Jaws- Sea Beast

The weekend of July 4^th is approaching, which is a particularly busy weekend for the beach town of Amity, the water is warm, the weather is perfect, and the town is gearing up for a successful and joyous celebration.. This particular holiday weekend tends to generate quite a bit of needed revenue, so the entire town takes their ability to appeal to tourists very serious. Days before July 4^th, during a little beach bonfire amongst friends, we see a young girl, Chrissy, slip away for a quick dip in the ocean, to never return. Her body parts begin to wash ashore and the new sheriff in town, Brody, immediately believes they have a shark problem. The Mayor brushes this claim aside, refusing to alert the future tourists of a shark problem, which would be detrimental to their businesses. Instead, the Mayor devises a plan to employ the town’s fisherman to capture the marine culprit before the busy weekend and before word gets out that a shark has attacked. Meanwhile, the Sheriff has called in a shark expert, Hooper. The town fishermen do catch a shark, and the Mayor is satisfied with this catch and is convinced he can open up the beaches. Hooper advises that this shark is not the shark that attacked the girl and advises against opening the beaches, to no avail, as the Mayor just won’t listen to reason.  Random day before the 4^th of July, beach goers are enjoying the beautiful weather, warm water and calm surf. Because the beaches are still open, to his dismay, Brody is on high alert. A young boy is floating on his yellow raft and is swiftly snatched up by the sea beast, right before Sherriff Brody and the beach goer’s eyes. The boy’s mother Ms. Kitner puts out a bounty for the sea beast. Hooper takes a look at the coroner report for Chrissy, and says there is no way a boat propeller mangled this girl, it was definitely a shark. Hooper and Brody take a trip out to sea at night and discover a local fisherman’s boat has been bitten and the body of the fisherman is alos present. They tow back the evidence and share it with the Mayor, they urged him to close the beaches, for the safety of the tourists, but despite their plea and overwhelming evidence, the Mayor keeps the beaches open. The 4^th of July comes and authorities are on high alert as tourists frolic in the sun, sand and water. Bordy’s son Michael is almost eaten by the beast, but was spared at the expense of a man in a rowboat. The Mayor, after being scolded once again by a shaken Brody, agrees to allow Brody to do what it takes to rid Amity of this monster once and for all.

Spielberg’s thriller, Jaws, is the best of its kind, though the story and characters are simple and silly. You could probably expect this 1970’s creation, to be an almost boring and mediocre attempt at capturing some shark attacks, with little possibility of actually portraying a wicked creature wreaking mad havoc on a small beach town. You might expect that he wouldn’t have the equipment or talent even, to turn a simple series of shark attacks into a thrill ride that demands fright.  You have to ask, how is he even successful at implanting fear into the viewers when he can’t even produce a real creature for us to see? Humans fear the unknown and the unknown is both the beauty and downfall of the ocean. So, the fact that his giant mechanical sea beast was a bust, I think actually worked in his favor. It gave him a direct outlet to put his brilliant mind and talents on display to the films viewers. He works with frighteningly accurate camera placement for the perfect shots, spot on editing and an amazingly scary sea beast theme song, by John Williams. He offers up more than a “fair share” of false alarms, which work only to exponentially intensify the fright that occurs when the real shark actually emerges. By the time they find a grossly large shark tooth lodged into the side of a boat, we still haven’t seen the likes of the sea beast, so showing us this tooth, builds a silly amount of suspense. At this point, we don’t know what to expect: Is this thing actually going to be the size of a small Caribbean island?

When taking into consideration that he only had lighting, shadows, editing, props, an incredible score and some special effects to work with, because his mechanical shark was a bust, it makes it extremely difficult to find the words to accurately describe the sheer brilliance of this film. If Spielberg’s intentions were to scare the pants off of beach goers everywhere and make them think twice about mingling with the secrets of the sea, then his job was more than completed.