Arachnophobia (1990)

ARACNOPHOBIA (1990) ***1/2
Arachnophobia is another one of those movies from the late ’80s or early ’90s that I must have watched a hundred times back when it first played on cable TV.

File it alongside such movies as Back to the Future 2, the first two Bill & Ted movies Excellent Adventure and Bogus Journey, The Great Outdoors, Gremlins 2, Terminator 2, Total Recall, Tremors, and Young Guns. Those are the ones that quickly come to mind.

Recently revisiting Arachnophobia again for the first time in many years, I have to admit that I remembered a good number of the scenes, especially during the second half of the film when the spiders go wild on the fictional small town Canaima, California. I blurted out John Goodman’s line before his exterminator character Delbert McClintock says Rock and roll! I had a lot of fun with it around the age of 13 and I still had a lot of fun with it at 44.

You can have a good old time with Arachnophobia, just like Tremors, because it doesn’t go too far into extreme gross-out territory with the shock moments and death scenes, it has predominantly quirky and likable characters that you can support for the length of a silly, spooky monster movie, it straddles that razor-thin line successfully between comedy and horror, and it enjoys preying upon our fear of the unknown. I don’t have arachnophobia, or an extreme or irrational fear of spiders, but that doesn’t necessarily mean I want a surprise in my size 12 shoe either.

Arachnophobia gives us a lot of familiar character archetypes.

For example, we have the highly educated big city doctor with the loving wife and two small children who relocate to a small town to get away from all the hustle and bustle. They have his new practice, her severance pay, and they also have each other. It goes without saying, of course, that our doctor suffers from arachnophobia.

The crusty old doctor who takes back his retirement after the young doctor and his family already made their move into a new house and who then seemingly opposes the young doctor at every turn during his subsequent effort to set up shop in the small town. He’s also the resident disbeliever when the spiders begin mounting their body count, and the younger doctor wants an outrageous autopsy because he doesn’t believe it was a heart attack.

The local head law enforcement officer who resents somebody like the highly educated big city doctor.

The straight-shooting but friendly old widow who takes an instant shining to the young doctor and who volunteers to be his first patient in a new town.

The football coach and his wholesome All-American family and the funeral home director and his penchant for jokes that never quite land.

Also, the world’s foremost expert on spiders, who Arachnophobia introduces before any of the small-town characters with a prologue set in Venezuela.

See, Dr. James Atherton (Julian Sands) and crew discover a new species of spiders, very large and very deadly, and one of the specimens hitches a ride in the coffin of his first victim Jerry Manley (Mark L. Taylor), a photographer from Canaima, California.

Our lethal spider makes his way out from the coffin and ultimately into the barn of the young doctor named Ross Jennings (Jeff Daniels). He crossbreeds with a local domestic spider that Jennings’ wife saves from their new house and relocates to their barn. The Jennings not only have the barn but also the cellar that’s very convenient for spiders and their nests, and their eventual world domination.

Daniels has been one of the most reliable actors in the movies, and his presence almost guarantees quality. His 88 acting credits include Terms of Endearment, The Purple Rose of Cairo, Something Wild, Gettysburg, Speed, Dumb and Dumber, Pleasantville, The Squid and the Whale, and The Martian. He’s very good as Jennings and this character and performance come across to the audience like Roy Scheider as Martin Brody in Jaws because he’s terrified by spiders just like Brody was not the biggest fan of water. In the end, though, it’s Jennings and Brody who overcome their greatest fears.

Goodman attempts to steal the movie with great moment after great moment. He’s a strong and steady injection of humor especially when the horror kicks into overdrive around the midpoint of the 110-minute film. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out if Goodman’s Delbert McClintock and Michael Gross’ Burt Gummer are related.

I prefer Tremors over Arachnophobia, because Kevin Bacon and Fred Ward are absolutely fantastic and trump any of the characters in Arachnophobia, Finn Carter’s Rhonda LeBeck is not cast aside for large chunks of the movie like Harley Jane Kozak’s Molly Jennings, and I just think it’s a better overall movie.

Both films, though, do a fine cinematic tradition justice.

Jaws in 3D (1975 / 2022)

JAWS IN 3D (1975 / 2022) ****
When I first read the announcement Jaws 3D would be released to theaters in early September 2022, I mistook it for the Jaws 3-D from 1983 and I thought why in the bloody hell anybody would unleash that bloody awful movie once again … Just when you thought it was safe to go back in a movie theater … because there couldn’t be that much interest really in a third-rate Jaws movie.

I watched Jaws for the first time on the big screen in June 2020, sitting between my wife Lynn on the left and my mom on the right. We ate lunch beforehand at a place called Sharky’s Pub and Grub, and they might even have a Jaws poster. Just when you thought it was safe to go into a restaurant. My stepdaughter Emily and her friend watched E.T.

Jaws is another one of those movies that I would stop and watch every time I would come across it on cable TV, whether it played on TBS or TNT or part of a Jaws marathon 4th of July weekend on one of the premium channels.

Anyway, I decided to watch Jaws in 3D on Saturday, Sept. 3, which just happened to be National Cinema Day. $3 tickets for every showing, every showtime, every format. I had never seen the multiplex so busy; the theater had all hands on deck, and apparently 8.1 million people attended theaters across the nation on that day. Despite not being the biggest 3D fan, I thought why not bloody Jaws, of course a movie not originally in 3D, at that relatively budget price. There was a decent-sized crowd for this 47-year-old blockbuster pioneer, and they remained mostly quiet except for a couple of the most famous shock moments.

I thought it was a great experience, not only because I got to keep the glasses.

I long considered Jaws a very good movie, an ideal one to watch on cable TV when you just want to laze around and watch a movie, but after the last two times I’ve seen it in a movie theater, Jaws has dramatically increased in stature. It’s a great movie.

First and foremost, I appreciate Roy Scheider as Police Chief Martin Brody, Robert Shaw as Quint, and Richard Dreyfuss as Matt Hooper more every single time I watch Jaws.

Three great characters, three great performances, and they are something the other three Jaws films obviously lack. Scheider returns as Brody for Jaws 2, but it’s not the same.

George Burns (The Sunshine Boys) beat out Brad Dourif (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest), Burgess Meredith (The Day of the Locust), Chris Sarandon (Dog Day Afternoon), and Jack Warden (Shampoo) for Best Supporting Actor at the 1976 Academy Awards, but none of them approach Shaw’s work in Jaws.

Shaw makes an unlikable character likable by not even trying to be likable, and we feel his death scene more than just about any other in movie history. It is truly a horrifying moment, and despite the fact that I’ve watched Jaws 50, 75, 100, however many times, I still don’t want to see Quint lose his grip and slide right into the mouth of that great white shark.

Recently, I mentioned the incredible chemistry between Fred Ward and Kevin Bacon in Tremors. Scheider and Dreyfuss have a similar chemistry as Brody and Hooper, and I’m glad Jaws made Hooper infinitely more likable, excised Hooper’s extramarital affair with Brody’s wife, and let him survive along with Brody in the movie.

Shaw and Dreyfuss are great together, especially when they’re landing jabs and throwing shade at each other.

At one point in Jaws, Hooper describes the shark, and he could just as well be talking about Jaws itself and its capacity to make thrills, What we are dealing with here is a perfect engine, an eating (thrill) machine. It’s really a miracle of evolution. All this machine does is swim and eat and make little sharks (thrills), and that’s all.

Of course, that’s not all with Jaws, a truly scary classic that also generates lots of laughter and lots of emotion.

Jaws 2 (1978)

JAWS 2 (1978) **1/2
I feel like I owe both Jaws 2 overall and specifically the killer great white shark in Jaws 2 a big apology.

Not a great big apology, though, but let’s go back in time.

When I reviewed Jaws 2 back in 2019, I gave the film two and the killer great white shark three stars, the former rating averaged from the shark’s three stars and the human characters’ one star. I wrote that review based on memory from having seen it so, so, so many times over the years, rather than a fresh viewing.

After revisiting Jaws 2 for the first time in several years, I have bumped the shark to three-and-a-half and the human characters to one-and-a-half, averaging out to two-and-a-half stars.

I still think Jaws 2 has the same fundamental strengths and weaknesses, though I found the strengths a little bit stronger and the weaknesses a little bit less weak this latest watch.

The great white shark in Jaws 2, plain and simple, it’s one bad mother- (Shut your mouth!) But I’m talking ’bout Bruce Two! (Then we can dig it!)

Though a major step down from the original in just about every conceivable way, Jaws 2 still made a strong killing financially because it had a hard sell advertising campaign centered around the immortal tagline Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water; because, just as Yogurt said in Spaceballs, Merchandising, merchandising, where the real money from the movie is made; and because, let’s face it, people wanted more shark and more shark attacks.

Jaws obviously did not satisfy the public demand for shark attacks captured on celluloid.

Released nearly three years later to the day, Jaws 2 serves up a shark attack every 10-15 minutes, just so we’re not completely bored stiff by a plot that rehashes one of the worst elements of the original Jaws and substitutes adult characters for a steady procession of teeny boppers who together do not make up for Quint and Hooper.

Jaws 2 introduces a syndrome … called none other than the Jaws 2 Syndrome.

That’s where a sequel takes the worst or one of the worst plot elements of the original film and does it again, only even worse, usually a lot worse.

We remember the infuriating mayor and the infuriating small town businesspeople and their infuriating desire to keep the beaches open in Jaws.

They’re even more infuriating in Jaws 2, set four years after the events of the first movie, especially in the form of the super sleazy town official and all-purpose wheeler dealer Len Peterson (Joseph Mascolo). Peterson only compounds our dislike of this character with his obvious lusting after Sheriff Brody’s wife Ellen (Lorraine Gary).

We’re not even rewarded with a death scene for Peterson, because, generally speaking, business interests and power brokers survive Jaws films.

Presented with photographic evidence of a shark, Peterson and his cronies on the town council dismiss it as seaweed, mud, something on the lens and they fire Sheriff Brody (Roy Scheider) not long after his public meltdown on a crowded beach.

We all know too well that Sheriff Brody and the killer shark are destined for a final showdown, so it is very frustrating (and infuriating, once again) to see Sheriff Brody put through the proverbial ringer in the middle section of Jaws 2.

Scheider did not want to have anything to do with Jaws 2 whatsoever and reports have it the human star of the movie thought he would be overshadowed by the shark. He’s right, exactly right, because the shark and the shark attacks absolutely steal the show. The shark is the greatest character in Jaws 2, despite Scheider’s best efforts as Sheriff Brody.

Jaws gives us five great characters in Sheriff Brody, Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss), Quint (Robert Shaw), Mayor Vaughn (Murray Hamilton), and the shark.

Brody and Vaughn return in Jaws 2, but they are overshadowed by the shark, Hooper did not return, and Quint certainly did not return after that ending in Jaws.

Instead, we have a bunch of nattering (or screaming) teenagers, who are still better characters than any in Jaws 3 and Jaws: The Revenge.

Jaws 2 (1978)

JAWS 2

JAWS 2 (1978) Two stars
When you watch JAWS 2, you just get the feeling that human star Roy Scheider wasn’t a happy camper during the film’s production.

Then you read more about the film and you find out that it’s true.

Scheider had a multi-picture agreement with Universal, makers of the JAWS films, and when he left THE DEER HUNTER, Universal made a deal with Scheider that if he did JAWS 2, it would be counted as the two films remaining on his contract. Fundamental problem: Scheider did not want to appear in JAWS 2.

We can feel Scheider’s resentment on the screen.

Scheider clashed with director Jeannot Szwarc to the point that it produced a physical confrontation between the men. They even carried it over into letters.

Scheider: “Working with Jeannot Szwarc is knowing he will never say he is sorry or ever admitting he overlooked something. Well, enough of that shit for me!”

Szwarc: “Time and pressure are part of my reality and priorities something I must deal with.

“You have been consulted and your suggestions made part of my scenes many times, whenever they did not contradict the overall concept of the picture.

“If you have to be offended, I deplore it, for no offense was meant. At this point in the game, your feelings or my feelings are immaterial and irrelevant, the picture is all that matters.”

When you’re watching JAWS, you don’t get the sense of a troubled production.

We do throughout JAWS 2.

Despite all that behind-the-scenes hullabaloo, also including a change of director and more technical difficulties with that damn mechanical shark, JAWS 2 became a huge financial success as it racked up nearly $78 million at the box office. Why? A hard sell advertising campaign centered around the immortal tagline “Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water”; “Merchandising, merchandising, where the real money from the movie is made,” in the words of SPACEBALLS; and, let’s face it, at that point in time, folks wanted more of the shark and JAWS 2 delivers “more shark.”

In fact, I give the shark in JAWS 2, oh, let’s see here, three stars, maybe three-and-a-half stars on a charitable day.

The people in JAWS 2, though, sink to one star.

Averaging out both numbers gives JAWS 2 two stars.

Yes, the characters in JAWS 2 (and the following sequels) suck.

The fundamental difference between JAWS and its sequels: JAWS gives audiences three great characters in Chief Brody (Scheider), Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss), and Quint (Robert Shaw). Amity mayor Larry Vaughn (Murray Hamilton), why he’s not too far behind. You care about the characters in JAWS.

Brody and Vaughn return in JAWS 2, but they’re competing against the shark and other less interesting human characters.

Instead of the core of adults in JAWS, we have an endless array of teeny boppers in JAWS 2 who just can’t hold a candle to Hooper and Quint. Dreyfuss did not return for the sequel, as he and JAWS director Steven Spielberg made CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND. And it’s quite obvious why Quint’s not back for JAWS 2.

All we need to know about the plot of JAWS 2 is that it’s the namesake of “The Jaws 2 Syndrome,” or when a sequel repeats the worst element of the original movie. We all know that Chief Brody will have to take out the shark, but the ringer it runs him through en route does more than try our patience, it’s blowed up real good.

Jaws (1975)

day 23, jaws

JAWS (1975) Three-and-a-half stars
Steven Spielberg’s JAWS wanted to do for sharks what Alfred Hitchcock’s PSYCHO did for showers 15 years earlier.

Like PSYCHO, JAWS became a game-changing motion picture and it’s been analyzed, overanalyzed, parodied, and satirized, and it spawned many clones and rip-offs with just about every animal turned into a relentless killer.

It’s known as the first summer blockbuster film (released on June 20, 1975), I mean it even says so in the Guinness Book of World Records, “Not only did people queue up around the block to see the movie, it became the first film to earn $100 million at the box office.”

Before 1975, summers were traditionally reserved for dumping insignificant fluff.

Based on Peter Benchley’s best-selling novel, JAWS tells a pulp story: a great white shark terrorizes Amity Island, a summer resort community, and transplanted city policeman Sheriff Brody (Roy Scheider) wants to close off the beaches but he runs into much resistance from Mayor Larry Vaughn (Murray Hamilton), who of course fears the loss of tourist revenue more than he does a great white shark. Eventually, though, Brody, along with preppy Ichthyologist Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) and grizzled old man of the sea Quint (Robert Shaw), attempts to hunt down and kill the great white aboard Quint’s ship, the Orca.

The film and the novel are different in several fundamental ways: Hooper and Brody’s wife do not have an affair in the film; Mayor Vaughn’s squeezed by the mafia in the novel and not simply local business interests; newspaper man Harry Meadows plays a bigger role in the novel; Quint’s made a survivor of the World War II USS Indianapolis; Hooper escapes death in the film; Quint dies by drowning in the novel; in the film, Brody kills the shark by shooting a compressed air tank inside the creature’s jaws, of course.

Spielberg said that he rooted for the shark the first time he read Benchley’s novel because he found the human characters unlikeable.

Normally, books are credited for having stronger characterizations than their screen adaptations.

That’s not the case with JAWS.

In fact, none of the subsequent JAWS films could match the characterizations of Brody, Hooper, and Quint and performances by Scheider, Dreyfuss, and Shaw. We have three indelible characters who stay within our hearts and minds just as much as the image of the great white shark.

Scheider and Dreyfuss appeared to have great chemistry together, just like there seemed to be real tension between Dreyfuss and Shaw.

Universal had Scheider bent over a barrel after he dropped out two weeks before filming started on THE DEER HUNTER, due to “creative differences,” and so they forced Scheider into starring in JAWS 2. Scheider’s performance in JAWS 2 suggests a very, very unhappy person and his conflicts with director Jeannot Szwarc must have only contributed to Scheider’s apparent misery.

Dreyfuss passed on JAWS 2 because Spielberg did not direct it; they made CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND together instead. Of course, there were obvious difficulties in Quint returning for JAWS 2.

JAWS 2 gives us a bunch of teeny boppers and repeats the basic plot of the first movie, JAWS 3-D sinks even more into a morass of mediocrity (how bad must you be to be disowned by the next JAWS film), and JAWS THE REVENGE, well, it gives us the first shark movie designed for geriatric consumption. To be honest, JAWS THE REVENGE defies the suspension of disbelief beyond belief and becomes one of the worst bad movies ever made.

Necessity became the mother of invention for JAWS, because of the numerous technical difficulties with the mechanical shark that became known as Bruce, named after Spielberg’s lawyer, or alternately “the great white turd.” Spielberg wanted to show the shark a lot sooner, but instead the film took on more Val Lewton proportions than the average horror movie. JAWS relies heavily on John Williams’ famous musical score to substitute for the shark.

The JAWS sequels utilized the mechanical shark far more often and much earlier on, honestly to their detriment. Less is more and more is less.

I always love it when horror movies take on more than just being a horror movie. At times, especially when our three protagonists are stuck on that damn boat together, JAWS becomes grand adventure and an unexpected comedy.