JAWS on Blu-ray

Check out some of the Blu-ray bonus clips at the bottom of this post.

On Tuesday, August 14, 2012, Universal Home Entertainment releases the Blu-ray disc of JAWS (1975), the Steven Spielberg film often credited with birthing the phenomenon of the summer blockbuster. Based on Peter Benchley’s bestseller, JAWS went on to become the most successful box office winner of all time (until it was replaced by STAR WARS two years later). The film has seen several previous home video releases (VHS, laserdisc, DVD); now, as part of Universal’s 100th anniversary celebration, it arrives in a new, digitally remastered high-definition transfer, with 7.1 surround sound. The combo pack also contains a DVD, a digital copy, Ultraviolet, and over four hours of bonus featuring, including a new documentary THE SHARK IS STILL WORKING (the title is an ironic commentary on the actual facts of JAWS’s production, during which the mechanical shark was often not working).
The press release offers more details, in the usual hyperbolic Hollywood style:

One of the most influential motion pictures of all time and nominated for a Best Picture Academy Award®, JAWS stars Oscar® winner Richard Dreyfuss and Oscar® nominees Roy Scheider and Robert Shaw. Produced by legendary filmmakers Richard D. Zanuck and David Brown, the film earned an Oscar® for composer John Williams’ instantly recognizable minimalist score, as well as Oscars® for Best Editing and Best Sound. When it was first released in 1975, JAWS smashed box-office records and became the highest-grossing film of its era, earning Spielberg a reputation as a Hollywood visionary. Today, it remains one of the highest-grossing films in motion-picture history and is largely considered the film that launched the summer blockbuster.
JAWS is one of 13 classic Universal films to be digitally remastered and fully restored from 35mm original film elements as part of Universal’s ongoing 100th Anniversary celebration. The JAWS restoration began with researching and evaluating the existing film elements to determine the best means to restore the film. Over the course of several months, skilled technicians at Universal Studios Digital Services meticulously balanced color, removed dirt and scratches, and repaired any damage to the film elements shot by shot and frame by frame. Following the picture restoration, Universal Studios Sound team up-mixed the iconic JAWS soundtrack to DTS-HD Master 7.1, optimizing the sound on the Blu-rayTM for the latest home theater technology. The entire restoration process was conducted in conjunction with Steven Spielberg and Amblin Entertainment’s post-production team to ensure the integrity of Spielberg’s original vision remained intact.
“JAWS holds a unique place, not just in Universal Pictures’ history, but in global pop culture,” said Craig Kornblau, President of Universal Studios Home Entertainment. “It is only fitting that this phenomenal film should be given the extensive restoration needed to ensure that long-time fans as well as newcomers can enjoy this unforgettable cinematic achievement for generations to come.”
The JAWS Blu-ray™ Combo Pack is available in collectible Universal 100th Anniversary packaging for a limited time. The Combo Pack also contains a Digital Copy of the film for a limited time, compatible with iTunes®, iPad®, iPhone®, iPod™ touch, Android or online retail partners, as well as an UltraViolet™ copy. UltraViolet is the revolutionary new way for consumers to collect movies and TV shows in the cloud to download and stream instantly to computers, tablets and smartphones. Consumers can now truly enjoy their movies anytime, anywhere on the platform of their choice.
Blu-ray™ Bonus Features:
• The Shark is Still Working: The Impact & Legacy of JAWS: All-new feature-length documentary featuring never-before-seen footage and interviews with cast and crew including Steven Spielberg, Richard Dreyfuss and Roy Scheider.
• JAWS: The Restoration: An all-new, in-depth look at the intricate process of restoring the movie.
• The Making of JAWS: A two-hour documentary featuring interviews with key cast and crew.
• From the Set: An insider’s look at life on the set of JAWS, featuring an interview with Steven Spielberg.
• Deleted Scenes & Outtakes
• JAWS Archives: Take a peek inside the JAWS archives, including storyboards, production photos and marketing materials, as well as a special segment on the JAWS phenomenon.
• Original Theatrical Trailer
• UltraViolet™: The revolutionary new way for consumers to collect movies and TV shows, store them in the cloud, and download and stream instantly to computers, tablets and smartphones. Currently available in the United States only.
• Digital Copy: Viewers can redeem a digital version of the full-length movie from a choice of retail partners to watch on an array of electronic and portable devices.
• pocket BLU™ App: The popular free pocket BLU™ app for smartphones is now even better with newly updated versions for iPad®, Android™ tablets, PC and Macintosh computers, with features made especially to take advantage of the devices’ larger screens and high resolution displays.
o Advanced Remote Control: A sleek, elegant new way to operate your Blu-ray™ player. Users can navigate through menus, playback and BD-Live™ functions with ease.
o Video Timeline: Users can easily bring up the video timeline, allowing them to instantly access any point in the film.
o Mobile-To-Go: Users can unlock a selection of bonus content with their Blu-ray™ discs to save to their device or to stream from anywhere there is a Wi-Fi network, enabling them to enjoy content on the go, anytime, anywhere.
o Browse Titles: Users will have access to a complete list of pocket BLU™-enabled titles available and coming to Blu-ray™. They can view free previews and see what additional content is available to unlock on their device.
o Keyboard: Entering data is fast and easy with your device’s intuitive keyboard.
• BD-LIVE™: Access the BD-Live™ Center through your Internet-connected player to access the latest trailers, exclusive content and more!
DVD Bonus Features:
• Spotlight on Location: The Making of JAWS: Highlights from the full-length documentary featuring interviews with key cast and crew.
SYNOPSIS
Directed by Academy Award® winner Steven Spielberg, Jaws set the standard for edge-of-your-seat suspense quickly becoming a cultural phenomenon and forever changing the movie industry. When the seaside community of Amity finds itself under attack by a dangerous great white shark, the town’s chief of police (Roy Scheider), a young marine biologist (Richard Dreyfuss) and a grizzled shark hunter (Robert Shaw) embark on a desperate quest to destroy the beast before it strikes again. Featuring an unforgettable score that evokes pure terror, Jaws remains one of the most influential and gripping adventures in motion picture history.
CAST & FILMMAKERS
Cast: Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw, Richard Dreyfuss, Lorraine Gary, Murray Hamilton
Directed By: Steven Spielberg
Produced By: Richard D. Zanuck and David Brown
Music By: John Williams
Based on Novel By: Peter Benchley
Screenplay By: Peter Benchley and Carl Gottlieb
Director of Photography: Bill Butler
Production Design By: Joseph Alves Jr.
Editor: Verna Fields
TECHNICAL INFORMATION
BD
Street Date: 8/14/2012
Copyright: 2012 Universal Studios. All Rights Reserved.
Selection Numbers: 61121167 (US); 61121267 (Canada)
Running Time: 2 Hours 4 Minutes
Layers: BD-50
Aspect Ratio: Widescreen 2.35:1
Rating: PG
Technical Info: English DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1/DTS Digital Surround 2.0 Mono and Dolby Digital 2.0, Spanish and French DTS Digital Surround 5.1
Subtitles: English SDH, French and Spanish
TECHNICAL INFORMATION
DVD
Street Date: 8/14/2012
Copyright: 2012 Universal Studios. All Rights Reserved.
Selection Numbers: 61120918 (US); 61121268 (Canada)
Running Time: 2 Hours 4 Minutes
Layers: Dual Layer
Aspect Ratio: Anamorphic Screen 2.35:1
Rating: PG
Technical Info: English Dolby Digital 5.1 and 2.0 Mono, Spanish and French Dolby Digital 5.1
Subtitles: English SDH, French and Spanish
In honor of its Centennial anniversary, Universal Pictures proudly salutes 100 years of unforgettable films that have entertained audiences and touched the hearts of millions around the globe. In celebration of our first 100 years, Universal Studios Home Entertainment is proud to present a selection of our many beloved movies as part of an extensive year-long program that underscores the studio’s rich cinematic history and indelible cultural impact.

Check out sample clips from the bonus features below:

Music in the Horror Film: An Interview with Neil Lerner

Click the podcast button to hear Tocatta and Fugue in D Minor, performed by Frederich Magle, courtesy of Magle International Music Forums.


I come from a generation of fantastic film fans who wanted a greater depth of knowledge about the films we loved. This moved beyond knowing who the actors and even the directors were. We knew about the special effects technicians, the make up artists, the matte painters, the model makers, stop-motion animators, and even who composed the scores. Some of my favorites included Bernard Herrmann, James Bernard, Jerry Goldsmith, and of course John Williams.
A few moments reflection on the movie going experience, especially in regards to the horror genre, reveals how important music is. Some of the more noteworthy examples are the shower scene in PSYCHO, the main theme for JAWS, and the memorable music for John Carpenter’s HALLOWEEN. Unfortunately, while the images of horror have been the focus of much critical and academic discussion, little attention has been paid to the music. Addressing this deficit, Neil Lerner has edited the book Music in the Horror Film: Listening to Fear (Routledge, 2010). Lerner is Professor of Music at Davidson College, where he teaches courses in music as well as film and media studies. His work on film music has been published in numerous journals, essay collections, and encyclopedias. Lerner discusses horror film music in this special interview for Cinefantastique Online.
John Morehead: Neil, thank you for being willing to discuss your book here. Can you begin by sharing a little of your background in music, and why, on a personal level, you chose horror as the genre of film for analysis in terms of music’s significance and impact?
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click to purchase

Neil Lerner: First of all, I want to you thank you and Cinefantastique for your interest in this work. As a longtime fan of Cinefantastique, it’s a great honor to get to discuss these things with you.
My professional background is as a musicologist, and my dissertation studied music in some U.S. government documentary films. At the time I started working on my dissertation, there were only a handful of music scholars who were taking film music seriously. So that’s partly why I went with these documentary film scores, by established concert hall composers like Virgil Thomson and Aaron Copland: because they were in many ways safer to the academy. It was also a case where I was confident I could get to the relevant archival material, like score manuscripts and production papers, something that’s still not easy to do with Hollywood scores.
One question that I found myself drawn to throughout that research on documentary scores was whether or not a composer could do more experimental things in a score for a documentary than in a Hollywood fictional narrative. I actually found several instances where composers could push the compositional envelope in a documentary film score—like using extended dissonances, or writing fugues, things that didn’t happen too much in Hollywood’s mainstream scores—and that question of where and how modernist strategies enter into film music continues to interest me.
Finally, I’ve always been a fan of horror films, but I started studying film more seriously in college, which, believe it or not, was at Transylvania University. I had one particularly brilliant professor there who took great pleasure in talking about vampire films in his film courses, and his intellectual curiosity was contagious. In many ways, then, I’ve been on a crash course with this topic.
John Morehead: Can you sketch how music developed in terms of its inclusion in the horror film? Viewers take its presence for granted in contemporary cinema, but may forget that there was a process of development as it was included in film, and in horror as well, beyond the jump from silent films to sound.
Neil Lerner: I think studying music in horror films brings with it the same challenges as in other genres in that transitional period between “silent” and sound film: composers had multiple strategies for dealing with different kinds of dramatic situations; it’s often difficult or impossible to reconstruct with certainty what early musicians did (in cases of live accompaniment); and it’s too easy to over-generalize based on just a few examples. There’s still a good deal of basic research to be done in trying to map out just what was done in horror films in the 1920s, but we have some important clues in a book like Ernö Rapée’s Encyclopedia of Music for Pictures (1925), which lists all kinds of categories and topics that musicians accompanying film could have used. That book doesn’t have notated music, but rather it has lists of possible pieces that would fit each topic, giving us now an idea of what music was considered appropriate (at least according to Rapée) for different genres. If you look up “horror” in the Rapée, it directs you to the topics of “gruesome” and “outcry,” which themselves then direct out to other categories like “dwarfs, ghosts, spooks, and mysteriosos” (for “gruesome”) or to “dramatic” in the case of “outcry.” It ends up suggesting quite a wide spectrum of music that was available to someone accompanying a scary scene, but certain basic ideas tend to surface over and over again in these pieces, and these are things that aren’t unique to music for horror film, but rather things that fall in a much longer tradition of ways that composers could create a sense of fear or dread: extended unresolved dissonances, surprising bursts of sound, unfamiliar timbres, etc.
I do think Robert Spadoni’s recent book on horror film and the transition into the sound era makes a strong case for the significance of the sound track and how it could make films more horrific. The success of horror films coming out of Hollywood (starting in 1931) really does overlap in interesting ways with the coming of synchronized, recorded sound to the cinematic experience.
Candace Hilligoss stands before the church organ in CARNIVAL OF SOULS
Candace Hilligoss stands before the church organ in CARNIVAL OF SOULS

John Morehead: Your book begins appropriately with a consideration of the organ in CARNIVAL OF SOULS in a chapter by Julie Brown, with a comparison of the same instrument in DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE. Was this the first major instrument to be used in horror films, and how significant is it in associations with the genre today?
Neil Lerner: I don’t know if we can say that it was the first major instrument of horror films, just because I’m not certain we know enough yet about music in horror film in the 1920s, but Julie Brown’s work makes a compelling case for why the organ would recur so much in horror films. Namely, the instrument’s connections with certain kinds of religious spaces as well as its associations with funerals are all rich things to explore in a genre (horror) that probes at our sublimated anxieties. The tradition of the baroque organ is one where its huge sound was supposed to overpower its listener through sheer volume and acoustic weight, in ways that Robert Walser has compared with heavy metal music (and how heavy metal music works in horror films, when it starts to appear, etc., is another topic that needs work).
The film that I researched for the book, DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE (1931), makes the organ a central icon connected with Henry Jekyll, adding a musical dimension that doesn’t occur in Stevenson’s novella. I believe it’s there to provide a quick and efficient clue to Jekyll’s character: he has a certain level of wealth and high culture sophistication in that he plays Bach organ works for pleasure at his home, and it also suggests something of Jekyll’s piety and goodness (towards the end of the film he cries out to God).
Our first glimpse of Dr. Jekyll: his hands playing a pipe organ
Our first glimpse of Dr. Jekyll: his hands playing a pipe organ

Yet there’s another component to Jekyll’s organ playing that I explore in my essay, and that’s the possibility that Rouben Mamoulian’s conception of Jekyll & Hyde might set the entire narrative up as a dream occurring in the midst of Jekyll’s organ playing. The film opens with Bach’s famous Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, a piece that recurs in the middle of the film—with some of the middle of the organ piece—and then the film closes with the final measures of the organ work. I know it’s a fairly radical way to read the film, but I found some other clues in the literary references that I believe at least complicate some of our assumptions about that film and how it works.
John Morehead: Of course, PSYCHO is perhaps the horror film most associated with striking music, as in the infamous shower scene. In the interesting chapter on this film, Ross Fenimore connects the film’s “aural fragments” of imagined and real voices with the musical “screams” of Marion’s (Janet Leigh) death as she is stabbed in the shower. Most viewers are familiar with the significance of Bernard Herrmann’s score to the film, but may not have connected this as part of a bigger aural whole that paints a picture of terror. How do these elements come together under the direction of Hitchcock?
Neil Lerner: I agree with you that the shower scene music from PSYCHO has become an iconic example of horror music, but I’d extend it even further, to say that it’s become one of the most iconic examples of all film music. Ross Fenimore’s essay raises some important questions about the music and to whom it might be connected (to Marion? to Norman? to Mother? to someone else?), which becomes really interesting when you start to factor in the film’s trickery in regards to connecting voices to characters.
I don’t know, however, how much credit should go to Hitchcock’s direction. I mean no disrespect to Hitchcock here, but I think it’s important to remember that Hitchcock originally wanted that shower scene to have only natural sound effects (like shower and knife sounds) without music. Herrmann lobbied to put music into it, and Hitchcock acquiesced, but Herrmann probably paid a heavy price later with Hitchcock for upstaging his director with a better idea. Herrmann’s score here is just brilliant; he was a composer at the peak of his powers, creating music that continues to yield new readings and interpretations. It’s just so marvelously simple and effective in its blend of extended, unresolved dissonances (major sevenths and minor seconds), descending registral gestures (moving from high to low), and repetition. Plus there’s the effect of having the string instruments play the quick portamento, the sliding up on the string, which creates a terrible ripping or tearing effect; it fills in the blanks of what’s happening because visually, we never actually see the knife ripping through flesh, but aurally, we get a clear idea of what’s happening.
John Morehead: As a long-time horror fan I should have been aware of this, but it was not until I read Music in the Horror Film, and Claire Sisco King’s chapter on music in THE EXORCIST, that I realized that the film includes an unconventional approach to musical scoring at the insistence of director William Friedkin. Why did he approach music in the film in this way, and how is this reflective of cultural anxieties of the time as well as the film’s narrative?
Neil Lerner: It’s hard to try and get inside a director’s head, but Claire Sisco King does a fabulous job of collecting all sorts of evidence from the production of the film, thereby giving us clues to what might have been motivating him. I was struck at Friedkin’s resistance to thinking of THE EXORCIST as a horror film, because it reminded me of Rouben Mamoulian’s similar remarks about DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE. I have a hunch both of these directors might have felt that horror as a genre was perhaps too undignified for the kinds of larger ideas they were addressing, and appropriately enough, both of them ended up transforming and complicating the genre in pretty important ways. Friedkin was motivated by a kind of documentary impulse in THE EXORCIST, and Claire Sisco King argues how this probably led to the unconventional musical choices he made. She then goes on to read the music in relation to the larger cultural anxiety of a widely perceived crisis of masculinity. I think her essay can help viewers to see THE EXORCIST in a new and different way—note the visual metaphors here, it’s just tough to escape them—but the underlying goal behind all of the essays in the book is the idea that by paying closer attention to the music, the ear can lead us to see these films in new ways.
John Morehead: I was raised on the fantastic scores of folks like Bernard Hermann, James Horner, and a little later John Williams. But one of the others I enjoyed was director John Carpenter with his synthesizer music. Your book includes a chapter discussing Carpenter’s music in THE FOG, and I wonder how original and significant you see his electronic scoring in this and other films like HALLOWEEN and ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK?
Neil Lerner: I think there’s still a good deal of basic work that needs to be done on this question, but K. J. Donnelly’s essay makes a strong case for the potential returns in giving close attention to film scores that might be thought of as too simple or basic. A good deal of scholarship on film music has tended to focus on fully notated orchestral film scores, but of course there’s a much wider spectrum of musical strategies out there, like rock or jazz, and Donnelly has been an important scholarly pioneer in this regard.
The synthesizer timbres weren’t original to John Carpenter—several of the important Vietnam-era horror films, like NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, or LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT, have some prominent use of electronic instruments—but Carpenter does seem to have done something that worked well and proved influential with the synthesizer scoring in HALLOWEEN (1978). Plus I just think those early modular synths were incredibly cool, so I’m happy we got a picture of a Moog in the book.
John Morehead: It is understandable that, since film is a visual medium, the image has been the primary focus of film analysis, but given the significance of sound and music to film, particularly to horror (not to mention science fiction and fantasy), why has musical analysis been largely ignored? And is this situation starting to change?
Neil Lerner: My college film courses emphasized that film is a visual medium, and of course much of the writing about film does that also, but maybe because I was studying music while taking film classes I was more attenuated to what was happening in the soundtrack. I’ve always found it interesting that so much of the attention in film goes to the visual elements, but the experience of film (and now television and video games) is almost always tied together with a soundtrack. One might speculate that there’s a larger cultural bias against the acoustic, that there’s a hegemony of the visual; what we consider basic educational skills dwell largely if not exclusively on things that are visual, like reading, but where in our culture do we teach about the sonic and the musical? I believe most of us are self taught in regards to knowing how to interpret the music we encounter with a film or video game—if we’re raised watching these things, we figure it out from the context—and most people can interpret these musical codes with a great deal of nuance, even if they aren’t trained in music and have no idea how the music is doing what it does. It’s useful, therefore, to have music scholars devoted to studying music in screen media as a way of providing students and devotees with another tool in their own lifelong encounters with these things.
As a music historian, I’ve long heard the truism that concert hall music in the twentieth century, particularly the experimental, avant-garde styles, hit a kind of impasse where audiences became disinterested in it and where many of these musical languages then found their way into film genres like fantasy and horror. One of my goals with the book was to help to provide some examples of that, whether it be through the radical sound collage that Mamoulian created for the first transformation scene in DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE or the later appropriations of Penderecki in THE EXORCIST or THE SHINING. There’s still a great deal of work to be done in tracking all of these musical languages, and that’s exciting for musicologists, film scholars, and folks who love movies.

(Tocatta and Fugue in D Minor, performed by Frederich Magle, courtesy of Magle International Music Forums)

Sense of Wonder: Was Hollywood ruined by Star Wars and Jaws?

Star Wars (1977)

A couple days ago, R. Patrick Alberty weighed in on the subject of whether JAWS (1975) ruined the modern Hollywood blockbuster. The inspiration for Alberty’s piece was this editorial by Ross Douthat, defending JAWS and STAR WARS against charges made by John Podhoretz and David Edelstein. I wanted to weigh in on the subject, not to cast my vote for who is right or wrong but to “take the bull by the horns” – in the old fashioned sense that logicians use to mean navigating a narrow course between two opposing options. In my view, debating about whether STAR WARS and JAWS should be faulted for the current state of the cinematic arts assumes there is something to be faulted for – an assumption I take issue with.
First off, I can see both sides of the argument: You may like STAR WARS and JAWS but still believe that their influence on Hollywood was a net negative; on the other hand, why hold films from the 1970s responsible for the current state of cinema? My objection is that, whatever their disagreements, all sides in the blockbuster debate accept the underlying premise that there is something seriously wrong with today’s movies. Podhoretz, who comes across like a bitter old man, laments the lack of “seriousness of purpose…and adult themes” in current Hollywood fare. Edelstein, who comes across equally old and equally bitter, fondly recalls an earlier era of films like IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT, EASY RIDER, and BANANAS. Ross, who is not old and is only slightly bitter, merely opines that “blockbusters were arguably better in the 1980s, and they’re arguably worse now.” Even Alberty, the youngest and in no way bitter member of the debate, cites a move “away from the basic foundations of good storytelling” and a “lowering of quality.”
More or less, everyone agrees: “Today’s Hollywood movies – or at least big-budget summer tent-pole movies – really suck.” The only disagreement is about how much they suck, exactly when they started sucking, and who is to blame for the suckage. For me, this is the old Golden Age Theory rearing its ugly head once again: once upon a time, things were great, and now they’re not. After sitting through something like JONAH HEX, I can certainly understand why some would think we’re living in the cinematic equivalent of the Dark Ages, but as someone who was old enough to see it first hand, I can tell you that the earlier “Golden Age” was not that golden.
Basically, franchise film-making has been around since the silent era. Long before almost every sequel had a number after its title, there were countless movies about Ma and Pa Kettel and Francis the Talking mule – not to mention durable characters like Frankenstein, Dracula, and James Bond. Not only that: big-budget blockbusters have been with us forever, and not all of them turned out as successfully as GONE WITH THE WIND. (CLEOPATRA, anyone?) In short, just about every complaint you could make about today’s Hollywood (recycling, overspending, glitz over substance) could have been – and has been lodged – for decades.
So, am I saying that nothing has changed since JAWS and STARS hit big in the 1970s? Of course not. Release patterns, as Podhoretz rightly points out, have changed from the days when Hollywood opened its movies in exclusive engagements and gradually rolled them out over the rest of the country. But I suspect this change would have occurred whether or not Universal had struck gold by debuting JAWS in wide release (on 400 screens – miniscule by today’s standards). The reality of home entertainment options like DVD and VOD have pretty much seen to that.
I think what really has Podhoretz and Edelstein riled is not so much bigger budgets and wider release patterns; it’s that genre films, once relegated to the low-budget ghetto, now receive prestige treatment. Once upon a time, a critic at a major outlet could ignore horror, fantasy, and science fiction films; they would be handed off to a second-stringer, if they were reviewed at all. But when IRON MAN 2 opens in thousands of theatres, there’s a certain obligation to assess its merits, for good or bad.
What’s funny about this is that JAWS and STAR WARS do not represent Hollywood’s first love with genre subject matter elevated to big-budget status. Back in the early ’70s, when young directors and writers were implementing the lessons learned in film school and trying to make artistic statements, William Friedkin was winning Oscars for THE FRENCH CONNECTION – a gritty police shoot-em up that became 1971’s Best Film of the Year. Unlike a filmmaker of today, who would probably feel some kind of obligation to justify that success by following up with some kind of serious “message movie,” Friedkin instead brought us a film version of THE EXORCIST, a big-budget horror movie, which also minted box office gold and earned multiple Oscar nominations.
In a sense, Steven Spielberg (with JAWS) and George Lucas with (STAR WARS) were following in Friedkin’s footsteps: taking genre material and giving it the lavish Hollywood treatment, with all the craftsmanship and artistry of a prestige production. I suspect this is the real crime in the eyes of critics like Podhoretz and Edelstein – critics who believe that art isn’t worth examining unless it comes wrapped in a blanket of heavy-duty seriositude, who believe that conventional, down-to-earth subject matter is somehow inherently superior to the amazing flights of imagination that can be achieved in the realm of cinefantastique. In short, critics who have allowed their Sense of Wonder to atrophy.
Seen from this perspective, I don’t think Ross Douthat is much of an improvement. Sure, he is not ready to pin blame on STAR WARS and JAWS for the current blockbusters that he dislikes (who can argue when he cites TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN and PIRATES OF THE CARIBEAN: AT WORLD’S END?). But still, like Edlestein and Podhoretz, he yearns for a return to a Golden Age; the only difference is that for Douthat the Golden Age is not the ’60s and ’70s but the ’80s.
For myself I would argue that our current era, despite its obvious lapses, need make no apology to the Hollywood of the past. Last year’s STAR TREK movie was as much fun as STAR WARS. The first IRON MAN was as good a movie as SUPERMAN (1978). AVATAR may not be perfect, but it pushes the envelope on film technology and uses that technology in a genuine effort to tell a story with some kind of thematic resonance, however heavy handed. Everyone seems to agree that Pixar’s animation blockbusters, like the current TOY STORY 3, deserve the millions of dollars they make.
Lastly, Christopher Nolan’s THE DARK KNIGHT (2008) belies every argument one could make against the Hollywood blockbuster. It fits the formula we are supposed to hate (a talented filmmaker wasting his time on a summer studio franchise flick based on an old comic book), yet it emerges not only as a great piece of summer entertainment; it is also a complex, dark, and thoughtful meditation on themes as profound as any you will see in a “serious” drama (which I explored earlier here).
Yes, STAR WARS and JAWS taught Hollywood that they could make a galaxy full of money during the summer months, and many bad movies have been made trying to replicate that success. But the silver lining to this allegedly dark cloud is that horror, fantasy, and science fiction films are no longer trapped in the low-budget ghetto, and some amazing, truly wonderful films have been made as a result.
[serialposts]

Shark Night 3D gets a Director

047009-shark-attack-warnings-ignoredNope, this isn’t the long-mooted JAWS remake but a new unrelated shark horror film shot in 3D. According to Deadline New York Incentive Filmed Entertainment is putting $28 million behind the film which is to be directed by David R. Ellis (THE FINAL DESTINATION, SNAKES ON A PLANE).
Jesse Studenberg and Will Hayes have written the script but no plot details are available thus far but don’t be surprised if promiscuous teenagers go swimming and get ripped to pieces by a man-eating shark. David R. Ellis certainly has the right track record for SHARK NIGHT 3D, having helmed b-movie flavoured and big budgeted 3D horror films twice already.
Interestingly the sharks in question won’t be CGI, but animatronic creations by Walt Conti, the people behind the sharks in Deep Blue Sea, the giant snake in Anaconda and the whales in Free Willy. Given that, and the people involved, SHARK NIGHT 3D sounds like it could be a lot of fun. SHARK NIGHT 3D starts shooting this summer in Louisiana.

Sons of Moby Dick: Melville's White Whale has spawned a school of sea monsters

Moby Dick may seem an odd choice for inclusion in Cinefantastique. After all, if one were to categorize the novel, the obvious label would be Adventure – specifically, a high-seas adventure about whale hunting. However,  Herman Melville’s tale is awash with allegory and symbolism, much of it relevant to the horror genre. The book is too vast in its implications to be fully analyzed here; for our purposes it is enough to point out that its chief mystery is whether the White Whale is simply a dumb beast acting from instinct or, as Captain Ahab believes, an intelligent being acting from malevolence. In effect, Ahab’s quest for vengeance is propelled by the conviction that he is pursuing an evil monster, and one question raised by the book is: does evil actually exist, or do human beings mistakenly perceive evil when random events bring about misfortune? This question underlies many horror films, most notably THE EXORCIST. In that case, the debate is weighted in favor of the existence of evil because the phenomenon is preternatural; Moby-Dick, on the other hand, can be seen as the prototype for countless films wherein natural phenomena appear to act with deliberate malice (witness THE BIRDS or the opening of TWISTER, in which a tornado seems almost like an angry god plucking away a family’s helpless father for no good reason). More specifically, the White Whale has spawned a school of sea monsters that have bedeviled ocean-going humans almost since the beginning of cinema.
Unfortunately, most of these descendants occupy a low rung on the pop-culture ladder, borrowing little of Melville’s metaphysics and reducing what is borrowed to the level of a simple plot device. To wit: no matter how fearsome and threatening a large animal may be to a lone victim, an organized group with the right weapons would have no problem exterminating the beast, unless it were somehow capable of avoiding their modern firepower; therefore, tales of monstrous sharks, orcas, and even snakes almost inevitably imbue the animals with at least a rudimentary intelligence that enables them to outwit their human opponents. The philosophical implications of this are seldom explored; it is enough that intelligence makes the beasts more threatening and therefore more in need of being destroyed.


The first two on-screen descendants of Moby-Dick were loose adaptations starring John Barrymore: both THE SEA BEAST (1926) and its sound remake MOBY DICK (1930) abandoned much of the novel in favor of adding a love story. Over two decades later, John Huston directed a more faithful, though still condensed, version. His MOBY DICK (1956) is notable for trying to use the visual medium, especially color, to convey the essence of Melville; but Gregory Pecks performance as Ahab has come under fire, even from the actor, who considered himself miscast (he thought Huston should have cast him as Starbuck and played Ahab himself).
Meanwhile, the science-fiction genre was getting into the act in the early ‘50s. Prior to Huston’s adaptation, two Ray Harryhausen films featured sea monsters dredged up from the depths by atomic bomb testing. In both THE BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS (1953) and IT CAME FROM BENEATH THE SEA (1954), complex considerations of the problem of evil are abandoned in favor of a simple metaphor: the monsters are living embodiments of the dangers of nuclear power. Still, BEAST gave credit for its inspiration to Ray Bradbury’s short story “The Fog Horn,” and something about the prehistoric reptile rising from the depths was evocative enough for John Huston to have Bradbury collaborate with him on the script for MOBY DICK.
One possible (albeit a simple) interpretation of Melville’s novel is that Moby Dick is not a monster at all but simply an innocent animal relentlessly pursued by a madman projecting his own mania onto a living tabula rasa. In fact, before the Pequod encounters the White Whale, previous accounts of Moby Dick have him swimming with others of his kind, implying that his previous “attacks” on whaling vessels may have actually been attempts to defend his species against human aggressors. This sympathetic interpretation of nature, versus the wickedness of humanity, is not pushed very far in the Harryhausen films: whatever set them off in the first place, the rhedosaur and the octopus are lone beasts that inspire little or no sympathy. That changed with GORGO (1960).

The materanl sea beast rises from the waves to seek her off-spring.

In this film, the sea beast comes to represent an archetypal force guaranteed to evoke human sympathy: mother love. The point is emphasized by the fact that there are no important female characters in the story (outside of the mammoth maternal monster that destroys half of London to save her offspring). The humans, like the crew of the Pequod, are men apparently cut off from the society of women. Interestingly, the lead character (played by Bill Travers) unofficially adopts an orphaned boy, much as Ahab took Pip under his wing. Assuming this feminine role of surrogate mother ultimately redeems the character when he abandons his greedy, masculine hopes of exploiting the beast for profit and instead risks his life to rescue the boy. (The maternal instinct of prehistoric monsters was later exploited by Steven Spielberg in THE LOST WORLD: JURASSIC PARK, but the effect was considerably diminished.)
The theme of the giant sea beast that represents nature’s revenge was developed further in the Godzilla films. The series started off fairly closely modeled after BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS, before mutating into juvenile camp. However, when the franchise re-booted in 1985, the sequels re-imagined the conception, changing Godzilla from a malevolent monster (as in his 1954 debut) to something resembling an implacable natural disaster. There was a twist, however, because Godzilla, unlike Moby Dick, is not a force of nature per se; rather, he once was a natural animal, but now he has been mutated by human science. Therefore,  it makes little sense to adopt an Ahab-like vendetta against the creature, who is, ultimately, a living embodiment of man-made catastrophe, like the Exxon Valdez or Chernobyl.
Beginning with GODZILLA 1985, several films delt with this theme, featuring revenge-crazed characters seeking retribution against the radioactive reptile in response to the death of a friend or a comrade in arms: GODZILLA VS. SPACE GODZILLA (1994), GODZILLA VS. MEGAGUIRAS (2001), and GODZILLA VS. MECHAGODZILLA (2002). Like Ahab, the humans tended to fail in their attempts to destroy the beast, but they sometimes learned the error of their ways, realizing that personal vengeance was pointless when mankind was ultimately to blame for Godzilla. As interesting as the concept is, it was seldom if ever developed to its full potential. Godzilla is certain awesome and mysterious enough to fill in for Moby Dick, but none of the human characters attained anything close to the stature of a Captain Ahab.
Sticking a little closer to Melville, Peter Benchley launched a whole subgenre with the publication of Jaws, which led to the blockbuster film and countless rip-offs (TENTACLES, CLAWS, GREAT WHITE, etc). Steven Spielberg’s JAWS (1975) is clearly intended as a pop riff on Moby Dick (with a little of An Enemy of the People thrown in). The Melville connection is even clearer in the book, wherein shark hunter Quint is dragged to his death, like Ahab, by a harpoon line attached to the swimming menace, but in both book and film the shark’s predations defy the instinctive behavior expected from the species, leaving one to wonder if something more than an unconscious killing machine is at work.

The White Shark rises from the depths.

This idea is taken a step further (to amusing but ridiculous extremes) in JAWS IV: THE REVENGE (1987), in which a new Great White seems to be taking personal revenge against the family of the man who killed the sharks in the first two films. The revenge theme was also present in ORCA (1977), although here the implication is that the Richard Harris character may deserve to be persecuted by the mate of a killer whale he harpooned. It is interesting to note that both JAWS IV and ORCA reverse the MOBY DICK formula, casting the sea creature as the instrument of vengeance.

A rather silly but well-photographed TV movie emerged in 1978, THE BERMUDA DEPTHS. The telefilm bares a passing resemblance to Moby Dick, in its tale of a humongous sea turtle responsible for the mysterious shipwrecks in the so-called “Bermuda Triangle.” The whole thing is boring as hell, but the Gamera-wannabe is a hoot, and Carl Weathers winds up dragged to his death, tangled in a harpoon line, just like Ahab and Quint before him. (This seems to be the only film to use the death described by Melville: Quint is swallowed by the shark in the JAWS film; and both Huston’s adaptation and the recent USA Cable mini-series of MOBY DICK have Ahab meeting his demise while lashed to the side of the whale.)
From turtles to snakes: SPASMS (1983) and ANACONDA (1997) may not seem related to Moby Dick, but there is a connection. Both feature serpents that are big, but neither one is so unnaturally large as to be a “monster.” So the question is: why cannot the characters just capture the damned thing and put it in a zoo? This is where the Moby-Dick syndrome comes in: to make them more threatening, the snakes are portrayed as if capable of strategizing, and there is a lot of supernatural hooey about their serpent gods. In the end both are dispatched by conventional means such as guns and explosives (although that was not enough to prevent a sequel title ANACONDAS, which seemed to overlook that the first film had already contained more than one anaconda).
Benchley returned to sea monsters with Beast and White Shark, which were adapted into mini-series entitled THE BEAST (1996) and CREATURE (1998). Interestingly, these works refute the apparent evil of the shark in JAWS, which is dismissed as an inaccurate piece of Hollywood nonsense. In THE BEAST, Will Dalton (William Petersen) argues that people have no right to hunt the giant squid, because it is the fishing industry’s depopulation of the seas that has driven the Beast from its usual hunting grounds and into contact with humans. White Shark, meanwhile, contains a Great White that is presented as a dangerous but endangered species that out to be preserved, not hunted to extinction.
This sub-genre came full circle with the 1998 TV version of MOBY DICK. What perhaps is most interesting about this mini-series is how easy it is to view the White Whale sympathetically today. Metaphysical implications take a backseat to the very real slaughter perpetrated against these animals; in this context, Moby Dick is less a symbol of a random universe that may only appear malevolent, than of poetic (perhaps even divine) vengeance against heartless harpooners pursuing a magnificent species nearly to extinction – an interpretation emphasized by Patrick Stewart’s public service announcements, at the end of each episode, on behalf of saving the whale. It’s less deeply disturbing than the ideas conjured up by the novel, but it does follow the course swum by many of Moby Dick’s descendants.
RELATED ARTICLES: Science-Fiction Author Ray Bradbury on Adapting “Moby Dick.”