| JAWS 30th Anniversary Edition |
 1975 - USADirector: Steven Spielberg
- Reviewed by Linda
Jaws scared the CRAP out of me. In fact, I was so disturbed by it that I ended up staying up until 1:00am that night, watching EVERY extra on the disc so that I wouldn't have to go to sleep with the sounds of Quint (Robert Shaw) screaming echoing in my head—that "terrible high-pitched screamin'" as he got gnawed on by the 25-foot great white shark. Again: Holy crap! In case you come from another planet, Jaws tells the story of a great white shark terrorizing the waters off of the summer beach town of Amity (the movie was filmed at Martha's Vineyard). First a skinny-dipping teenager disappears on a night swim (the famous opening scene of the girl getting pulled under by who-knows-what). Sherrif Brody (Roy Schieder) wants to close the beaches until the shark is found, but the mayor insists on keeping everything as normal as possible as waves of tourists come to the island for the Fourth of July holiday. But when the shark picks off a couple more victims in plain view on crowded beaches (YIKES!), Brody enlists the help of a shark expert (goofy Richard Dreyfuss) and a scrappy-old-salt of a fisherman (Shaw) to go and catch the big beastie once and for all. Of course it is not that easy, as the second half of the movie plays out in claustrophobic manner on the boat Orca, with the shark treating the men like his next prize, as opposed to the other way around. Much tension ensues. So! A mere 5 years after releasing the perfectly-fine Collector's Edition, Universal goes ahead and releases a 2-disc 30th Anniversary Edition of Jaws. This edition covers much of the same ground as the previous souped-up version, but includes the full 2-hour documentary (instead of the 60-minute edited version), as well as a short segment from British TV filmed during the making of the movie (which is quite interesting, with an interview with 26-year-old Steven Spielberg). There is a 60-page booklet with lots of pictures, quotes from the movie, and factoids about the production, plus the DVD also includes the same outtakes as were included on the original DVD release. You won't find the old trailers that were on the original DVD (which is too bad, I always find those to be fun), and there is still no feature commentary be Spielberg (which probably means eventually we'll all have to buy Jaws again). The bottom line is this: if you haven't really seen Jaws, well, you really should. It is a classic for a reason. It is an excellent and frightening thriller, a horror tale that is much scarier than its surprising "PG" rating suggests. There are real characters developed with real dialogue, making me nostalgic for those days when the movies that made a butt-load of money also happened to be four-star movies. But, you should note that if you are one of those that already owns the original Collector's Edition, there is not really any need to go out an buy this new release. |
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Jaws is one of those movies that is so embedded in American pop culture that you feel like you've seen it, even if you haven't. I don't know anyone who hasn't crept up on friends in the water while voicing the classic John Williams score (duh... duh..... duh... duh... duh duh... duh DUH duh DUH duh DUH!!!), or swam around in a pool or lake, then pretend to be dramatically pulled under by an unseen monster. Heck, I was SURE I'd seen the movie. At least I thought I had. Maybe. At least parts of it. Hmmm, I thought to myself, maybe I should see it again, just in case. So I checked out the 25th Anniversary Edition a couple years ago.
