JAWS (1975) Review

Directed by: Steven Spielberg
Written by: Peter Benchley, Carl Gottlieb
Starring: Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw, Richard Dreyfuss, Murray Hamilton, Lorraine Gary

"DON'T GO IN THE WATER"

JAWS? On a slasher blog? Have I gone insane? Well maybe I have but my state of mind has nothing to do with my thinking that this is an appropriate movie to review on a slasher blog, and if you bear with me hopefully I can try and elaborate as to just why JAWS has a place here. Everybody knows that Spielberg's killer shark flick is what kickstarted the whole summer blockbuster movement and it had some pretty far-reaching influences and consequences when it was released (not least of all the paranoia and misinformation about sharks it filled its audience with) but what a lot of people don't seem to recognize is that JAWS (or at least the first two thirds of JAWS) pretty much follows the slasher template with some minor adjustments. And remember, John Carpenter's HALLOWEEN wouldn't come along for another 3 years.

Going over the plot to JAWS is probably a little pointless as I expect everybody in the world to have seen this movie at least once, but let's do it anyway. At the very least it will help fill out this post a bit more.
Amity Island is popular tourist spot, a real summer hotspot. Golden beaches, bronzed bodies and bikini babes are what the island is known for and the town makes most of its income from the summer vacationers who come to visit the picturesque coastal location. But this summer in the lead-up to the fourth of July there's an unwanted summer vacationer who's come to visit. A great white shark has decided to call Amity home and is indiscriminately chomping down on any unwitting people who happen to wander into its path. Police chief Brody (Scheider) has to try to stop the shark from munching down any more tourists while struggling against the mayor (Hamilton) and his cronies who will do anything to keep the money-making vacationers in Amity.

In talking about JAWS as a proto-slasher I want to focus on a few key points of the film. First of all is the killer, in this case being a shark instead of your usual human (or humanoid) villain. Powerful, terrifying and seemingly unstoppable, the shark is the epitome of what a slasher villain should be. Sure it uses its teeth as a weapon instead of the more conventional knives or machetes or whatnot, but they serve the same purpose.
Another common slasher element is the well known and now well used POV shot from the perspective of the killer. HALLOWEEN used it, FRIDAY THE 13TH used it, hell just about every slasher film ever made has used it at least once, and it's used here to great effect.

JAWS also happens to make good use of the leitmotif, in fact it's probably one of the best and most memorable of all time. Everybody knows that when that 'duh dum, duh dum' starts getting faster there's going to be some blood in the water. And of course the leitmotif is a tool used by a number of slasher movies, probably most notably FRIDAY THE 13TH with that iconic 'ch-ch-ch ah-ah-ah'. Is it a direct influence from JAWS? No, but I thought it would be worth mentioning anyway. JAWS is in my humble opinion a definite proto-slasher, and you could even go on to say that JAWS 2 is even closer to a slasher. But that's a discussion for another day.