THE BLACK SHEEP is an ongoing column featuring different takes on films that either the writer HATED, but that the majority of film fans LOVED, or that the writer LOVED, but that most others LOATH. We’re hoping this column will promote constructive and geek fueled discussion. Dig in!
JAWS: THE REVENGE (1987)
DIRECTED BY JOSEPH SARGENT
Oh boy. Flying sharks that roar like a goddamn grizzly?
Yes folks, we must have arrived at the jagged maw of JAWS: THE REVENGE, a movie so thoroughly slammed, panned, mocked and excoriated for featuring one of the all-time most ludicrous plot-lines ever cooked up by a major studio in Universal – that it damn near rendered one of the earliest Hollywood blockbuster franchises extinct!
Rightly so?
Oh hell no. Wait, wait a goddamn sec. Here me out.
While I fully understand the laughable lunacy JAWS 4 presents, and how little the producers think of the audience’s intelligence, I must say that I have always enjoyed THE REVENGE leaps and bounds more than I do the boring, painfully outmoded tech of JAWS 3D. Part of this no doubt comes from watching JAWS 4 as a wee child, one dumb enough to overlook the glaring inefficiencies of the movie, most notably that asinine premise. I mean, a Great White shark with an elephantine memory, who tracks and hunts the Brody family to the Bahamas from Martha’s Vineyard with vengeance on the mind? I get it, it’s indefensible!
Still, I don’t give a goddamn. I had an absolute blast of a time clocking this flick as an 8-10 year old, and will forever defend the flick, against my better adult judgment, as a F*cking Black Sheep if there ever was one!
Before we detail what actually does work in the film (yes, there is a solid sequence or two of actual merit), it might be wise to contextualize just how passionately hated JAWS THE REVENGE has become over the decades. Currently rated as the #27 film on the bottom rated 100 movies on IMDB, rocking a 2.9/10 user rating and a seemingly irredeemable 15/100 critical Metascore – it’s pretty clear that nobody likes the flick very much. Note the late Roger Ebert’s opening line of his review of the flick, in which he hilariously slapped the film with a big thumb down rather than even a paltry half-star rating: “Jaws the Revenge” is not simply a bad movie, but also a stupid and incompetent one – a ripoff.”
Again, few with two working eyeballs can disagree with this assessment in total, but I can tell you what about the flick startles (the two decent death scenes), and what about the film derives a level of oh-my-god-its-so-f*cking-terrible-I-can’t-look-away enjoyment. Thankfully, we needn’t look past the opening nighttime attack on young Sean Brody (Mitchell Anderson), which I will forever maintain is a genuinely harrowing sequence. Or, at least it was to my naive preadolescent eyes. The flick opens on Christmas Eve night on the vineyard, with local deputy Sean Brody dispatched to unhook a snagged boat in the harbor. Once he boards the sloop and peruses the area, little time is wasted before he’s ultimately accosted by the Brody-family-killing Great White Shark. Sean’s arm is gorily chomped off in a quick strike, leaving his rain-slicker in bloody tatters, with his utterly shocked reaction is as mortifying as the attack itself.
As the boat begins to sink from Bruce’s forceful impact and Sean begins to realize his horrific fate, director Joseph Sargent cuts back and forth between the vicious bloodletting as Sean howls in horror and the peaceful Christmas carolers; the synthesis of which creates a good amount of sympathy for Sean. In terms of plot, we’re not yet made privy to the fact that the shark, old Brucey, is targeting the Brody family specifically, and therefore we can judge, at least the first time seeing it, the opening on its own merits. Even after being informed of the dumb plot, I will honestly go to the grave believing that Sean’s death is a well crafted sequence that mounts the requisite level of tension and suspense. The fact that Sean’s alone at night, itself an original dynamic for a JAWS death sequence, crosscut against the yuletide cheer, the result is far better than the reputation of JAWS: REVENGE writ large.
Oh but then the actual story reveals itself, doesn’t it. Sheer idiocy! We get it. The killer shark who Chief Brody blew up with an explosive “Smile you son of a bitch” air tank, has apparently given birth to a baby Great White that vows to avenge its mother’s murder. Okie dokie. Bruce swims his ass from the cold waters of the East Coast to the warm shores of the Bahamas (actually shot in Hawaii), where he systematically hunts every Brody family member. Adult Michael (Lance Guest), his wife Carla (Karen Young), daughter Thea (Judith Barsi) are squarely placed in Brcue’s bulls-eye, with Mike’s aquatic research partner Jake (Mario Van Peebles) and wife Louisa (Lynn Whitfield) also endangered. Oh, and who can forget OG Ellen Brody (Lorrain Gray) and her romantic interest, Hoagie (Michael Caine), whose ridiculously excised subplot about smuggling dope onto the island could have made the movie an even better “Holy-F*ck-This-Movie-Sucks-So-Bad-Its-Good” legend. Legend I tell you!
As for Caine, dude has made no bones about doing this movie for a paycheck only, which he accepted without even reading the script, instead agreeing to do the movie when he saw the opening line: Fade in: Hawaii. His famous quote on the matter post-release:
"I have never seen it, but by all accounts it is terrible. However, I have seen the house that it built, and it is terrific."
Sheesh. Can’t front on that level of jaded cynicism. Regardless, in addition to the droll interplay between Mike and Jake, which, as a wee lad I enjoyed so much I actually wanted to change my name to Mario at one point (sadly not joking). “My-kull…stop busting my boongies!” The ridiculous Jamaican accent and little dreadlocks Van Peebles rocks is too damn funny to hate in the way the risible premise continues to be. Word is Van Peebles wrote his own part. And while there are only two fatalities in the film (Jake’s mysterious death notwithstanding, more below), there are a number of underwater chase sequences that, despite how ludicrous the shark appears to be in them, are actually pretty fun. In fact, when compared to JAWS 2 and JAWS 3, THE REVENGE revels in its silliness so much that, on the whole, it exudes far more fun than the others. Unthinkably dumb fun, but fun nonetheless.
The second sequence which still freaks me the f*ck out is the brutal banana boat attack and concomitant fatality. Seriously, if witnessed in a vacuum, unmarried from the nonsensical plot, the ferocious lunge out of the water is a legit “Holy Shite” moment. Never mind the fact Bruce leaps out of the water like a goddamn Orca, the shite’s intense! Part of it has to do with Thea’s near extinction, as the adult instructor right beside her is the one who gets nastily mandicated into a pulpy pool of grue. The slow motion framing and huge slavering teeth of Bruce are on full display, and if you weren’t thinking how stupid it is that Bruce is targeting yet another Brody, you might appreciate this death for what it is: a graphically visceral up-close onslaught from a prehistoric predator!
Okay, now here’s where it gets really personal for me. Why? Well, the alternate ending of JAWS THE REVENGE sort of f*cked me up as a kid. The first time I saw the movie, I witnessed the European version (now on subsequent DVD versions), which does not end with Jake’s gory underwater demise. In the version I first saw, the version Universal ordered to be filmed five days after the original ending was already released in theaters (WTFFFFF?), Jake survives the ridiculous shark attack (yes the one where Bruce stands on its tail and roars like a bear before being impaled by the ship’s mast) and paddles his way back to the other survivors. Okay, all good. Now cut years later when I saw the film again, still as a child, with the original ending intact, in which Jake does not survive, but dies an ultra-bloody underwater death.
The thing is, this was way before the days of the internet, much less DVDs, so the confusion as to what I saw, or thought I saw initially, haunted me for a like a goddamn decade. Seriously, this is the first time I learned about a what an alternate ending of a movie was, and couldn’t compute in my little birdbrain that I’d witnessed two different versions as a kid. I couldn’t fathom it. It got the point where I was going off memory alone, ensuring friends who saw the original ending that somewhere out there was a version where my man Jake did indeed survive. I was scorned, laughed at and dismissed just as quickly as this movie will forever be, and I even began questioning whether or not I’d imagined the whole damn thing to begin with. I’m telling you, this shite f*cked me up so bad that I couldn’t evict the Geto Boys’ My Mind Is Playing Tricks on Me from my brain! It was a freaky lesson in how movies work, and honestly, still kind of makes me uneasy anytime the film comes on TV and nears the ending. The suspense lacking in the movie itself is always made up for me by the sheer mystery of what ending will be broadcast. Will Jake plummet to his death or miraculously come floating back to safety? Somehow this still haunts my nine-year-old self!
Look, no one is arguing that JAWS: THE REVENGE is a remotely good movie. However, I’d argue it’s better than JAWS 3D, or at least more fun and entertaining. And if you had the nostalgic association with the film since a child, as I did, the movie is likely all the more forgivable as an adult. It’s a F*cking Black Sheep of a franchise killer that, despite its horrendous reputation, is still more amusing to watch than the insipid cottage industry of SyFy Channel SHARKNADO entries and offshoots. THE REVENGE may not deserve to own the JAWS namesake, but it’s more enjoyable than it’s been perceived over the past 32 years!