#78 Jaws: The Revenge (1987) (Colin)

Sequels are no strangers to our list so far.  We've had the completely confusing and nothing to do with the previous film, Highlander 2; the budget slashing end of a tired franchise, Superman IV; and the boring, non-action snoorefest, Speed 2.  One thing they all have in common is that they have been nowhere near the standard of the original movie.  Therefore it came as no surprise when yet another sequel appeared on our list, although this time the original movie is frequently regarded as an all time classic.

In 1975 Jaws was released to huge critical acclaim and financial success.  John Williams score sets up the suspense and drama beautifully, Ray Scheider gives a masterful performance as Chief Brody and even the shark itself looked darn good. It was a truly magnificent movie and quite rightly appears near to or at the top of many best film of all time lists.

2 more movies followed and although none recaptured the feel and success of the original, both are decent sequels.  Surely then we are on safe ground and the fourth Jaws movie will be an OK addition to the franchise?

I'm afraid not.....

#78 Jaws: The Revenge

Largely ignoring the events of Jaws 3, we start by learning that our hero from the original movie, Chief Brody, has died of a heart attack.  His son, Sean, (Mitchell Anderson), has now joined the Amity police and is called to remove a log from a buoy, (Ooer missus!).  When he puts his arm in the water to retrieve the log, Jaws promptly rips it off and then drags Sean under, killing him.

Sean's mum, Ellen Brody, (played again by Lorraine Gray), is convinced that the shark has singled out Sean and is seeking revenge against her family for the deaths of the other sharks in the previous movies.  Ellen's other son, Michael, (Lance Guest), suggests taking her back to his family home in the Bahamas.  Having spent a whole morning grieving for the horrific loss of her son, she decides to go.  They are flown to the islands by Hoagie, (Michael Caine), a chirpy chappie who seems to immediately fall for Ellen.  Ellen, who is still racked with loss, seems to take a shine to him too.  At this point no one seems to have buried Sean, but hey, a minor point.

Once in the Bahamas, Michael goes back to work as a marine biologist to Ellen's horror.  She wants none of the family to be anywhere near the water which is a bit rich as she continues to live in a coastal town and has just agreed to spend an indefinite amount of time at Michael's ocean view house.  On Michael's boat, the inevitable happens and Jaws attacks, everyone survives but the boat has a nice shark shaped teeth bite out of it.

Michael and his colleague Jake, (Mario Van Peebles), manage to attach a tracker unit to the shark when it returns a few days later.  So good is their device that Jaws manages to go unnoticed towards the coast and promptly chomps down on a banana boat, killing someone who was not a major part of the storyline.  Ellen Brody witnesses this attack and decides she's blooming well had enough and that she is going to put an end to all of this bother.

Stealing Michael's boat, she sets about trying to locate Jaws.  Michael, Jake and Hoagie discover this and Hoagie flies them to the boat, landing his plane in the water.  Jaws decides he only likes 'plane' food and starts to feast on Hoagie's plane, meanwhile Michael and Jake swim to the boat and give Ellen a jolly good ticking off.  Hoagie also manages to swim aboard and all 4 set about a plan to stop Jaws.

Michael and Jake somehow, (I kinda lost the plot at this point), send electrical impulses to the shark, (I'm guessing through that faulty device), which disorientates it and sends it towards them.  Jaws picks Jake up gently with his razor sharp teeth and drags him under.  Michael continues to send the electrical impulses, gets a nice bomb ready, Ellen spears Sharky with the boat and somehow everything comes together and we have a ton of fresh shark meat.  Yum.

Jake, presumed dead, comes back to the surface, everyone is OK and the waters are safe once again.  And so ends one of the most ludicrous, daft and disappointing sequels of all time!

So what is the problem with this movie?  Well, for once the cast is not the issue.  Gray successfully reprises her role as Ellen and plays the worried mother and grieving widow to great effect.  The notion of a shark singling her family out is off course stupid, but this is not Gray's fault and was something she had to work with.  Guest is also not bad and he gives a good performance in the lead role.  Caine was just there for the money, but still managed to portray a likeable, fun character in Hoagie.  I genuinely didn't want him to die when it looked like he had had his chips with his plane in the water and Jaws attacking.  I could easily volunteer any of the support cast to swap places with him!

There is an issue with the shark death count.  Bearing in mind that this is the fourth installment in the franchise and by now you would expect the deaths to get more elaborate, brutal and plentiful, 2 deaths for the movie is frankly, not enough.  I really felt cheated and like I did not get enough bang for my buck.  The best death by far is Deputy Brody's arm tearing off followed by the dragging under.  Although there is a major problem with this scene.  Brody, upon losing said arm, sits back on the deck of his boat screaming in agony, looking at the bloodied, torn jacket where an arm once was.  Unfortunately, we can see quite clearly that the actor has just hidden his arm under his jacket and it is as painful as supposedly getting your arm bitten off, that the arm is still there!

The other shark death was just stupid and seemed to involve Jaws floating on the surface and gently nibbling away at this women.  If you look closely, you can clearly see the actress putting her foot delicately into Jaw's mouth and the whole scene is badly staged and poorly done.

In fact poorly done sums up this movie quite well.  Everything is poorly done.  For example, explaining Michael's fiancee, Tiffany, out of the movie, (she's under sedation), in an off the cuff manner, (there could have been good scenes as both widows come to terms with their loss and how Tiffany could have reacted to Ellen's theory of the shark targeting the Brody's).  Or in Hoagie's airplane, the background is obviously bluescreen and not a good version of it either, but in one particular scene it is really bad.  The actors in the plane are all acting as if they are on a nice straight smooth flight.  Outside the window it clearly shows the background suggesting that they start off nice, straight and low, but then it ascends quickly, (as if taking off from a runway), and the horizon does a 45 degrees!  Meanwhile the characters are all still enjoying a nice smooth level ride!

The end is visually very poor as the cast are quite clearly in a water tank!  The sky is appears to be painted on fabric, (with heavy grey and black clouds, a bit odd for the Bahamas?).  This becomes obvious because the 'sky' has visible folds in it and ruffles!  This brings us nicely onto one of the biggest problems with the look of the movie, as a sky that is made of fabric I could forgive, but a shark?  Well no I can't forgive that!

In our last movie, Robot Monster, they spent about $16,000 on their effects, the makers of Jaws: The Revenge seem to have spent considerably less.  Jaws looks terrible and I think it is a major achievement for the effects team to make a shark look less realistic that the 1975 version 12 years earlier.

In nearly every scene you can see the rods which work Jaws, the rails under the water in which he 'swims' and in one scene, Jaws' fin is clearly wobbly and looks like a small sail in a strong breeze.  The scenes in which Jaws is hunting Michael in a shipwreck are the best examples of just how bad this shark looks.  Along with the visible rods is the very clearly visible stitching of the rubber skin!  The back of Jaws to the end of his tail looks more like a sofa cushion than a shark.  All in all, the animatronics are so bad in this movie that they might as well have cast Big Mouth Billy Bass as Jaws, (see if you can spot the difference below):

But for all of the bad effects and cheap feel of the movie, the one thing that stands out and the most obvious reason for why this film is so bad, is the plot.  A shark, hell bent on revenge, seeks out the family of the person he feels is responsible for the deaths of his sharky pals.  Really?  Did they not sit in the ideas meeting, read this out loud and think, 'actually we may have gone a bit too far here'.

Let's take Deputy Brody's death at the beginning of the movie.  Sean had to clear the log from the buoy because the coastguard was unavailable and the other officer was attending a cow tipping incident.  This is why Sean was where he was and according to the plot we are meant to believe this was not a chance meeting, but a calculated move by Jaws.  I mean really?  So Jaws rung up the coastguard and said, 'I think there may be a fishing boat in trouble 50 miles off the coast?' and then proceeded to a field to push over some bovine?  He then lets out an evil laugh, twists his moustache and goes and lies in wait next to the buoy.

This ridiculous theme is carried on throughout the movie and you could think to yourself, poor Ellen, (as it is her which keeps putting this theory forward), she must be grief-stricken after losing her husband, but the movie makers keep trying to make it plausible.  Especially when Jaws then 'follows' them to the Bahamas, (presumably at the back of Hoagie's plane with dark sunglasses and reading the New York Times, as I am not sure how else he covered the 2,000 miles as quick as the Brody's did).  I mean, if I had completely lost my senses that is the only conclusion I could come up with as it would be a huge coincidence that both shark and Brody's end up in the same location.  But I haven't, (although many more movies like this and I might), and this is just a laughable storyline.

There is also a suggestion that somehow Ellen and the shark share some sort of psychic connection and she 'senses' when Jaws attacks Michael and she feels drawn to go and confront the shark and knows where to find him.  Honestly, crap, crap, crap, and don't even get me started on this finale with Ellen and Jaws as there are 2 massively wrong things that really do consign this movie to the bargain bin and earn it's place, quite rightly on our list.

Firstly, there is Ellen's constant flashbacks to the original Jaws movie, particularly at the end when she is remembering Chief Brody, who has rifle in hand and is about to shoot the oxygen tank in Jaws' mouth causing it to explode and blow up original Jaws.  The thing is Ellen was not there, so how is she remembering this?  She then flashbacks to Sean's death, again, she was not there, so how the hell is she flashbacking to this?  And more to the point if she was there, why did she not bloody try to help?

Lastly though, (and this is talked about in all reviews so forgive me for repeating everyone else), is when Jaws who is about to strike the boat and kill Ellen, jumps out of the water and roars.  It fucking roars like a lion!  I mean, what the hell were they thinking?  a) sharks do not have vocal chords, b) they do not have lungs to push the air out to meet the non existent vocal chords to do the bloody roar this shark makes!  Was this supposed to make the shark more scary?  Was this supposed to make us jump with fear?  Because I will admit, I did piss myself, but that was due to laughter as I watched this pile of rubbish.

I have a feeling sequels will continue make an appearance on our list, but this one well and truly deserves it's place and could even be placed higher.  The idea to make Jaws some cold, calculating serial killer seeking revenge for previous shark deaths was ridiculous.  The further idea to make Jaws some kind of scary roaring monster, was just laughable.  Unfortunately the studio and writers did not realise that the ideas were now running thin and they resorted to extraordinary lengths to try to scrape together something for this movie.  It simply did not work and the ideas were so poor and far fetched, that in the end the shark truly jumped itself.