The Beast is Jaws with a giant squid, and from the same author of the shark film classic
The Universal logo, a sea creature terrorising a small town, based on a Peter Benchley novel.
It could almost be Jaws, but this is The Beast, a two-part TV movie adaptation that certainly takes plenty of cues from the original shark book and Steven Spielberg shark classic. That isn't a complaint
And frankly, who can blame Peter Benchley, who also gets an executive producer credit. if you can't plagiarise yourself then who can? It even has J. B. White (Jaws, Bruce?), on screenplay duties. Instead of a Great White shark we get a great giant squid.
And instead of Roy Scheider's Chief Brody we get fisherman William Petersen's, er Whip Dalton.
There's also a newly transferred female coastguard, Lt Kathryn Marcus played by Karen Sillas (thankfully no terrible beard like the Amity coastguard in Jaws 2) who also likes to scuba dive.
And instead of Mayor Vaughn we get the harbor master, Schuyler Graves, played by Charles Martin Smith (who also co-starred with Richard Dreyfuss in American Graffiti). At one point he even says: "We are helping transform a dying community, into a thriving one."
The Beast has almost the same story beats as Jaws, with us opening on a boat on its own in the ocean, you just know that its occupants are Chrissie Watkins waiting to happen. A couple have to leave their sinking boat in their dinghy, but soon they become victims of an unseen attack, with its ending emulating Chrissie being pulled under the water in Jaws. It's certainly an effective opening.
Interest piqued; we then move to Ami... I mean Graves Point, Washington. The Jaws variations continue, but it is never not a fun viewing experience, and that is thanks in no small part to the presence to the always dependable William Petersen, years before he carried a flashlight in CSI.
We even get a Ben Gardner-esque Larry Drake (from LA Law and Dark Man), its own variation on the Pipit scene, calling on the services of a marine biologist, a Founders Day celebration that absolutely isn't anything like the 4th of July weekend, people asking if they should close the beaches and a good old town hall meeting. And, if that isn't enough, we also get nods to Jaws 2 and Jaws 3D.
Jaws with a squid, yes, it is. Which only means that there is lots to love. Its tentacles don't even get in touching distance of Jaws, but it still - even all these years later - has lots to commend it.
And that is despite it being a two-part TV movie, so suffers a little from some of the usual flabby soap opera filler to fill its running time. If nothing else, it helps confirm that the chucking out of the subplots from Jaws the book for Jaws the film was absolutely the right move.
Having said that, several set pieces and scenes are still hugely effective and if nothing else it is fun to see the Jaws story reworked over 20 years later. There is a particularly tense scene with Dalton's daughter and friend who go in the water, when you know who is in the area.
There's also an eco-message in there about overfishing and how the rampaging squid is actually our fault. Petersen's character even saying in the town hall meeting that: "It's not a monster, just a hungry animal trying to survive."
The score, by Don Davis (who would go on to score The Matrix) is another stand-out, naturally some cues of music almost have a Jaws slant at times. Which is more knowing than knock-off.
Not giving the ending away, the script raises the bar against Jaws as the boat at the end, the Seafox, is packed with more people than the Hooper, Brody and Quint of the Orca sent to catch the shark.
It plants the seed it will take more than the crew that defeated the shark in Jaws to take this one down. That also means there are more on the potential menu before the credits role.
The Beast is salty as hell, but it certainly doesn't stink like the ammonia that the squid creates.
As far as monster TV movies go, and seeing as it is from the pen of Peter Benchley who wrote Jaws, it's a nostalgic 7 out 10-tacles for me.
And I'm not squidding when I say it is a lot better watch than many of the Jaws pretenders out there. Dive in and enjoy the staring off to sea shots, the creature point of view shots, the buoy and barrel references and this 1996 TV mini-series is still a huge amount of fun.
Although The Beast was made for television, at one point John Carpenter, the director of Halloween and The Fog, was lined up to direct a big screen version of the Peter Benchley book. Find out how that version vanished beneath the waves below.
Words by Dean Newman
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