It Came From The Cineplex: 47 Meters Down

47 Meters Down was written by Ernest Riera and Johannes Roberts. It was directed by Johannes Roberts.

Riera and Roberts co-wrote The Other Side Of The Door, which I've never heard of. Roberts previously wrote and directed a bunch of other films I've never heard of, including Hellbreeder, Darkhunters, Forest Of The Damned, F and Storage 24.

As an aside here, I feel obligated to point out that Roberts' Storage 24 is noteworthy as one of the lowest grossing movies of all time. As part of a TV deal, it was released in exactly one theater for one day, where it earned an amazing $72.

47 Meters Down is a perfect example of the "survival horror" genre, in which the characters are placed in highly contrived and deadly situations, and have to figure out a way to escape. Think Frozen (the one about being trapped on a ski lift, not the Disney thing), The Reef, The Canyon, The Ruins and Eden Lake, among others.

Jaws is the granddaddy of all shark movies, and even though it came out over forty years ago, it still casts a long shadow in Hollywood. Any similar movie is automatically going to be compared to Spielberg's classic, so if you've got the chutzpah to attempt to make a shark movie these days, it'd better be a damned good one. Sadly, 47 Meters Down is not going to be dethroning Jaws anytime soon.

47 Meters Down was originally shot as a direct-to-video film, scheduled for release in August, 2016. Dimension Films then sold the rights to Entertainment Studios (which has to be the blandest possible name for a business). They were apparently so impressed with the film that they scheduled it for a theatrical release in June, 2017.

As we all know here at Bob Canada's BlogWorld, any time a movie is delayed for ANY reason, it's ALWAYS a bad, bad sign. And so it is with 47 Meters Down. It's not the worst thing I've ever seen, but there's no tension, zero scares and very little in the way of sharks. It really does feel like a Siffy Channel movie that somehow found its way into the cineplex.

Somehow the film's a modest hit, grossing $41 million against its minuscule $5 million budget. Even subtracting marketing costs (if there were any), that's not a bad return. Look for 94 Meters Down in theaters next year!

SPOILERS!

The Plot:
We start with the usual urban horror movie setup— sisters Lisa (played by Mandy Moore) and Kate (played by Claire Holt) are attractive young Americans vacationing in Mexico. Lisa's boyfriend Stewart just broke up with her because she's "boring," so she's traveling with Kate to prove him wrong. She hopes once Stewart sees she can be spontaneous, he'll come running back to her. Sounds like Stewart's better off without her if you ask me.

Kate drags Lisa out for a night on the town, where they meet two local men, Louis and Benjamin. They hit it off and have a great time, thanks to blessed alcohol. The men tell them they're going shark diving in the morning, and invite the girls to come along. Kate's up for it of course, but Lisa's not so sure, because she's boring. Kate eventually talks her into it.

They meet the guys at the dock the next morning, where they're introduced to Taylor (played briefly by a vacationing Matthew Modine). Taylor's the captain of a comically decrepit boat that you'd only find in a movie, complete with an alarmingly rusty shark cage. No one in their right mind would ever step foot on this tub, but of course Kate's somehow able to talk Lisa into going.

Taylor asks the girls if they've ever been diving before. Kate has, but of course Lisa hasn't because she's boring. She lies and says yes, and Taylor knows she's lying, but takes her money anyway. They chug out onto the ocean, where Taylor's "crewman" Javier starts chumming the water to attract sharks. Kate points out that this is illegal, but Javier says it's OK because they're in Mexico. Charming!

Soon a couple of sharks show up, and Louis and Benjamin get in the cage. Seems odd that the two guys would dive together, but whatever. Taylor lowers the cage just under the water, and the guys get a spectacular view of the sharks swimming around them.

When it's the girl's turn, Taylor infodumps a bunch of expository dialogue, carefully explaining to them (and the audience) how scuba tanks and depth gauges work. He lowers them just under the water, and after a few minutes the girls see an impossibly huge Great White shark cruise past.

Lisa starts getting nervous (because she's boring), and uses her scuba mask's' hi-tech communication system to tell Taylor to bring them up. As he does, his rickety winch malfunctions, and the cage suddenly drops a dozen feet or so. The girls panic and try to get out of the cage. Before they can though, the winch chain breaks and the cage plummets to the ocean floor, 47 Meters Below (Houston, We Have A Title!).

They try to radio Taylor, but unfortunately they're too far down (really?). Kate opens the hatch at the top of the cage and swims up to 40 meters, where she can finally contact Taylor. He tells them to stay put in the cage, as ascending too quickly will give them the bends and kill them. He says he's sending Javier down with a cable to pull them back up with his "spare winch."

The girls huddle in the tank as they watch their oxygen supplies slowly dwindle. They see a flashlight in the distance, and realize it's Javier. They start banging on the cage to attract his attention, but the flashlight hangs motionless in the gloom. Kate's oxygen is dangerously low (because she swam up to contact Taylor, I guess?), so Lisa reluctantly offers to go meet Javier and bring him back.

Lisa hugs the ocean floor as she slowly makes her way to the flashlight. She comes to a terrifying sheer drop-off, with no discernible bottom, and  forces herself to cross it. Suddenly a shark appears, and she hides in a small cave until it leaves. She makes it to the flashlight, but doesn't see Javier anywhere. She sees his speargun lying by the light.

She grabs the flashlight and spear and swims back to the cage. She's horrified when she spots half of Javier's body on the ocean floor, along with the cable. She pulls the cable back to the cage and attaches it to the top. She then swims up to 40 meters to tell Taylor to start pulling them up. Lisa gets back in the cage, and sees Kate's air is almost gone.

The cage begins rising slowly, so as not to give the girls the bends. Hilariously, when they get to 20 meters this cable snaps as well (!), and the cage falls back down to the bottom (!!!). Unfortunately Lisa's leg is pinned under the heavy cage, trapping her. Kate swims up to tell Taylor they're still alive, and he says he's sending down extra oxygen tanks for them. He warns Kate that switching tanks can cause "nitrogen narcosis," and they may start hallucinating (?). He says he's alerted the Coast Guard, which should arrive within an hour to rescue them.

Kate sees two tanks and some flares fall to the ocean floor and swims out to get them. Her air's almost gone, and she manages to switch to one of the new tanks in the nick of time. A shark appears (a rarity in this film) and she hides against some rocks until it swims away. Just as she reaches the cage, the shark reappears and carries her off, presumably killing her. She drops the other tank just outside the cage.

Lisa weeps for her sister until her oxygen gauge starts beeping, indicating she's almost out of air. Unfortunately she can't reach the extra tank just outside the cage, as her leg's pinned. She uses Javier's speargun to try and drag the tank to her. She accidentally fires the gun, slicing open her hand. Eventually she manages to hook the tank and is somehow able to swap it out like a pro seconds before her air runs out. She then inflates her BCD (Buoyancy Control Device), which lifts the cage just enough for her to rip her leg out from under it.

She swims out of the top of the cage, and miraculously runs into a badly-wounded Kate (hmm...). The two swim slowly to the surface, stopping periodically so they don't get the bends. They decide to light the flares, hoping they'll ward off sharks. They light one, and when it goes out, Kate lights the other, but drops it. Lisa lights the third and last flare, which reveals they're surrounded by a dozen hungry sharks.

Somehow the girls make it to the surface. Louis and Benjamin pull them out of the water. Just as Lisa's almost in the ship, a shark leaps up and chomps on her leg. She jabs it in the eye, causing it to let go. She lies on the deck of the boat, laughing in relief.

Suddenly Lisa wakes up, and realizes everything after Kate's death was an elaborate hallucination and she's still trapped in the cage (!). She sees Coast Guard divers come toward her and remove her from the cage. The movie ends as they lift her slowly to the surface. Or maybe this was another hallucination, who knows?

Thoughts:
• For a film that advertises itself as a "shark movie," there really aren't all that many sharks in it. The movie's only eighty five minutes long, and less than ten of them actually feature sharks.

• 47 meters is only about 154 feet. Put that way, such a depth doesn't sound all that terrifying or dangerous. Amazingly though, you don't have to go very deep before you start feeling the effects of the sea. Water pressure increases one atmosphere for every ten meters you descend. So at 47 meters it would feel like almost FIVE atmospheres pressing against your body!

• Matthew Modine shows up for a few minutes in the movie as the "Day Player." 

See, low budget movies don't have the budget for an all-star cast, so they often hire one big name actor— usually an older star whose fame has faded a bit. The producers can usually only afford to pay them for one day, two at the most. They then use that day to film as many scenes as they can with the actor. Then they sprinkle those scenes throughout the movie, to give the illusion that they're in it much more than they really are.

This is an old, old trick employed by thousands of cheap B-movies.

This is definitely the case here with Matthew Modine. He appears in a couple of brief scenes at the beginning of the movie and then completely disappears. His voice is occasionally heard on the radio a couple times afterward, but that's it.

• It occurred to me while writing this review that this is the first ever Mandy Moore movie I've ever seen in my life. I guess at long last I can finally cross that item off my bucket list.

• James Van Der Beek was cast as Lisa's boyfriend Stuart, and filmed several scenes with Mandy Moore. All his scenes ended up on the cutting room floor though, as the final film just references him briefly. 

• For some reason, Louis and Benjamin get in the shark cage together, leaving the girls up on the ship with Taylor and Javier. When they're done, Kate and Lisa then pair up in the cage. Doesn't that seem a little strange?

Presumably they're all on a double date, right? So why wouldn't each guy pair up with one of the girls for their dive?

Answer: Because if the experienced Benjamin paired up with Lisa, he'd have known exactly what to do when the cage plummeted to the ocean floor, and the movie would have been fifteen minutes long.

Plus, like it or not, women are generally seen as more vulnerable than men, so it's supposedly scarier to have two frightened gals trapped on the ocean floor.

This is what you call your Plot Contrivance. There was no logical reason to have the girls dive together, other than to make the movie scarier.

• For someone with such a ramshackle, derelict boat, Taylor's scuba gear has a surprisingly sophisticated communication system. The characters have no difficulty talking to one another, even under water.

That said, this comm system seems to have an extremely limited range. The cage falls to the ocean floor, and the two women can't contact Taylor on his ship, which is only 154 feet above. Kate eventually has to swim up to 40 meters, or 131 feet, before Taylor can pick up her signal.

154 feet doesn't seem like enough distance to cause a radio signal to fade. Does water somehow block radio waves?

• I've never been scuba diving in my life, so my knowledge of it's pretty limited. From what I've read though, the scuba science in this movie is woefully inaccurate. Laughable, even. Here're a few examples of things the movie got wrong.

As the girls get in the shark tank, Taylor explains that they have an hour's worth of oxygen. But the amount of time you can breathe a tank of compressed air decreases with depth. A scuba tank might well last an hour near the surface, but at 47 meters you'd only get twenty five minutes. Even less if you're panicking or exerting yourself, like the characters were.

Taylor constantly warns the girls that they'll get the bends if they surface too fast. Unfortunately going down is just as bad as coming up. At the high rate of speed the cage fell, the girls' eardrums would have likely burst, possibly causing permanent deafness!

Taylor also warns Kate and Lisa about "nitrogen narcosis," saying it could cause them to experience elaborate hallucinations. Yeah, that's not how it works. It doesn't cause you to dream up fully-realized fantasy worlds, it just makes you dull-witted, like you're drunk.

The question is, do these inaccuracies really matter?

My first instinct is to say yes. A screenwriter should always try to be as accurate as possible, especially these days when looking up facts and figures literally takes seconds.

But then I start thinking about Jaws. It's one of the greatest movies ever made, yet it features some truly eye-rolling shark behavior (contrary to popular belief, real sharks don't stalk people like the villain in a slasher film). It's not fair to give the scientific inaccuracy in Jaws' a pass while mocking 47 Meters Down for doing the same thing.

After thinking about it a while, I came up with an answer to the accuracy question. If a movie features a particular procedure in a brief scene that isn't integral to the plot, then scientific accuracy isn't that big a deal. But if the ENTIRE PLOT revolves around a specific activity (like scuba diving), then it absolutely needs to be as accurate as humanly possible.

• Near the end of the film, Lisa and Kate make it to the surface and swim to the boat. Just as Lisa's pulled from the water, a shark jumps up and bites her on her leg. Somehow she manages to free herself and is pulled to safety. She lays on the deck, happy to finally be out of the water.

Annnnnd then she comes to, realizing her whole "rescue" was just an hallucination, and she's still sitting on the ocean floor! So basically she created an elaborate fantasy in which she's attacked by a shark during her "rescue!" I dunno about anyone else, but I don't think I'd incorporate something like that into my imaginary dream world.

47 Meters Down is a survival horror film that's light on thrills, scares and, well, horror. Worst of all, for a film that's ostensibly about sharks, there're very few of them on display. In fact the biggest danger in the movie isn't from man-eating fish, but from shady tour guides with dilapidated boats. The movie's also filled with nonsensical and inaccurate "science" that'll have scuba enthusiasts in the audience rolling their eyes till they sprain 'em. Do yourself a favor and rewatch Jaws instead. I give it a C-.

It Came From The Cineplex: The Shallows

The Shallows was written by Anthony Jaswinski and directed by Jaume Collet-Serra.

Jaswinski previously wrote Killing Time and Kristy, neither of which I've ever heard of, and Vanishing On 7th Street, which I saw and WISH I'd never heard of. Burn!

Collet-Serra directed House Of Wax and Orphan, both of which were fairly decent little horror flicks. He then apparently entered his Liam Neeson Period, directing Unknown, Non-Stop and Run All Night.

The Shallows is a perfect example of the "Survival" genre, in which the main character finds themselves all alone in a dangerous (and unlikely) situation and has to figure out a way to endure. Think 127 Hours, The Grey and All Is Lost and you'll have the right idea.

I've seen many marketing blurbs breathlessly stating that the film is "The Best Shark Movie Since Jaws!" and "It's Jaws For A New Generation!" Eh, I don't think I'd go that far. Yes, The Shallows is suspenseful, and it's got a shark in it, but it doesn't hold a candle to Spielberg's terrifying fishy opus. If fact I think it'll be a long, long time before another film surpasses Jaws. If ever. And no, Sharknado doesn't count.

The film clocks in at a brisk eighty seven minutes, which is a good thing. When your entire movie takes place in one location— in this case, a rock in the middle of a lagoon— it's probably best not to tax the audience's patience too much.

SPOILERS!

The Plot:
Med student Nancy Adams (played by Blake Lively, aka Mrs. Ryan Reynolds) travels to Mexico with her best friend for some much-needed R & R. When she's ditched by her worthless, hungover friend, she hires a local guide named Carlos to take her to a secluded island beach. It's the same beach Nancy's late mother surfed years earlier when she was pregnant with her.

Carlos drops Nancy off at the beach. As she inspects it, she's immediately awestruck by its beauty. When she asks the name of the beach, Carlos refuses to answer, quickly changing the subject. Gosh, that's not the least bit suspicious. He exits and leaves her to her surfing.

Nancy hits the water, bares her tanned and very toned body and treats us to a surfing montage. She spots a couple of other surfer dudes, named Redshirt One and Redshirt Two, and joins them. OK, I made up those names. But as we'll soon see, they're apt. Redshirt One tells her there's a large rock a few hundred feet from the shore that's only visible at low tide, and to watch out for the "fire coral" that lines it. Heavy foreshadowing alert!

She then takes a break from surfing to call her sister Chloe, which provides us with some much-needed exposition and backstory. It seems her mother's recent death has caused Nancy to consider dropping out of med school. Her father gets on the horn and begs her to reconsider, saying that her mother taught her to be a fighter, and never give up. More foreshadowing! Personally I think Dad just doesn't want the tens of thousands he's spent on her tuition to go to waste.

Nancy paddles back out into the surf as the sun begins to set. The Redshirts tell her they're knocking off for the day, as it's dangerous to surf after dark (duh!) and encourage her to do the same. She tells them she wants to catch one more wave before she goes in.

As she waits in the water for a wave, she spots a large whale carcass a hundred feet away. How she failed to see this gigantic floating corpse before now, I have no idea. Maybe it suddenly fell from the sky, like the whale in Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy. For some insane reason she paddles closer to inspect it, and even climbs on top of it (!). She spots a shark circling the whale, and decides a hasty retreat is in order. 

As she surfs back toward the shore, the shark slams into her board, knocking her off. She hits her head on a submerged rock, and struggles back to the surface. The shark then bites her leg, pulling her under. Miraculously she manages to free herself and make it to a small rock sticking out of the water— the very one the Redshirts told her about. She steps on a hunk of fire coral as she climbs the rock, severely burning her foot.

Nancy examines the large gash on her leg, and uses her board's ankle strap as a tourniquet to stop the bleeding. She sees the Redshirts leaving in their SUV and tries to call to them, but they don't see or hear her. She's then stranded on a rock, two hundred yards from shore, with a hungry shark circling her. Oh, and there's a wounded seagull on the rock as well, to keep her company. 

As darkness falls, she rips the arm off her wetsuit to act as a compression bandage for her injured leg. With rescue out of the question, she tries stitching up her leg with her earrings and necklace, which may be one of the most horrifying things I've ever seen.

The next morning Nancy sees a drunken man passed out on the beach. She calls to him, telling him to get the phone from her backpack and call for help. He staggers over to her backpack and of course steals all her money and credit cards. Because of course that's what all "fereners" do. I'm surprised he didn't try to steal her kidney while he was at it! The man notices her surfboard floating in the water, and for some reason decides to wade out and retrieve it. Or maybe he decides to try and rescue her— it's not really clear. Nancy tries to warn him that there's a shark nearby, but he either doesn't hear or understand. She watches in horror as the shark tears him in half, and he drags his upper body out of the surf before expiring.

A few hours later the Redshirts return, and somehow miss the half corpse lying on the beach. Nancy calls to them, and instead of driving for help, they stupidly get in the water and paddle out to her. She tries to warn them of the shark, but Redshirt One says there aren't any in the area. Right on cue, he's attacked! Redshirt Two tries to make it to the rock, and Nancy pulls him out of the water. Unfortunately the shark pulls him back in. Told you they were redshirts!

Redshirt Two's GoPro camera helmet floats past the rock (product placement!) and Nancy risks her life to retrieve it. She records a goodbye to her family, and tosses it to shore, like an electronic message in a bottle. 

Nancy realizes she's running out of time. Not only is gangrene setting in on her injured leg, but the tide's rising, and her rocky refuge will soon be under water, leaving her vulnerable to attack. She fixes her seagull pal's dislocated wing and sets him adrift on a hunk of broken surfboard. She then times the shark, who keeps methodically circling her rock, noting that it takes it thirty two seconds to complete a circuit. 

As the shark passes, she slips into the water and swims through a smack of jellyfish (I kid you not— a group of jellyfish is called a smack!) to avoid the shark. She and it are both stung, and she manages to make it to a nearby buoy. She climbs up onto it, and opens a box on the side. Inside the box is a flare gun with several shells. She tries to signal a passing cargo ship, but the flares are duds and don't soar high enough to be seen.

The shark rams the buoy, and Nancy shoots it with a flare. Immediately the whale oil in the water ignites, burning the shark. You'd think that would be enough to chase it away for good, but apparently it just pisses it off. It begins wildly attacking the buoy, tearing off bits and pieces, including one of the chains anchoring it.

Nancy falls into the water, and as she's beneath the surface, she notices the buoy's chained to a rebar-spiked base on the ocean floor. She gets the bright idea to pry the remaining chain off the buoy. She hangs onto it as the heavy chain drags her underwater toward the base. The shark sees and swims quickly after her. She lets go a second before reaching the base, and the shark slams into it at full speed, impaling itself.

A little boy (not buoy) finds the GoPro helmet cam and sees Nancy's message. He runs to get his father, who turns out to be Carlos (small world!). They find Nancy washed up on the shore. As Carlos bends over her, the delirious Nancy sees a vision of her late mother smiling down on her.

One year later, Nancy's fully recovered, albeit with a nasty scar on her leg. She teaches her younger sister Chloe how to surf back in her hometown of Galveston, Texas, as her father looks on proudly.

Thoughts:
• As the film opens, Nancy's being driven to the hidden beach her mother surfed years ago. Apparently the beach is such a well kept secret she doesn't even know what it's called, nor where it's located. Despite this, she's somehow able to hire Carlos the guide and tell him exactly where to take her. 

How the hell is this possible if she doesn't know the beach's name or location?

Nancy: "Por favor, señor. Can you take me to my mom's secret beach? I don't know what it's called, but she surfed there twenty five years ago."

Carlos: "Ah, sí, sí! Señora Adams' Secret Beach! Everyone knows where that is! Hop in!"

• After Carlos drops Nancy off at the secret beach, he asks if she'll need a ride back to town when she's done. She says no, she'll call Uber. Carlos looks puzzled and says, "Who's Uber?"

Jesus wept.

OK, I get that this was supposed to be a funny line, but instead of making Nancy seem like a clueless American tourist, it just makes her look like a drooling moron. Not only is it ridiculous for her to expect Uber to service such a remote and secluded region, but even if they did, why wouldn't she have just taken one of their cars to the beach in the first place?

So what was her plan when she brushed off Carlos and told him she didn't need a ride back? He just drove her twenty miles along a one lane dirt road to a hidden beach. Was she planning on walking back, while carrying all her gear? Would anyone in their right mind really not put even a second's worth of though into how they were going to return?

This is some classic plot trickery here. All she had to do was tell Carlos to meet her back at the beach at 6pm. Then she wouldn't have been stuck on a rock for two days with a hungry shark circling her. The only reason she doesn't ask for a ride back is to artificially place herself in danger and keep the movie from only lasting fifteen minutes.

• Speaking of plot trickery, there's a ton of it going on in this film. In fact you can almost see the script ticking items off a checklist in order to strand Nancy in an improbable (and easily avoidable!) situation. Her friend bails on her so she has to go surfing by herself. The secret beach she's surfing has no name, so she can't tell anyone where she'll be. She refuses a ride back from a helpful stranger. She stays in the water after the other surfers have left for the day. She leaves her phone (with the magical reception) on the beach. No one can hear her cries for help. The flares in her flare gun are duds. And on and on...

• As Nancy prepares to surf, she slowly strips down to her bright orange, extremely tiny bikini. We're then treated to a lengthy scene of her sensuously slathering sunscreen on her arms and shoulders, as the leering camera slowly moves over every inch of her shapely, toned body.

Annnd then she puts on a black wetsuit, covering up the areas she just covered with protective lotion. So what was the point of that? I've never gone surfing, so I don't know if you're supposed to wear sunscreen under your suit, but I'm guessing not. Obviously the only reason the sunscreen scene exists is to give the men in the audience something to ogle.

• Nancy gets pretty darned good cell phone reception on this secluded, no-name beach. She's even able to video chat with her sister in Texas, without any lagtime!

Meanwhile I'm sitting here in the middle of a city and my phone's only got two bars.

• When the drunken man wades into the water to retrieve Nancy's surfboard, he's attacked by the shark. Instead of actually seeing this happen, the camera focuses on Nancy's face, as she watches the attack unfold. Somehow seeing her horrified reaction was worse than witnessing the actual event. The mind can always imagine something worse than it can see. Well, mine can, anyway.

• By the way, this is some "hidden" beach. Nancy encounters two other surfers while there, and later on a drunk actually staggers by!

• Kudos to the seagull that keeps Nancy company on her rock. He turned in a surprisingly nuanced performance!

• When Nancy shoots the shark with the flare gun, the water around it erupts into flames. Whaaa…??? I think what happened here was the oil from the nearby dead whale leaked into the seawater and ignited. After all, that was the point of the entire whaling industry of the 19th Century. Whales provided lamp oil, which is presumably highly flammable. Or is that inflammable?

• I'm a bit fuzzy on the end of the film. Nancy unfastens a chain on the side of the buoy, and its weight apparently pulls her underwater, faster than a shark can swim. Or did it? As she grabs the falling chain, there's a sort of ratcheting sound. It almost sounds like the chain is being rapidly retracted into the base. Is that a thing? Do buoys have retractable chains? This would actually make more sense, as I think a retractable chain would pull her under faster than one that was simply falling by its own weight. Unfortunately it's not quite clear if this is what's really happening (at least not on a first viewing). 

Of course if it is retracting, this begs the question— how the hell does Nancy know that's how buoy chains work? Is she a mechanical engineer as well as a doctor?

The Shallows is a taut little survival thriller that's long on suspense, short on plot. It's also highly contrived, as the main character's predicament becomes progressively worse, almost to the point of hilarity. It doesn't help that the shark acts more like a horror movie slasher than a wild animal, as it almost seems to have a personal vendetta against humans. I give it a C+.

This Is Why Automatic Ad Generation Is A Bad Idea

Take a look at this actual image of the Yahoo home page I saw yesterday. Note that it features a story about an eleven year old boy who was attacked by a shark… next to a very unfortunate ad for the Discovery Channel.

Hey Yahoo— you might want to think about retooling the automatic ad generation algorithm on your site.

Happy Fortieth (!) Anniversary To Jaws!

Happy 40th Anniversary to the grandaddy of all summer movies, Jaws!

Forty years! Can you believe it? I vividly remember seeing Jaws in the theater as a lad. First run, even! It was THE movie to see that year— nothing else even came close. I remember the audience shrieking out loud every time the shark appeared. And they actually cheered when it blew up at the end (sorry, SPOILER ALERT!)! When's the last time you heard that happen in a theater?

Jaws was the only topic of discussion that entire summer. Johnny Carson talked about it practically every night, it was in the newspaper, dozens of political cartoons referenced it, and even TV shows of the day got in the act. It was definitely a pop culture phenomenon.

The film also traumatized an entire generation, making them literally afraid to so much as dip a toe into the ocean.

People actually went to see the movie dozens of times, like it was some kind of roller coaster or thrill ride. Even I saw it twice (once in a theater, and once in a drive-in), which was unusual for me.

If you enjoyed seeing Star Wars, Jurassic Park or The Avengers (and countless others) in the theater during the summer months, then you owe a debt of gratitude to Jaws, which ushered in the age of the Summer Blockbuster Movie. Before it premiered, summer was just another season for movie studios. It's hard to believe, but back then studio executives thought that in the summer, people were too busy swimming, tanning and vacationing to go see a movie. Once Jaws hit and hit big, they realized there was an audience out there who actually wanted to see movies during the summer. And not just any movies, but big, expensive, action packed ones. 

Jaws opened on June 20, 1975 in 464 theaters in the US and Canada, which was the biggest simultaneous opening at that time. Before Jaws, movies generally premiered in theaters in major cities, then once they completed their runs there, the prints (which were by then beat up and full of splices) would slowly make their way across the rest of the country.

Due to the film's unprecedented success, the number of theaters was increased to 700 on July 25 and later 950 on August 15.

It made $7 million in its opening weekend, which doesn't sound like a lot now, but was huge at the time. It was the first movie to ever gross $100 million, earning $121 million in its initial release. It was the highest grossing film of all time until it was defeated by Star Wars in 1977.

There was an unprecedented avalanche of Jaws merchandise released as well. T-shirts, books, records, board games, coloring books, trading cards, bedspreads, posters— you name it. If it would hold still long enough to slap a shark on it, someone made it.

Jaws was of course based on Peter Benchley's massively popular novel. In fact Universal Pictures bought the movie rights to the novel before it was even published!

The screenplay was written by Benchley and Carl Gottlieb, and directed by Steven Spielberg. It was Spileberg's second time at directing a big screen film, his previous being The Sugarland Express.

Jaws was a very troubled production, running over budget and over schedule. Shooting on the open ocean caused a few of the delays, but the vast majority of them were caused by the malfunctioning mechanical shark created for the film.

It's an oddly structured film, almost like two movies in one. The first half takes place on land and features a large cast, but once the trio sets out in search of the shark, it becomes a completely different movie— a tense "man vs. nature" film with just three characters.

Of course the success of Jaws spawned a cottage industry of copycat films featuring various animals— sometimes aquatic, sometimes not— attacking humanity.

A few Jaws facts:

• Bantam Publishing artist Roger Kastel painted both the book cover and the movie poster.

• Steven Spielberg said when he read the novel he rooted for the shark, as the human characters were all so unlikable.

I read the book before I saw the movie, and he's right. Everyone in the book is a miserable asshole. For example: in the novel, Matt Hooper has an affair with Chief Brody's wife, which seemingly comes out of nowhere. It has absolutely nothing to do with the plot, and I'm convinced it exists solely to up the page count and inject some sex into an otherwise sexless tale.

Hooper also dies at the end of the novel, I suppose as some sort of comeuppance.

Fortunately Spielberg threw out this superfluous subplot, made everyone more likable and allowed Hooper to survive. Screenwriter Carl Gottlieb was hired to inject some much-needed humor into the script, to great effect.

• Author Peter Benchley wanted to cast Robert Redford, Paul Newman and Steve McQueen in the film, presumably as Brody, Hooper and Quint. Yawn. Pretty much every writer & director in the 1970s wanted those three guys in their movie.

Robert Duvall was considered for the part of Chief Brody. Lee Marvin and Sterling Hayden were suggested for Quint. Timothy Bottoms, Joel Grey and Jeff Bridges were considered for Hooper. Once Richard Dreyfuss was cast, the role of Hooper was rewritten to better suit him.

Charlton Heston desperately wanted the Chief Brody part, but lost out to Roy Scheider. Heston was reported so angry over losing the part that he vowed to never work with Spielberg. He even turned down the part of General Stilwell in Spielberg's 1941. If you've ever seen that particular film, you'll know that Heston did himself a favor.

Peter Benchley appears in the film as a TV reported in the beach attack scene.

• Author Peter Benchley later regretted writing the book, which he said paints sharks as evil creatures that target humans. He became an ocean conservationist, and spent much of the rest of his career trying to convince people that real sharks don't act like the one in his book.

• In the scene in which Chrissie's remains are found, that's a real hand sticking out of the sand. Spielberg thought the prosthetic appendage originally used in the scene was too fake looking, so he had a crew member buried in the sand with just her hand sticking out.

During the entire summer of '75, anytime I was in any body of water, be it a lake or a pool, I'd pretend I was being attacked by a shark. I'd paddle around serenely for a while, then suddenly start thrashing about and pulling my head under water as if I was being dragged down by a shark. Yes, I was quite hilarious, and I'm sure a joy to be around.

• During the shark attack on the beach, Spielberg uses the famous "Hitchcock Zoom" effect to highlight Chief Brody's spine-tingling terror. The camera zooms in on Brody's face, while the background seemingly recedes from him.

It's an interesting, but simple effect. It's created by zooming in on a subject, while the camera is simultaneously being moved away. You can recreate yourself it if you have a camera with a zoom feature.

• Robert Shaw absolutely hated Richard Dreyfuss, and the two argued off-screen constantly. This may have actually helped the film, as it created a palpable tension between the two characters.

• After Alex Kintner's death by shark, his mother slaps Chief Brody in the face. Lee Fierro, who played Mrs. Kintner, couldn't convincingly fake a slap, so she actually hit Scheider in the face. Unfortunately for Scheider, the scene required multiple takes, and he says it was one of the most painful of his career.

• One of the biggest scares in the film is when Ben Gardner's severed head tumbles out of the boat, terrifying Hooper (and the audience as well). The head's appearance was one of the last scenes filmed. Spielberg decided he needed one more big scare in the movie, so he shot the head in film editor Verna Fields' swimming pool, paying for the shoot out of his own pocket.

This was the other big scare in the film, in which the shark pops up to say "hi" when Brody's not looking. That scened caused much screaming and soiling of garments in the theater the day I saw the film.

• According to Spielberg, the shooting star that appears during the scene where Brody loads his revolver was real, not an optical effect.

There's a second shooting star that appears over a long shot of the Orca though, that is most definitely fake. It looks like it's either been animated or filmed in slow motion.

• The mechanical shark, nicknamed "Bruce," was a complete and utter disaster. The harsh saltwater messed with its electronics, causing it to constantly malfunction. In fact, the first time it was lowered into the water it promptly sunk to the ocean floor!

Spielberg then had to figure out how to film a shark movie without a shark. He solved the problem by asking himself, "What would Alfred Hitchcock do?" Hitchcock believed that what the audience doesn't see is infinitely scarier than what they do see. Spielberg decided to shoot many of the shark scenes from the shark's point of view, which ratcheted up the tension. The shark was also suggested by the yellow barrels that were attached to it.

Thank the film gods for the malfunctioning shark! By "hiding" the shark, the audience never quite knows where it is, which makes it that much more frightening. Just think, if the film was made today, the shark would no doubt be lovingly rendered in CGI and would be splashing away in every scene.

• Chief Brody's famous line, "You're gonna need a bigger boat," was ad libbed.

• During their little pissing contest, Quint displays his manliness by crushing a beer can in his bare hand. Hooper counters by crushing a paper cup.

It's a funny scene, but I wonder if much of the humor is lost on modern audiences, as beer and soda cans are extremely flimsy these days. Back in the 1970s cans were much, much thicker, and really were a lot harder to crush.

• Near the end of the film, the shark attacks Hooper, who's inside a submerged cage. For these scenes, shark experts Ron and Valerie Taylor shot underwater footage of real sharks. To make the sharks look bigger, they filmed them swimming around a scaled-down cage with a little person inside.

• The first time Spielberg heard John Williams play the Jaws theme, he thought it was a joke. He was eventually convinced to use it, and of course it's gone on to become one of the most famous themes in movie history.

Spielberg later said that without the score, the film would have been only half as successful. He's right.

Other notable movies celebrating their 30th Anniversary this year: The Rocky Horror Picture Show, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, Monty Python And The Holy Grail, Dog Day Afternoon, A Boy And His Dog, Tommy, Death Race 2000, Rollerball, The Stepford Wives, The Land That Time Forgot, The Devil's Rain, Dolemite and The Hindenburg.

Hillbilly Shark Attack!

Last week a family vacationing along the Tennessee River was shocked when they discovered a small shark in the water. This was significant as sharks tend to prefer salt water oceans, rather than fresh water rivers.

The family contacted Wildlife Conservation Officer Jay Lowery, who said it's unlikely that the shark got so far inland by itself, and was most likely placed in the river as a hoax.

Hoax or not, the idea of a shark attacking innocent swimmers in the Tennessee River's just too good for the Siffy Channel to pass up. I know what their next made-for-TV movie is gonna be!

Actually the Siffy Channel beat me to it. They already released a similar film back in 2011. At this point it's almost impossible to make up something too ridiculous for them to air!

Sharks On A Train!

Yesterday New York subway riders were surprised to find a dead shark lying on the floor of the train.

Witnesses say the shark, whose name is not being released at this time, was between one and a half to three feet long. It was not apparent how long it had been there or how it may have found its way into a subway car. Or what its intended destination may have been prior to its death.

Brandon Sanchez, an NYU student who spotted the deceased animal, said, "It was the craziest thing I've ever seen on the subway in New York." Somehow I doubt that.

You can probably guess what's coming up next...

"I have had it with these motherf*cking sharks on this motherf*cking train!"