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(Pleatherface) JAWS and the Birth of the Summer Blockbuster

By. Pleatherface

 

Summer is in full swing, the heat exacerbating a self-inflicted energy cost crisis. There is no better time to head outside and into the AC-cooled space of a local movie theater. Be it either a mall or the movie theater, for decades now people have escaped the heat and costs of cooling their home and pursue some easily digested entertainment. Which is why for this entry on horror, I’ll take a look on one of Hollywood’s most important films: JAWS. Please note I’ve phrased it this way because while an important film in the corpus of the film’s directors’ body of work, I argue it matters more for the business of movies than the artistry of film as a medium.

I love to see early films of established directors. It shows you the viewer a different side of them sometimes, often those who have a signature style will show the rough brush strokes of theirs while others may have evolved as visual and narrative artist in ways that depart greatly from those early products. I talked a bit about this with Burton in his short Vincent, and he clearly fell into the first camp. I can’t think of someone who would as easily fall into the second camp except maybe Steven Spielberg. His first movie was shot as a 17 year old with the support of friends and family, and his first “Hollywood” experience was The Sugarland Express (he had directed a TV movie called Duel between these two that saw a cinema release in 1983 as his fame exploded). But the film that marked his long road as one of Hollywood’s most powerful and successful directors was JAWS. JAWS was based on a book of the same name by Peter Benchley and released in 1974 (the year prior to the film). The movie stars Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw and Richard Dreyfuss as the main trio who take on a shark preying on swimmers in New England’s Amity Island (filmed on location at Martha’s Vineyard, MA). It is an important film for a couple of reasons, but for our concern the main on is that it ushered the era of the modern summer blockbuster; it had such an effective marketing campaign which in concert with the films quality (from both the filmmaker and actors efforts), turned it into one of the highest grossing films at the time and setting a template for studios to incessantly mimic to this day in an attempt to make money. If you look at the way in which we are bombarded with information on or why some films are so ubiquitous, JAWS is the reason why. Coupled with the realization, after Star Wars, that there was more to be made by exploiting the concepts/characters in a movie by mass producing non-film artefacts, films were no longer about just that which was shown on the screen. If a blueprint for the summer blockbuster/tentpole/whatever can be describes would be as follows: The film is produced usually with a “high concept” that can be easily put on an ad or parroted in the press, with a mid to high budget (probably nothing less than 100 million, though that number is growing quaint these days) and a star or big name attached to it that can be plastered on a poster, advertising will be focused on either the star/s or go grassroots if the name lacks that easy recognition, it will try to aim for a large release if possible with an opening day announced well in advance, ultimately the goal is to produce a strong opening that will feed subsequent enthusiasm. Critical acclaim then becomes secondary, which is what we see as an arguably central problem (artistically-speaking) with the IPfication of Hollywood: we don’t need you to like it, just that you are curious enough to get into the door; and by depending so much on early returns, we further remove the need for strong products as we aim to recoup before word-of-mouth tanks attendance. Horror is the one genre where this word-of-mouth is still a key ingredient in economic success. Jaws then was truly an outlier which is why it is hard for some to categorize it as horror.

While some may consider it at least horror-adjacent, and I would put myself in that camp as I will explain, it is often called a thriller or action film. I disagree due in part to two things I argue make it a horror film. The first is that it has an identifiable villain with no motivation except an unquenchable need to consume/kill; the second is in the way we are presented with the events of the film. Spielberg goes into considerable effort to establish a suffocating atmosphere that conspires with the sense of the unknown to elicit fear and dread in the viewer. The setting in an island creates a juxtaposition that is beautifully illustrated by the film’s photography of large expansive space but also closed off-ness if it makes sense. Furthermore, the scenes set in open sea betray the expansive waters by making the protagonists feel isolated and sticking them with limited or no ways to make their way through the shark’s home ground. Going back to the photography, Martha’s Vineyard offers a beautiful backstage to the action, Spielberg is amazing at setting thoughtful shots that can create a sense of calm that only serve to further enhance the surprise factor that make me think horror rather than action or adventure. This is also a great moment to sit back and offer the deserved props and praises to Spielberg for him and his production teams ingenuity in creating the final product. Even before I had ever seen the movie to its end, the myth around the production was something I was aware of as someone interested in the film industry. The most commonly repeated story was that of the shark being mostly of-camera due to the technical limitations of the animatronics comes to mind, as does the troubles that shooting at sea brought to the team – this is something of a rite of passage for any movie that is filmed primarily at sea. But the film was also a pioneer in other areas. For example, as Laurent Bouzereau mentioned in his book, “A Look Inside JAWS,” Bill Butler created equipment that aided the filming of underwater scenes. One last prop must go to John Williams. While most, including me, would associate horror with blood and gore, the combination of Spielberg and Williams (visuals and sound, even if the former was conditioned due to technical limitations) create that atmosphere that is the key to a strong horror film; that management of tension that slowly rises to a crescendo as the strings speed up in JAWS’ Theme can cause even the bravest to stop and turn and look behind them.   

Hollywood has spent decades chasing the next blockbuster, but not every ambitious studio experiment receives the same appreciation. Pleatherface revisits Dark Castle's HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL and THIR13EN GHOSTS, two stylish remakes that deserve another look.

Going back to my previous point, JAWS can be described as the gateway drug for the IPfication crisis that plagues the film industry to this day. This is not a knock or an attempt to diminish the value of the product itself, but rather an assessment of how the business side of the film industry has taken all the wrong lessons. While as stated the film is a solid outing for a prolific and talented director, it is nevertheless one of his least powerful visual or narrative efforts. Visually it cannot compare (mainly due to the technological limitations) with a Jurassic Park or even it’s closer relative-film in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. In my research, I came across a quote by Peter Biskind on the effect of marketing over the old modus operandi of depending on strong critical performance, JAWS, “diminished the importance of print reviews, making it virtually impossible for a film to build slowly, finding its audience by dint of mere quality.” He added that the other negative that came out of the film’s success was how it, “whet corporate appetites for big profits quickly, which is to say, studios wanted every film to be JAWS.” This has led to the great divide we see today in film production. Gone are the days of mid-budget, these days it is either an A24 small-budget flick or a $100+ million behemoth; as if film studios are – in a baseball analogy – either trying for a home run or taking a walk on base. We can add Thomas Schatz to those who agreed with Biskind, JAWS “recalibrated the profit potential of the Hollywood hit, and redefined its status as a marketable commodity and cultural phenomenon as well.” He also added that the film opened the door for the high-tech, high-cost spectacle film, essentially a precursor to Star Wars. A lesser spoken of lesson that came out of it was the low quality, cash grab sequel, or the IPfication of Hollywood. When the studio saw the massive return on the film, it greenlight a sequel that had a decent return; and also collaborated on a massive merchandising machine with the likes of Topps (trading cards) and Coca Cola (novelty collectible cups). The quality of sequels only went downhill and ended with a fourth installment called JAWS: The Revenge (the only sequel to not make a decent financial return).

My parting thoughts on this film? As a child of the 80’s I did not need to see the film to feel the fear of sharks. Such was the cultural phenomenon that JAWS was. The movie has had such a transcendental effect on film via copy-cats, on the business of film, and on pop culture via endless references (this itself a symptom of IPfication) that it cannot be left out of a list of the most relevant films ever made. And at to that heavy baggage the fact that it is a pretty good film, one that I would so far as to suggest is a great entry-point to those wanting to delve into horror.

Some horror films become cultural landmarks, while others are remembered for the wrong reasons. Davalyn's look at GOTHIKA revisits another studio horror film whose reputation has long overshadowed the ideas hiding beneath its supernatural surface.