Guilty Pleasures: Jaws 3-D AKA The Original Shark Night 3D
There’s nothing wrong with a bad movie. There is a problem with too many bad movies. Due to an over exposure to shit… I find it hard to dislike anything. These are just a few of my guilty pleasures.
JAWS 3-D
This weekend, Shark Night 3D swims into theaters. I cannot deny two facts. Fact #1: I think this movie is going to be one of the biggest pieces of shit ever released. Fact #2: I can’t wait to see it. That decision may or may not be influenced by my love for Jaws 3D.
In 1983 a decision was made. Studio Guy said “We need another Jaws movie.”
“But wait”, said a producer… “Let’s ride this 3D wave (get it, wave, like as in the ocean… where sharks live)”.
Thus Jaws 3-D was born.
I’ve always raised this question to people. Since 3D has recently made the quite unwanted comeback, if they decided to re-release previous 3D films, which would you want to see? The answer for me has always been Jaws 3D (although the original House of Wax is a close second). I know that Jaws 3D is a bad movie. In fact one could argue that the only thing the film has going for it is that it’s not Jaws: The Revenge. But we’re being unfair. Regardless of how bad the movie might be today, I’m sure that seeing it in a theater, in it’s full 3-D glory, was probably a thrill. Plus, it teamed Dennis Quaid with Louis Gossett Jr., a full two years before Quaid would play a stranded bigoted space man and Gossett Jr. an asexual lizard in Enemy Mine.
One of my biggest issues with modernized 3D is that instead of pushing objects TOWARDS us… they simply push other images further away to create a deeper 3rd Dimension. Obviously I’m not including Piranha 3D and My Blood Valentine 3D that had the same sort of fun with the format that Friday the 13th and Amityville Horror did. Jaws 3D had fun with the format in the form of floating arms, fish heads and shark explosions. That’s a pretty big leap from the boring, floating branches in Avatar.
Jaws 3D also featured the first shark with downs syndrome.
Jaws 3D takes place after the events of Jaws 2. Roy Schneider put his foot down and said ‘no more’, so of course the film follows his kids, all grown up and working at a weird Sea World spin-off. The big opening is coming up when a baby shark makes its way into the park. The employees unwisely make the shark an attraction, which leads to the shark dying in front of a crowd of park attendees. It upsets the employees, the boss and the families of onlookers, but it REALLY pisses off the larger than fuck momma shark. I think this explains the set up just fine. The rest of the movie plays out like this: shark eats people then shark blows up.
There are a few films that I think SHOULD have been much better movies had they stuck with the original plot line. Jaws 3D is one such film. It was originally proposed as a comedy under the title National Lampoon’s Jaws 3: People 0. The film would have been a spoof produced by Matty Simmons (fresh off of Animal House), written by (the then new writer) John Hughes with Joe Dante directing. If you’re an 80’s comedy geek, you are already masturbating furiously.
The film would have had it all. It was going to open with Peter Benchley (author of Jaws) being eaten by a shark in his swimming pool, a naked Bo Derek and shark-costumed aliens. Universal Studios halted the idea on the grounds that Steven Spielberg threatened to never work with Universal again if the movie was made. I’d like to address Mr. Spielberg at this time:
Dear Steven,
Thank you for all of the good things that you’ve done for cinema. I can’t even go into the ocean anymore because of Jaws. You made me cry during E.T. and filled my childhood with wonder with Jurassic Park. That being said; you are a dick. How could Jaws 3: People 0 be any worse than Jaws the Revenge or Jaws 3D? Or The Lost World? I mean sure, at this point you had some hits… but you also had made 1941 and killed Vic Morrow so it wasn’t like you were exactly on cloud nine.
Love, Matt Kelly
P.S. I hope Tintin washes the taste of Crystal Skull out of my mouth. And that War Horse had better live in the end or I’ll be pissed.
Okay, I’m glad to get that out of my system. Anyway, with the comedy potential out of the way (or so they thought), we got this instead. As I said previously, I still enjoy the movie; but mostly because I like gore and sharks. As much as I shit on it, I still own (and frequently watch) Jaws: The Revenge. Maybe I can let a love of sharks cloud my ability to separate good from bad from worse. It is possible.
Regardless, in honor of this weekend’s Shark Night 3D, I will be rewatching Jaws 3D this weekend. Repeatedly. Then Enemy Mine.
When Matt Kelly’s not watching movies because he’s too afraid to even so much as go into a swimming pool he’s hosting his podcast The Saint Mort Show, performing musical comedy and writing in his blog Pure Mattitude.
