Steven Spielberg’s Jaws (1975) was sold, not unlike its source novel, as a tense piece of nature horror and its success is well documented, rarely contested Hollywood lore at this point. It was only natural that the studio executives at Universal desired a sequel be made in short order, with or without Spielberg’s involvement. Jaws 2 came out in 1978 without Spielberg’s name attached, swapped with French filmmaker Jeannot Szwarc instead. The sequel replaced Spielberg’s subtle suspense with something much more visceral. If the first Jaws was in the mold of Hitchcock, its follow-up was closer to Herschell Gordon Lewis. Universal, perhaps wisely considering where the horror genre was headed, turned Jaws into a slasher movie. When it came time to develop a third entry in the aquatic horror franchise, they followed in the footsteps of the Friday the 13th series set up at competing studio Paramount: they went 3D.
Jaws 3-D (1983) released just one year after Friday the 13th: Part III 3D (1982) with 3D cinema finding its second wave of popularity after a decades long hiatus. Like the first 3D surge in the 1950s, the 3D offerings of the 1980s skewed genre heavy and horror made perfect sense to take advantage of the new technological advances in the format. Friday the 13th’s 3D entry made ample use of impalings entering the third dimension and Jaws 3-D takes no time letting viewers know what they’re in for by dropping a severed fish head into their laps in the film’s opening credits, the text of which is also all rendered in eye-popping 3D. The 3D effects in Jaws 3-D are what you expect going in, but it benefits from that. There’s a comfort in seeing a genre movie that so clearly gets the memo in what its audience wants. Audiences who saw the film in 3D in 1983 were treated to a great white shark breaking through the screen, the gore of the shark’s victims floating by their noses and, due to the film’s setting, plenty of water ski stunts defying the laws of physics and space.
The setting for Jaws 3-D isn’t the fictional Amity Island of the first two films. Instead, Universal transplanted the shark horror to the second most obvious location after the ocean: SeaWorld. The crux of the film is ultimately that a blood-thirsty great white shark ends up in the amusement park and someone needs to rescue the patrons before they’re all eaten to death and rendered into 3D chum. Roy Scheider opted to sit this one out, as did Jaws 2 director Jeannot Szwarc, who was replaced by Jaws and Jaws 2 production designer Joe Alves in his sole directorial credit. Jaws 3-D, for better or worse, is a threequel that feels like it was directed by a production designer and features Dennis Quaid and Louis Gossett Jr. fending off an animatronic shark in supremely goofy 3D. It’s a far cry from Spielberg’s film both in its approach to the subject matter and its affection for it. But as a sequel to Jaws 2, Jaws 3-D is suitably sensational. It takes the slasher beats of Szwarc’s film, ups the gore, and gives the antagonist even more disposable humans to take out. The posters that Universal had made rather oddly promised that the film was “All New, All New,” as if some viewers might get the impression that this was Jaws in 3D rather than a new movie. But, it’s safe to say that as soon as the opening credits hit, from the point of view of the shark, we aren’t in Spielberg’s hands anymore.
Jaws 3-D screens this Tuesday, June 30, and Wednesday, July 1, at The Vogue on digital 3-D.
