Jaws 1975
This was one of the first really scary movies I got to see, mostly because it was HUGE. People were screaming in the theater. It was an amazing phenomenon and everyone had the t-shirt or poster. I don’t know if I bought it on VHS, but I bought it on DVD and again on Blu-ray. The 25th anniversary DVD had a lot of great extras including some new interviews and retrospectives. The Blu-ray doesn’t have much new material (still no commentary track), but they did go back and re-scan the movie for high definition and 7.1 sound back in 2012. It really does look great. The restoration documentary shows all of the damage they had to fix and I am thinking they couldn’t try to keep one really pristine copy?
The movie still totally holds up today. You feel like most of the movie happens out on the boat, but really the first half is all on land with the initial shark attacks. The movie is famous for having been difficult to make, with a buggy robot shark that forced them to shoot around showing the shark, which in turn just made the movie that much more suspenseful. The soundtrack was perfectly integrated into the movie and the core stars of Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss, and Robert Shaw played off of each other perfectly as they realize they aren’t hunting the unseen shark so much as it is hunting them. I have watched the movie a few times over the years and am always amazed at how good it is, even if some of the elements in the setup show Spielberg is still kind of new at this. The big thing about the movie is its monster success let Spielberg go on to do pretty much anything he wanted. And what he wanted to do was Close Encounters, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and E.T., which weren’t too shabby either.
Written: 22 Apr 2018
Owned on: Blu-ray, DVD, Digital