JAWS at 50: "A Personal JAWStory"

A Personal JAWStory

By D.M. Anderson

It’s hard to believe Jaws is turning 50 this year. It was a watershed moment in movie history and I remember it like it was yesterday. If you weren’t around in the summer of 1975, you can’t imagine the impact it had on everybody. Not just audiences, but on popular culture. The first true summer blockbuster, Jaws scared the bejeezus out of damn near everybody, so much that many won’t even venture into the ocean to this day (including yours truly).

To kick off Free Kittens Movie Guide’s celebration of Jaws’ Anniversary, I thought I’d share my own recollections of seeing it for the first time. The movie may be turning 50, but my personal Jaws-iversary is about 49.5 years because it was months before my mother agreed to let me see it.

I was 11 when Jaws opened in three local Portland theaters, the Southgate Quad, Town Center Tri-Cinema and the Foster Road Drive-In (all of which are now long gone). Based on all the TV spots, newspaper ads and the enthusiasm of my friends who saw it first, Jaws was numero uno on my gotta-see list. 

Mom shot down those plans pretty swiftly. “Absolutlely not. A friend at work told me a dog gets eaten, and a dead man is floating in the water with no eyes.”

This was still a few years before defying her authority was an option. I was heartbroken. There it was, the mother of all movies, the cinematic Holy Grail playing at the Southgate theater only five miles away, rendered forbidden fruit by my mother. Sure, I knew the whole story already, regaled by friends whose parents had no objections to letting them see it. But because it was rendered off limits, Jaws became the only movie I wanted to see. In ensuing months, I would occasionally beg Mom again, hoping she’d change her mind, but was always met with a stern no. She’d offer the same reason almost every time: “That’s not the kind of movie a kid should see.”

On rare occasions when I felt brave, I’d counter with, “But it’s rated PG. You’ve let me watch PG movies before, like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.”

“Butch Cassidy never devoured the Sundance Kid,” she said, probably proud of her response. “Jaws is a horror movie, and you’re not going to see a horror movie about a fish that eats people. It‘ll give you nightmares.”

The Oregonian's ad for Jaws on opening day, June 20, 1975.

It was at this time I’d usually sulk back to my room, not understanding her reasoning. I’d watched lots of horror movies before, but for some reason she had a problem with Jaws. And with my limited debating skills, I was unable to convey how much it meant to me to actually see a fish eat people.

Then in November, on my 12th birthday, Mom finally decided it was okay for me to invite a couple of friends to see Jaws at the Southgate Quad. I’m still not sure what prompted her sudden change-of-heart. Perhaps it was Dad’s idea, thinking it would be nice for he and Mom to have the house to themselves for a few hours (which didn’t happen often). If that was the case…eew.

By this time, the film had been out for six months. Everyone else and their dog had already seen it, including my two friends, but that didn’t matter. After months of hype and hearing everything second-hand, I finally got to see this pop culture phenomenon for myself.

The Southgate Quad Cinema, where Jaws played for almost a year in Portland, Oregon.

And just in case anyone reading this is like my mother and has never seen it…Jaws takes place in the fictional coastal town of Amity (in real life, Martha’s Vineyard), where a 25-foot great white shark starts attacking swimmers. In order to save this vacation town from financial ruin, sheriff Martin Brody (Roy Scheider), shark expert Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) and loony charter captain Quint (Robert Shaw) set out on a rickety fishing boat to kill the shark. That’s the movie in a nutshell, and while it doesn’t sound like much on paper, the story is so masterfully told that it rightfully made a superstar out of young director Steven Spielberg. We don’t even see the shark until about halfway through, which made it even scarier (it has been well-documented that the decision not to show the animal too much stemmed from the fact the mechanical shark broke down pretty often).

The final act (onboard the fishing boat) is still one of the most relentless and entertaining third acts ever made. And who really cares if you can’t actually blow up a three ton shark by shooting the scuba tank lodged in its mouth? It’s sure as hell a better ending than the one offered by original Jaws author Peter Benchley, where the shark simply rolls over and dies. By the way, if you never read the original novel, don’t bother. It sucks.

To this day, Jaws is one of the few movies that lived up to all the hype…and then some. We’ve all gotten amped-up to see uber-promoted blockbusters only to walk out of the theater thinking, “So what?” But Jaws was everything I hoped it would be: scary, funny, surprising. It was not the shocking gore-fest Mom feared - only five people are actually killed - and the poor little pooch she was so worried about doesn‘t die onscreen…in fact, it’s only implied that he dies. 

There is that jolting scene of one victim’s head popping at the screen with an eye missing, which scared me so bad my popcorn went flying, but Jaws was always more than just a “gotcha” horror movie (I personally don't consider it a horror movie at all...more of an action-adventure tale that simply happens to make some folks pee their pants). Leaving the theater, I felt like I saw just something special, more than just another flick my parents dropped me off to see while they went shopping (or have the house to themselves...again, eew). In ensuing years, not too many movies gave me that same rush, and the last movie to hit me with the impact of Jaws was Pulp Fiction.

But as my mom feared, the movie did give me nightmares. After coming home from the movie on my 12th birthday, some time during the night I crept into my parents’ room and crawled into bed with them. Man, that guy with his eyeball missing really did freak me out.

Jaws played for damn near a year at the Southgate theater, where I watched it twice. Then when the movie finally made its way to the second-run theaters in town, I caught it three more times (some of you younguns might have to Google ‘second-run theater’). This makes Jaws the movie I’ve seen on the big screen more than any other.

50 years later, I still think it is the greatest film of all time. Sure, like any kid, something shiny & new would come along to briefly takes its place, like Star Wars or Escape from New York or Halloween. But then I’d revisit Jaws again and back to the top of the list it would swim. For me, Jaws isn’t just a great film; it remains a nearly perfect film.