy is absolutely dreadful in the scene where they discover Chrissie's remains, but he's practically Laurence Olivier compared to Quint's mate. You can almost see the contempt in Shaw's eyes as the guy delivers his lines so atrociously.

In fairness to Crissie's Blond boyfriend, Roy Scheider's acting isn't great in that reaction, either. They clearly needed something to look at off camera.

[Ballad of Ballard Berkley]

I must admit, during that deleted scene my eyes were focused on the blonde guy inertly staring at Scheider as he recoiled in horror. I know it's just a piece of rough, unedited footage, but you'd think that guy would've at least tried to react to what his fellow actor was doing.

This afternoon I listened to a condensed reading of Benchley's novel on Radio 4 Extra. For reasons best known to himself, the Shatner-like narrator decided to voice Quint in the style of Homer Simpson.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/play/b0bhfnq3

[Ballad of Ballard Berkley]

Jeez, look at all this toot that Spielberg and Gottlieb wisely excised from Benchley's novel.

The Mafia... pressure Vaughan to keep the beaches open in order to protect the value of Amity's real estate, in which the Mafia invested a great deal of money.

Brody's wife Ellen misses the affluent life she had before marrying Brody and having children. She starts a romantic relationship with Hooper, who is the younger brother of David Hooper, a man she used to date, and the two have a brief affair in a motel outside of town. Throughout the rest of the novel, Brody suspects they have had a liaison and is haunted by the thought.

[On the Orca] Brody and Hooper argue, as Brody's suspicions about Hooper's possible affair with Ellen grow stronger; at one point, Brody unsuccessfully attempts to strangle Hooper.

Larry Vaughan arrives at the Brody house before Brody returns home and informs Ellen that he and his wife are leaving Amity. Before he leaves, he tells Ellen that he always thought they would have made a great couple. After he leaves, Ellen reflects that her life with Brody is much more fulfilling than any life she might have had with Vaughan, and feels somewhat guilty for her prior thoughts of missing the life she had before marrying Brody.

Brody, now floating on a seat cushion, spots the shark swimming towards him and prepares for his death. However, just as the shark gets within a few feet of him, it succumbs to its many wounds, rolls over in the water and dies before it can kill Brody. The great fish sinks down out of sight, dragging Quint's still entangled body behind it. The lone survivor of the ordeal, Brody paddles back to shore on his makeshift float.

Pretty much everyone in Jaws (shark novel) is horrible. The shark attack passages have some visceral power, no doubt about that, but Benchley doesn't appear to have much sympathy for any of the characters he created. And what a damp squib of an ending! The shark is about to eat Brody, but conveniently dies because it's taken such a battering. Blowing the fucker up is so much more satisfying.

Are there any other notable examples of a film being much, much better than the novel it was based on?

[mothman]

Well, yes - The Godfather (Mafia novel) was this incredibly potboilerish affair that had all sorts of excised subplots, including somebody with a mutant vagina, that mercifully never made it into The Godfather (Mafia film).

[Ballad of Ballard Berkley]

Well, yes - The Godfather (Mafia novel) was this incredibly potboilerish affair that had all sorts of excised subplots, including somebody with a mutant vagina, that mercifully never made it into The Godfather (Mafia film).

Good lord. Hats off to Spielberg and Coppola for ripping all the bilge from the novels they based their greatest films on.

[Kelvin]

Apparently, the book of Jaws 4 explains the Shark's obsessive behavior by... implying a witch doctor has cursed the family over a grudge against Chief Brody.

So, in other words, the eponymous revenge is a witch doctor's, not a sharks.

I thought that was interesting when I started writing this post.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Jeez, look at all this toot that Spielberg and Gottlieb wisely excised from Benchley's novel.

Pretty much everyone in Jaws (shark novel) is horrible. The shark attack passages have some visceral power, no doubt about that, but Benchley doesn't appear to have much sympathy for any of the characters he created. And what a damp squib of an ending! The shark is about to eat Brody, but conveniently dies because it's taken such a battering. Blowing the fucker up is so much more satisfying.

Are there any other notable examples of a film being much, much better than the novel it was based on?

Doesn't it rattle an entire chapter down to the sentence 'Amity is a summer town, we need summer dollars?'.

[Ballad of Ballard Berkley]

It does. All of that crap condensed into a single line of dialogue.

Apparently, the book of Jaws 4 explains the Shark's obsessive behavior by... implying a witch doctor has cursed the family over a grudge against Chief Brody.

So, in other words, the eponymous revenge is a witch doctor's, not a sharks.

I thought that was interesting when I started writing this post.

I can never decide if that's better or worse than what we see in the final film. Neither, probably.

[Kelvin]

I just like the idea that a writer thought "a shark with a grudge is too far fetched. I'll ground the story by incorporating a wizard."

[Ballad of Ballard Berkley]

Seeing as you can find practically everything on the internet these days, I'm surprised that Sackler and Milius' drafts of the Indianapolis speech have never (ho ho) surfaced. Spielberg probably has them locked in a vault somewhere (the drafts, not Milius and the remains of Howard Sackler).

[St_Eddie]

...Spielberg probably has them locked in a vault somewhere (the drafts, not Milius and the remains of Howard Sackler).

Why deny the truth?  Has Spielberg got you on the payroll too? Yes, that would be as an absurd a claim, as me not being able to afford a fine fillet steak, curtesy of Mr. [NAME WITHDRAWN]'s bank account.

[Glebe]

Apparently, the book of Jaws 4 explains the Shark's obsessive behavior by... implying a witch doctor has cursed the family over a grudge against Chief Brody.

[Bad Ambassador]

Are there any other notable examples of a film being much, much better than the novel it was based on?

Ray Bradbury thought Francois Truffaut's film of Fahrenheit 451 was better than his book, and I'd agree.

[Kelvin]

Is that wrong? I'm basing it off articles that mention it, I haven't read the book.

[Shit Good Nose]

Well, yes - The Godfather (Mafia novel) was this incredibly potboilerish affair that had all sorts of excised subplots, including somebody with a mutant vagina, that mercifully never made it into The Godfather (Mafia film).

Don't forget pages and pages devoted to the size and shape of Sonny's cock.

I've always said the Godfather films are like operas and the books are like soap operas.

Is that wrong? I'm basing it off articles that mention it, I haven't read the book.

It's correct.  Been a long time since I've read it, but from memory either Jake or Michael (I can't remember which) destroys a witch doctor's shrine or summat, and said witch doctor places a curse on the entire Brody family and everyone who knows them cos he's a bit miffed.

At least the book goes some way to explain it.  Also bizarre to think it's written by the same guy who did the novelisation for Jaws 2, which was quite grounded and actually not half bad (again, from long memory).

Worth mentioning, too, that, like the Jaws 2 novel, the novel for 4 was based on an early draft of the script, which included the voodoo and also Hoagie being a drug smuggler working for the CIA.


Also just to reiterate how incredibly bad I think Jaws (shark book) is.

[mothman]

Don't forget pages and pages devoted to the size and shape of Sonny's cock.

I was doing a pretty good job of forgetting it, until just now.

[Shit Good Nose]

I was doing a pretty good job of forgetting it, until just now.

So had I until someone else on here reminded me...

[Ballad of Ballard Berkley]

Has anyone here seen USS Indianapolis: Men of Courage, the notoriously shit Nicolas Cage film? I haven't, as it's a notoriously shit Nicolas Cage film, but I'm almost tempted to give it a go.

It's such a shame that they botched it, as there's a potentially great film to be made from that harrowing story.

Howard Sackler wrote a treatment for Jaws 2 based on the Indianapolis tragedy, but Universal passed in favour of the film we ended up with. A missed opportunity, that could've been great.

Young Quint would've been the protagonist, presumably. I can picture Harvey Keitel in that role, with Brad Dourif as Herbie Robinson, the baseball player from Cleveland. Ah, what could've been. 

[Ballad of Ballard Berkley]

Probably the best and most memorable things about Jaws (shark film) 2 is the tagline on the poster 'Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water.' Had a quick look to see if the genius who came up with that is known to history but it seems not. Peter Benchley gets a credit but I'm guessing that's erroneous.

Just found this tidbit on IMDB.

The film's tagline, "Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water...", has become one of the most famous in film history. Andrew J. Kuehn, who developed the first film's trailer, is credited with coining the phrase.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_J._Kuehn

[St_Eddie]

Has anyone here seen USS Indianapolis: Men of Courage, the notoriously shit Nicolas Cage film? I haven't, as it's a notoriously shit Nicolas Cage film, but I'm almost tempted to give it a go.

It's such a shame that they botched it, as there's a potentially great film to be made from that harrowing story.

Howard Sackler wrote a treatment for Jaws 2 based on the Indianapolis tragedy, but Universal passed in favour of the film we ended up with. A missed opportunity, that could've been great.

Young Quint would've been the protagonist, presumably. I can picture Harvey Keitel in that role, with Brad Dourif as Herbie Robinson, the baseball player from Cleveland. Ah, what could've been.

Aw, that would have been great.  Damn.

[Shit Good Nose]

Has anyone here seen USS Indianapolis: Men of Courage, the notoriously shit Nicolas Cage film? I haven't, as it's a notoriously shit Nicolas Cage film, but I'm almost tempted to give it a go.

Yes.  It is terrible.  Despite having a fairly chunky budget, it looks REALLY cheap - the CGI is dreadful (and I'm not just saying that as a CGI hater - it really is low-brow stuff) and some of the green screen work is laughable.  There's also some very ropey acting - Thomas Jane doesn't come off too well, and he's only got about 5 minutes screen time.  Cage himself gives it one of his low key pathos performances, but you can tell he's not really into it and is phoning it in for most of the time.  About the only things it has got going for it is that it portrays the Japanese with a bit of humanity and depth, and it is also pretty accurate to the actual events - the only "fluffs" are some minor anachronistic ones (there's a tractor in one shot that wasn't manufactured until several years after the war ended, for example), and some composite characters and re-chronologising of events to fit a dramatic feature film framework.

It's such a shame that they botched it, as there's a potentially great film to be made from that harrowing story.

There is one - Mission of the Shark.  It is a made for TV film, but it's pretty good.  Infinitely better than Indianapolis.  It does suffer from some made for TV trappings, but they're minor.


IIRC from the Jaws 2 Log (highly recommended), the consensus was that Sackler's Indianapolis Jaws 2 idea was pretty good, but the script/treatment he turned in was pretty poor (his contributions to the script for the first film were merely linking ideas and some doctoring, otherwise it was a genre that he never previously or subsequently wrote in), and it strayed too far from the basic theme of a single rogue great white shark (the Indianapolis film would have had to have several sharks of different species).  Those who have read the original proper Jaws 2 script (bankrupt Amity, city officials in debt to the mafia etc) say that it was much better than the one that ended up being used, but it would have been more like John Cassavetes' Jaws rather than another summer action film, as it was heavy on dialogue and had very little action for the first hour.  To be honest, I would prefer to see that over trying to shoehorn in the Indianapolis story to the Jaws franchise.

[Ballad of Ballard Berkley]

Ta for the Men of Courage review, you've convinced me to give it a miss.

There is one - Mission of the Shark.  It is a made for TV film, but it's pretty good.  Infinitely better than Indianapolis.  It does suffer from some made for TV trappings, but they're minor.

Now that you come to mention it, I do remember reading about that ages ago. I'll track it down.

IIRC from the Jaws 2 Log (highly recommended), the consensus was that Sackler's Indianapolis Jaws 2 idea was pretty good, but the script/treatment he turned in was pretty poor (his contributions to the script for the first film were merely linking ideas and some doctoring, otherwise it was a genre that he never previously or subsequently wrote in), and it strayed too far from the basic theme of a single rogue great white shark (the Indianapolis film would have had to have several sharks of different species).  Those who have read the original proper Jaws 2 script (bankrupt Amity, city officials in debt to the mafia etc) say that it was much better than the one that ended up being used, but it would have been more like John Cassavetes' Jaws rather than another summer action film, as it was heavy on dialogue and had very little action for the first hour.  To be honest, I would prefer to see that over trying to shoehorn in the Indianapolis story to the Jaws franchise.

I'd really like to see the footage shot by the original director, John D. Hancock. There won't be much, as they fired him after a month, but he did get some Amity ghost town footage - presumably involving Scheider and Hamilton - in the can.

A downbeat, Cassavetes-style Jaws film is an intriguing proposition, but no wonder the execs were alarmed. I'd like to see that film, but it would've been commercial suicide.

[Kelvin]

It's a shame they couldn't find a halfway point, though. A ruined town facing another shark problem, but still with enough action to keep audiences engaged.

[mothman]

I did wonder if the teenagers-in-peril storyline was a refection of all the late seventies teen slasher flicks, but I think most of them came out after (Hallowe'en, also 1978, but several months after; Friday the 13th, 1980...).

[Ballad of Ballard Berkley]

Gottlieb based that stuff on suburban American teenagers grooving around town in their cars. If you were a teenager on Amity Island, pissing about on a boat would be the equivalent.

[kalowski]

A great line:

"Love to prove that wouldn't you? Get your name into National Geographic."

[AsparagusTrevor]

I got the recently released UHD (4K movie disc), watched it yesterday. It's a very lovely transfer, very clean and crisp without looking digital and the HDR really makes some shots pop. The white twinkling of the water in the opening scene is mesmerising.

[greenman]

I got the recently released UHD (4K movie disc), watched it yesterday. It's a very lovely transfer, very clean and crisp without looking digital and the HDR really makes some shots pop. The white twinkling of the water in the opening scene is mesmerising.

Yeah was watching it last night, a very good example of UHD giving the feeling of watching a film projection rather than a load of sharpening and noise reduction, Scheider's tanned visage rendered in all its glory.

[Shit Good Nose]

Yeah was watching it last night, a very good example of UHD giving the feeling of watching a film projection rather than a load of sharpening and noise reduction, Scheider's tanned visage rendered in all its glory.

Yep, he's like a piece of cowhide.  That boy could tan!


It's an absolutely stunning piece of work the UHD.  I was always going to get it day 1, but I must admit I was somewhat dubious about how much of an improvement it could possibly be over the remastered blu.  But it is a VERY noticeable step up again - having the benefit of being able to compare both almost side-by side, the extra detail and clarity and increased colour range on this UHD release is tremendous.