Jaws - 25th Anniversary Collector's Edition [VHS]

YOU'RE GONNA NEED A BETTER MEDIUM..., 2 Sep 2012JAWS THE BLU RAY"What we have here is a perfect movie, all it does is entertain, terrify adults and give little kids nightmares all night long..."Like most people from my generation, I have a strange but very personal history with this movie. When it first came out I was not able to see it, I think I was thought to be too young. (The Poster did after all warn that this movie might be a bit too intense for little kids). My older brother saw it when it first came out and being a kid who lived inside his own head most of the time; he was able to remember every single line in the movie.I come from the Bogside in Derry of Northern Ireland and I had absolutely no idea what a shark was, no concept at all - my brother Paddy, told me it was like a goldfish that was grey, that it was about the size of a bus and that it had rows of teeth the size of steak knives, oh yeah, and it also could bite a man clear in half below the waist - Yikes!.One Halloween's night, a very stormy night if I recall correctly, in a friend's house, we sat, three friends and I, (all of us thought too young to see the film), under the kitchen table in the dark with a candle, and line by line, doing incredibly accurate impersonations of all the characters, the sound effects, the music, the screams from the onlooking bathers as people were eaten alive, my bother created out of the darkness of our overactive imaginations the entire 2hour plus movie and we were rooted to the spot and terrified beyond belief for every minute of that tale. When the shark was about to attack my brother did the two note music and that just built the tension even more than his vivid depictions of the mayhem off Amity.When I finally saw the movie for the first time it was as a double bill with Jaws 2, - How lucky was I!!! - (which I think is still a pretty decent sequel but could have been better if Spielberg had a hand in it).Needless to say, Jaws blew me out of my seat and when I had my first glimpse of what a grey goldfish the size of a bus with knives for teeth looked like up close on the big screen I told myself never ever to set foot in the ocean.When Ben Gardener made his unexpected appearance from the jagged hole, I shot clear out of my seat as my heart jumped right out of my shrieking lungs; the timing, o boy, the timing of that appearance was sheer brilliance and from that moment on, whenever there was water on screen, even a slither of it, I was all bunched up in tension with my eyes darting all over just to make sure that monster was not about to suddenly pop from out of the screen to chomp on me.As a kid from a slum, when I first saw the Chief's car driving along the beach road at the beginning of the movie I turned to my friend watching with me and told him that one day I would get out of the ghetto and live in a place just like Amity Island and strangely enough, I happen to live now in the very place where the underwater shots of the real shark attacking the cage was shot - Port Lincoln South Australia - a place that looks quite a lot like ole Amity - Weird or what, right?I loved the movie and still consider it to be one of the most perfect movies ever made, great, mind blowing opening, and great pace, characters you care about, funny, frightening, and suspenseful with a great ending that makes you want to jump up and down on your chair and cheer.I later read the novel in school, the version without the steamy affair between Hooper and Ellen Brody, and I loved that too. I went on to read Jaws 2 by Hank Searle and that was even better than the sequel movie, (I recommend it).Over the years I have watched Jaws a number of times in different mediums, the last time being the DVD 2 Disc Edition and I have to say it is still one of my favourite films.I have ordered it on Blu Ray and although it has still to arrive, I know it will be money well spent because Spielberg has had a hand in the restoration and if there is anything evident about this man when it comes to movies it is he is a perfectionist so I know I am going to have my socks blown off when I finally get to see my favourite film in HD for the first time.I am already planning a Jaws fest with my eldest daughter, Storm, who also loves Jaws, she has yet to see Jaws 2, and so it is going to be great to watch the first one on Blu Ray and the second one on DVD. I have also ordered the Jaws Novels, 1 & 2, and the Jaws Log by Carl Gottlieb; maybe I should try and get a poster too!I would like to say thank-you to all the people involved in the making of this movie and to those responsible for bringing it on to Blu Ray because even when we first watched it on video and DVD we all knew the makers were going to need a bigger boat to do this movie justice.There I got in the best line in the movie.Great novel, great story, great actors, Roy, Richard & Robert, great screenplay, great cinematography, and brilliant directing from a guy young enough not to know the difference between courage and stupidity.Can't wait to get back in the water...UPDATE...Just received the blu ray and watched it immediately and I suppose the question on everyone's lips is does this transfer deserve me updating from the 30th Anniversary 2 Disc DVD Edition and the answer is YES-INDEEDYDOODY, YOU CAN BET YOUR GRANDPA'S BACK MOLARS AND YOUR GRANDMA'S PRETTY GREY HAIR - That is if he still has them and she isn't as bald and wispy as a China Man's chin -The images are crisp on this baby now, I noticed things I had never noticed before and I loved that fact, the colours are glorious, the night time water shots are stunning, the blue skies oh so blue, the aqua waters crystal, the sheen of sweat on skin so clear you can see the pores on Chief Brody forehead, all of it wonderfully upgraded. This movie looks even better than it did when it first screened, and let's not forget, this is a 36 year old movie we are talking about. The underwater shots of the shark are especially good and one has to include the eeriness of the SS Indianapolis scene with the whales singing to each other in the background; which brings me to the sound, oh dear me, the sound, when that shark is on its way and the music tells you so, the sound in 7.1 is spine tingling, the hairs on your neck stand up, absolutely brilliant.And as for the extras, well, we still get all the extras from the 30th Anniversary Edition, including the great Making Of, which ran at 1 hour and 40 minutes and I thought when I first saw that that it was brilliant, I loved all the behind the scenes information; however, the Blu Ray goes even further with another feature length doco called The Shark is Still Working. I thought it would be just more rehash from The Making Of; but oh how wrong I was - this doco alone is worth the upgrade, we get to see a lot more behind the scenes as well as getting to hear some current directors talk about how much of an impact this movie made on them and their careers; wonderful stuff.So, as good as the DVD was; this Blu Ray treatment blows the DVD clear out of the water, it is most definitely worth the upgrade, it will be the best $20 you will ever spend on a movie and it is a movie that you can now introduce to the younger generation and do it some justice this time round.Buy it, buy it now, tell all your friends to buy it, if you haven't got the money, go rob a bank, take hostages at gunpoint, do whatever you must do to own this amazing movie in this format; even go tell that old git down the road none of us can stand to go out and buy himself a copy today."Show me the way to go home; I'm tired and I want to go to bed; well, I had a little drink about an hour ago and it's gone right to my head, no matter where I roam, through land or sea or foam; you will always hear me singing a song; show me the way to go home..."Jaws has just arrived.Finally, she's home!Shalom

Movies like Jaws are difficult to review. Everyone’s seen it. So what’s new to add?The movie had flaws, like any other, but the overall product was phenomenal. Our 1970s-based belief was suspended while we sat in crowded theaters, munching nervously on popcorn, and so we easily overlooked oddities, such as how the mechanical shark bent like a rubber toy when it landed on on the stern of the Orca. And I used to say to myself, “No shark jumps onto a boat like that.” Of course, twenty years later, while watching the Discovery Channel, I witnessed sharks jumping onto rock formations to gobble up seals, so what’d I know?The generations of people who did not grow up with Jaws (1975) can’t understand how the movie grappled this country into submission. People became terrified of swimming, and if they did go swimming, there was always some joker, standing along the shore (or the edge of the public swimming pool), humming the theme, “Dum-dum. . .dum-dum. . .” Fishermen took to the seas and began killing sharks by the thousands--the real "Jaws the Revenge," as it were. And this movie made me, as a child, so scared of sharks that I was afraid to take a shower. I knew that something was hiding in the drain. Of course, that “thing” eventually became Stephen King’s It, but that was over ten years later. During my formative years, being in water meant being susceptible to Jaws (a.k.a. “Bruce the Shark”). Jaws created mass hysteria that hadn’t been seen since the Exorcist (1973).As a child, I was so thankful for the scenes in Jaws that didn’t have the shark. The appearance of the shark was like a roller coaster ride for me. I closed my eyes and waited for it to be over—and didn’t fully comprehend the movie until I was a teenager. Those scenes of Brody shopping for art supplies—and spilling the jar of brushes—were so appreciated. They were stress relief. I don’t get that from movies anymore. I get bored with horror stories and skip to the good parts.This movie had wonderful tension. Normally in movies, the chief of police is a boring, cliched bad-ass. Martin Brody was a policeman that I actually admire. He wasn’t oppressing the citizens of Amity Island, and during the shark hunt, the Amity fisherman treated him as unnecessary, illustrating his powerlessness. He didn’t have the authority that one normally expects from a cop, perhaps because Brody wasn’t corrupt. Brody is the kind of law enforcer I wish we had in the world. He was a good man who cared more for the citizenry than he did for his job (especially apparent in Jaws 2).Brody became a (pun intended) “fish out of water.” The moment he left the mainland, he was out of his element. We didn’t see a bad-ass cop who was going to shoot a bunch of criminals, a la Dirty Harry, and never make us fear for his life. In Brody, we saw someone with whom we could identify, fear for.Much of the tension on the boat, The Orca, had to do with the class rivalry between Hooper and Quint. It was “old-school knowhow” versus “college-educated savvy.” Brody was caught in the middle.Now, in the highly readable novel by Peter Benchley, the tension was quite different. In the book, Hooper slept with Ellen, Brody’s wife. So, all while hunting the shark, Brody had to contend with feelings of jealousy over Hooper. It was a brilliant way to further isolate our brave police chief. Matt Hooper was the antagonist as well as the specialist needed to stop the shark. I’m glad that director Steven Spielberg cut this plot twist out, though, which wouldn’t have worked well in the movie. It worked in the book, for sure, and the dinner conversation between Hooper and Ellen was deeply erotic.Really, what I love about the movie Jaws is the way it gave us truly understandable plot complications. We can all “get” why the town wanted to keep the beaches open. It’s not a villainous motivation. When a shark kills tourists, the tourist industry goes away, and the town starves. The town feeds on tourists, so to speak, and that shark came along and snatched their source of nourishment. This was a movie without cut 'n' dry bad guys. The shark wasn't evil. The mayor wasn't evil. The only people who did anything intentionally malicious were those kids who swam around with rubber dorsal fins strapped to their backs, scaring tourists. And those were KIDS pulling that prank, so no real evil there.Jaws is so powerful a movie that even the nonsensical ending worked. If for some reason you have never watched Jaws, you might balk at how the shark meets its comeuppance. But I think that you will overall see the quality that went into this film. Jaws is one of those movies that inspired so much awe from this country that--like Star Wars--it deserves to be called great. But is it really a five-star movie? Even if it's not, it is.