God Created the Devil and Gave Him Jaws
My new book Tooth and Claw is a love letter to Jaws.
And when I say love, I mean it.
I love Jaws.
I’ve always loved Jaws.
Though it wasn’t love at first sight.
You see I loved Jaws before I even saw it.
At four, I was way too young to watch Jaws at the cinema on its release - but I sure knew about it. The frenzied word of mouth and advertising blitz was everywhere. Even as a pre-schooler, I had not one, but two Bruce toys, though I doubt I was aware my new prized possessions were in fact rubber toothed killing machines. I cherished those toys and took them everywhere. I guess no other film blew the doors off movie merchandising like Jaws, (Star Wars arrived all of two years later).
I also had an older sister who saw Jaws when it came out and told me all about it, (which seems kind of irresponsible looking back). Her feverishly excited retelling of the story, the panic-inducing images on TV spots and the infamous tag line “You’ll never go in the water again!” all conspired to burrow deep into my young mind and forever change the way I would view air mattresses at the beach. Unfortunately my juiced up imagination was now hungry and wanted more. Unable to actually see Jaws, I was left flailing through a chum trail of killer word of mouth and red hot reviews, stuck humming John Williams’ ominous score, playing out imagined scenes with my vicious rubber sharks in the bath, (no ducks in my house), and scanning the ocean for approaching fins when on holiday, all the time secretly dreaming of the fateful day I would finally be able to sneak into a cinema and watch the movie.
But maaaaaan it was a long wait.
A couple of years later Jaws 2 came out at the cinema promising a new floating buffet of water skiers and delinquent teen sailors in Bruce#2’s sights. After missing out on the original Jaws, I kicked up such a rabid fuss about Jaws 2 that my Nan was forced to take me to see it, despite her probably being too old and me certainly being too young. God bless you Nan.
And I have to say I loved every moment of Jaws 2. I really did.
But it still wasn’t Jaws.
Eventually, six long years after the original’s opening release, John Williams’ score rose from the watery depths again and ads for Jaws started popping up on TV.
ITV was going to broadcast Jaws.
Oh happy days.
I convinced my parents I would be OK and that I wouldn’t freak out if they let me watch the devil fish do his thing on the box, and by some strange miracle they bought it. So that fateful night on October 8th 1981, I anxiously sat down to watch my beloved Jaws, as did half of the UK, (it was the third most watched ITV broadcast ever, after England’s 1998 World Cup clash with Argentina - there was history there, OK - and the curiosity of Roger Moore’s debut as James Bond in Live and Let Die). I was finally about to see the film that I‘d already decided was going to be my favourite movie of all time, desperately hoping that all those years of blind loyalty hadn’t set me up for a fall. With all the expectation I’d built up Jaws could have easily disappointed.
It didn’t.
It was everything I’d hoped for.
It was a compelling disaster movie: cue the Amity beach mass panic scenes. It was an accomplished horror movie: cue Hooper’s night dive down to Ben Gardener’s boat, his close quarter battle with the shark whilst submerged in his flimsy little cage, and of course, Quint’s bloody end as he slid into those infamous jaws and down Bruce’s gullet. But it was also an exciting adventure movie: cue Williams’ rousing score when our heroes chased those elusive yellow barrels across the open sea - these guys were on a nautical safari and you could see they felt truly alive with the thrill of the chase. Well for a while anyway. And of course it was a buddy-buddy movie. Or rather a buddy-buddy-buddy movie: cue the strained relationship between three of the best cinematic characters to ever grace the screen: Brody, Hooper and Quint, baiting and sparring with each other, before eventually bonding over rum and scars in the face of danger.
Jaws managed to be both a great classic movie and a balls out exploitation movie. At university a friend of mine picked Jaws for our film studies presentation on exploitation movies, and I was pissed with him. How could he call Jaws an exploitation film? But he was right. It’s just that it’s such a goddamned good movie, I’d never looked at it as an exploitation piece before - which of course it is - albeit a truly great example.
So my love of Jaws was vindicated and sealed. It was indeed my favourite movie of all time and would stay that way. Sure, the bond between me and Bruce had to navigate some rough waters over the years just like any relationship. Jaws 2 ebbed a bit on repeat viewings. Jaws 3 had its barmy fun moments, but also managed to inflict some truly awful 3D imagery on my psyche and the Jaws brand. And Jaws 4...wow. Whilst training in the Air Force, I watched the very strange beast that was Jaws 4 at our camp cinema on the base, but I was so convinced I must have been drunk at the showing, I immediately hired it again on video for a repeat viewing to see if I hadn’t hallucinated the whole experience. Yes, there was a psychic link between Ellen Brody and the shark. Yes Bruce did growl and roar underwater while chugging along like a Greyhound bus with a burnt out gearbox. And yes Mario Van Peebles did survive all those bloody bite injuries, having held his breath for ten minutes whilst hiding beneath the waves in embarrassment.
But hey, the original Jaws was, and still is magnificent no matter how many times I watch it, (a lot), and any inferiorities or infidelities thrown up by its sequels are just red water under the lagoon bridge to me.
So after years of worshipping at the altar of Jaws, I like many others of my generation, grew up to be a mature, fairly well developed and rounded individual who is perpetually terrified and fascinated by sharks.
You see, Jaws has been with me all through my life, swimming alongside me like an ever-present frenemy; a literal force of nature and perpetual source of joy and anxiety.
As a child, Jaws brightened my days and darkened my nights. As an adult, Jaws was there with me when I visited a girlfriend in Mauritius and she caught me always staying on the shore-side of her when swimming in the sea. In my defence, I knew great whites were known to occasionally feed in the area and argued that should an attack happen, I would be more likely to save her than the other way around. She didn’t buy it.
Jaws was there with me when travelled to Australia too and I tried open water scuba diving off the Great Barrier Reef. I was attempting to overcome my fear of sharks, but unluckily ended up being the first to go over the boat’s side and had to wait an agonizingly long time in the water for the rest of the group, before we could dive below and see what was lurking beneath our feet. As I bobbed around on the surface like a large chunk of fish food, waiting to be snatched into the depths like Chrissie Watkins, I could hear Quint’s unforgettable USS Indianapolis monologue ringing in my ears and thought to myself I’ll never put on wetsuit again.
And so Jaws was always with me and it’s still here with me now. It’s here with me every time I visit the beach, every time I read a book, or watch a movie or a wildlife documentary, every time I look at sharks on Instagram or on the web, every time I write; every time I close my eyes and dream.
And you know what?
I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Tooth and Claw by Leigh Dovey is available now on Amazon Kindle.
