Jaws At 50: How The Best Movie Ever Made Changed My Life

     “Jaws” turns 50 this summer. Since 1975, I have watched it as many times—if not more—as the age of the movie itself. This is a conservative estimate.

     I plan to rewatch it this Fourth of July with all immediate family members. For some, it will be their first viewing! How is that even possible?

     This maneater masterpiece, set during the Fourth of July timeframe, remains my favorite film. I was 10 when I first witnessed, from the safety of my ancient Swiss Theater seat in Tell City, a monstrous great white shark indulge in a feeding frenzy of actors—from its first victim, a skinny-dipping blonde tugged and jerked violently by an unseen underwater predator with a hunger for torso, to the final victim, Captain Quint, a crusty, shark-killing maniac fatally bitten when Jaws decides to board his sinking boat, the Orca.

You could always tell how suspenseful a movie was at the Swiss by the squeaking of its old, torn seats. The night I saw Jaws, the theater was a squeak fest, moviegoers twisting and sinking and bouncing and screaming in their loud seats, gripping their sticky chair arms as if clutching life preservers. Word spread that someone had vomited. You could smell it. 

To this day, no movie has left a lasting impression the way Jaws did. Never before had I seen anything so frightful and graphic on the silver screen: a boy about my age devoured in broad daylight while floating on his raft; a pale, bloated human head popping from the hull of a sunken, shark-bitten boat; a man’s pale, severed leg sinking to the bottom of “the pond.”

     Most people look forward to fireworks in July. I look forward to a 25-foot, three-ton shark that indulges in a smorgasbord of swimmers and fisherman off the coast of Amity island.

     “Martin, it’s all psychological. You yell, ‘barracuda,’ everybody says, ‘huh? what?’ You yell ‘shark,’ we’ve got a panic on our hands on the Fourth of July.’” Mayor Vaughn says this to Sheriff Brody. I speak it too, aloud, right along with the mayor. I’m that guy you dread sitting beside during the movie. I can’t help but recite a litany of lines during Jaws. 

• “Well, this is not a boat accident. And it wasn’t any propeller; and it wasn’t any coral reef; and it wasn’t Jack the Ripper. It was a shark.”
• “Bad fish. Not like going down to the pond chasing bluegills and tommy-cods. This shark, swallow you whole. A little shakin’, a little tenderizin’, down you go.”
• And, of course, the crème de la crème of movie lines: “You’re going to need a bigger boat.”

At 10, I was an unscripted victim of Jaws. The great white scared me so much that I boycotted Saddle Lake the rest of that summer, certain that a freshwater equivalent of the sharp-toothed beast was waiting just beyond the ropes—a giant catfish, perhaps. Whiskers. I even avoided waterbeds.

     I received permission to sleep on my parents’ bedroom floor the night I returned from the Swiss . . . and the next night . . . and the next night. I gradually moved my sleeping bag into the hallway until eventually, seemingly swimming seasons later, I found the courage to sleep in my own bed again.

But by then, Jaws 2 was released.

Just when you thought it was safe to go back into your own bedroom.

     I’ve seen Jaws via various media forms since seeing it on the big screen in 1975. I owned Jaws View-Master reels. I watched it several times in a mall, the movie replayed in full throughout the day to entice people to buy their first very-expensive VCR/large screen TV combo. I have ridden the Jaws wave through all technological changes: From VHS to DVD to streaming. I’ve caught it at theaters during anniversaries ending with a zero or five. I saw it on IMAX: Bigger shark. Bigger teeth.

     I whiled away the days re-enacting “Jaws” in my parents’ backyard. The wooden picnic table doubled as the doomed Orca. A rubbery toy shark played the lead role (despite being 24 feet shorter than the movie shark). I took on the roles of Brody, Hooper and Quint—to this day, Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss and Robert Shaw remain the triumvirate of movie casting perfection. I crushed a lot of drink cans as Quint, I tilted the picnic table end-to-end to represent the Orca’s sinking, and I spat Heinz ketchup to replicate Quint’s shockingly bloody death scene. To re-enact his gripping U.S.S. Indianapolis story, I coaxed my toy shark to attack my G.I. Joes, popping off their heads. RIP, Ben Gardner.

     I listened repeatedly to the very cheesy “Mr. Jaws,” a 45 rpm novelty record by Dickie Goodman that parodied the movie. I was ecstatic when MAD and Cracked magazines and SNL parodied “Jaws.” I gazed intently at the Ohio River, certain I’d spot a dorsal fin.

     I nervously bobbed for paragraphs from my grandmother’s Reader’s Digest Condensed Books collection featuring an abridged “Jaws,” cautious not to get caught with my face inside a “grownup” book, as guilty as a boy secretly side-eying an uncle’s Playboy. 

     Fifty years later, I’m still a mark for Jaws merchandizing. I actually have Jaws dress socks.  Jaws shirts were a popular  Father’s Day gift this year. 

     Jaws made me a movie fanatic. The novel turned me into a voracious reader. Both made me want to become a writer—perhaps the next Peter Benchley. At 12, I actually wrote a novella, “Oceanarium,” in a red spiral notebook during bus rides. The plot entailed an explosion that resulted in Florida vacationers being trapped inside Sea World, terrorized by various denizens of the deep. I lost the notebook, but somehow the Arts survived.  

Jaws holds a special place in my horror movie heart because it was the last movie to really scare me. I’m relieved each time Chief Brody finally blows up the shark, turning the Carcharodon carcharias into a shower of (spoiler alert) Technicolor chum. I cling to it because it reminds me of how scary a movie can be to a boy entering his second decade of life. I also watch Jaws as a reminder of the importance of movie theaters in my life, in particular, the Swiss, that towering, one-screen wonder that was eventually shuttered due to the opening of a twin cinema across town. Still, I can still hear the squeaks, still taste the Junior Mints and black cherry pop, still recall the Friday night popcorn wars as the kernels flew through the dancing rays of the Swiss’ projector that had entranced our town since Gone With The Wind.

     Last summer, my wife and I read the Bantam Benchley novel together (her first time, my fourth). I had two copies handy. “It will be like our own little book club,” she said, excited about us being synchronized readers. I still love sharing yet another summer of the shark with others, whether through the book or the movie. Together, Brynne and I began to read: “The great fish moved silently through the night water . . .” Fireworks.

Shared courtesy of Next Avenue.

https://www.nextavenue.org/jaws-at-50-movie-changed-my-life