JAWS THE REVENGE: A Cult-less Classic?
UniversalWhen Jaws opened in the summer of 1975, it instantly became a cultural phenomenon. To this day, it is widely regarded as one of the first blockbusters and the film which positioned Steven Spielberg as one of the foremost directorial talents of his generation. It also immediately spawned a franchise, which – contrary to what one might think today – was rather unusual at the time. In fact, next to Planet Of The Apes, Rocky, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and a handful of others, it is one of the earliest Hollywood-produced film franchises of all time. Yet, its three sequels have effectively disappeared from the collective cultural consciousness despite being financially successful enough to continue being made until 1987.
Granted, none of the films which followed Jaws were particularly great. But, then again, it is honestly hard to expect any film to be able to come close to the quality of the 1975 original, which was arguably a perfect little lightning in a bottle. What Jaws 2 (1978), Jaws 3-D (1983) and Jaws: The Revenge (1987) were supposed to do was to capitalise on the unparalleled phenomenon of Jaws, offer digestible entertainment and make money. Lots of it. None of those films were successful critically. In fact, they were almost universally panned, but viewers kept flocking to see more shark-related carnage and progressively more ridiculous set pieces, as though to spite the critical consensus. Yet, the fourth one is almost always mentioned as the worst of the bunch, a coup de grace delivered driven into the heart of this dying franchise.
However, despite being universally labelled as a bad movie and even getting under Roger Ebert’s skin so much he almost resorted to expletives in his zero-star review, Jaws: The Revenge was never re-appraised as a so-bad-it's-good movie. It never cultivated a following akin to Troll 2 or The Room and hence it quickly vanished from existence. The question is: why?
It is interesting to note that the idea for a fourth installment in an already beleaguered Jaws series originated almost out of sheer inertia. Producers at Universal were perfectly aware Jaws 3-D didn’t do very well with critics, which is a polite way to describe the fact it featured prominently among the nominees at the 4th Razzie Awards. But it made enough of a profit for them to become convinced they could do it again and get away with it. What is more, as the project developed it became obvious that the non-sequitur nature of Jaws 3-D was a massive obstacle. Therefore, a decision was made to completely ignore this film and pretend Michael Brody never worked at SeaWorld and his brother Sean, instead of turning his fear of water into a love of ranching, stayed in Amity with his mother and followed in his father’s footsteps to become a police officer. In fact, at one point Jaws: The Revenge was marketed as ‘a conclusion of a trilogy’, which already made it look like a beautiful disaster waiting to happen.
Sadly, Jaws: The Revenge never became a legendary hot mess like Alejandro Jodorovsky’s Dune, Alien 3 or the Richard Stanley/John Frankenheimer-directed The Island Of Dr Moreau. The production of the film was extremely uneventful and verged on dangerously expedient, which effectively removed any possibility of it developing a cult on the basis of its troubled genesis. Therefore, the movie had to stand or fall on its own merit. And, boy, did it . . .
Anyone will be able to objectively state that Jaws: The Revenge is extremely easy to pick apart. As a matter of fact, between the ridiculous concept of a roaring shark, the bonkers mad resolution to the story involving both an impalement and an explosion, the idea of a telepathic connection between Ellen Brody (Lorraine Garry in her final role) and somehow convincing Michael Caine to wander on the set half-inebriated, it is almost impossible to defend it. The overwhelming preposterousness of this film makes it look more like a Zucker/Abrahams parody in the vein of Airplane! rather than a serious sequel to a seminal blockbuster. But one could argue this is where the film’s charm – if there is one – could potentially originate from because, for all intents and purposes, Jaws: The Revenge was not engineered to be self-aware at all.
On the contrary, the film expends considerable effort to build an atmosphere of seriousness within the narrative. To this end, the filmmakers openly tether it to the original Jaws (and Jaws 2 to a lesser extent) by means of both thinly sketched structural symmetry and more on-the-nose tips of the hat. For instance, the design of the banana boat carnage is not at all accidental, as it is meant to relay directly to the iconic sequence in Jaws where the shark attacks at the beach. Similarly, the idea of having the shark chomp at a landing aeroplane seems borrowed from Jaws 2 where it successfully handled a helicopter. However, the most egregious example of this narrative tethering involves a re-creation of the famous scene where young Sean was imitating his father at the dinner table. Together with a handful of ham-fistedly inserted sepia-tone frames from the original film – a manifestation of Ellen Brody’s inexplicable telepathic connection with the shark – Jaws: The Revenge is clearly trying to tap into a nostalgic groove and recapture some of that Spielbergian magic the original had in spades.
This is likely where most viewers draw a line and label the film as offensively sacrilegious. It should come as no surprise that the vast majority of fans didn’t find it endearing that Joseph Sargent (who directed this film) and his collaborators were seemingly attempting to bring back the magic of the original Jaws to the audiences for one last blow-out. Instead, they found it off-putting. They could not comprehend this jarring concoction of religious reverence to Spielberg’s film and abject incompetence of the film’s technical execution. They saw it as an utter failure and proof that some films simply should not be made at all. It didn’t occur to anyone at the time nor in the years that followed to pull back a few notches and see Jaws: The Revenge as an accidental fan film.
After all, what is a fan film if not a loving serenade for a movie executed – usually poorly – by a bunch of dilettantes? Therefore, it is possible to see the fourth and final installment in the Jaws franchise as an incidental meta-commentary on its own lasting greatness and successful planting of roots within the zeitgeist of the era. In all honesty, this might be the only way to excuse this film’s raging inadequacies in a way that does not rely on the viewer’s own nostalgic connection to it. Jaws: The Revenge more or less works as a fan-produced sequel to Jaws and an accidental parody at the same time.
However, it doesn’t tick at least two quite substantial boxes all fan films do. First of all, it wasn’t made on the cheap by a bunch of driven amateurs but by seasoned professionals working with a studio backing. In fact, the film was fast-tracked at great expense by Universal. Secondly, it was not a labour of love but rather a blatant cash-grab. This might invariably undermine this fan film hypothesis because it effectively questions the ‘fan’ element of it and it involves some serious mental gymnastics to move past it. However, if experienced filmmakers working with a whopping budget of twenty-three million dollars were to ever turn in an amateurish love poem to one of the greatest films of all time, Jaws: The Revenge would definitely qualify.
It is honestly quite sad to realise just how unfortunate it is that the fourth Jaws sequel continues to lay dead in a ditch of other terribly unsuccessful studio movies from that era. It was too successful to enter the word-of-mouth universe of cult classics in the making, nowhere near good enough to have a life of its own and too expensive to survive the scrutiny of a bona fide fan film. Jaws: The Revenge is nothing short of an abomination, a freak show that failed to attract a crowd of onlookers. But, then again, this is where its charm truly resides because it is impossible to think of any other movie which had to negotiate a similar predicament. In that regard, Joseph Sargent’s Jaws: The Revenge is a unique specimen: a cult-less classic and a quasi-fan film produced by people who should have known how not to make a bad movie in the first place. It’s bizarre, preposterous, laughably ridiculous, but at the same time somehow lovable. Just like a fan film. Or a pug.
