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Jaws: The 25th Anniversary Edition

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A Techtite Review

The Film : Some of the younger set may not realize this, but Jaws in the 1970's was the #1 best selling blockbuster of all time, prior to Star Wars in '77. While Hitchcock's classic film, Psycho, made watchers afraid of a simple shower stall, Jaws made people afraid of the whole beach! It took a simple enough concept of shark attacks, and turned it into one of the most top-notch, roller coaster rides in all of thriller history.

The story, as if you didn't know, begins with the classic scene of a young woman, skinny dipping near a small town's beach, without a care in the world. Suddenly, this innocent scene gets very foreboding, as John Williams' Oscar Winning theme music plays in the background, signaling the arrival of "Jaws," a great white shark. By morning, the local sheriff (Roy Scheider) investigates the cause of this woman's sudden disappearance, and uncovers the threat; a shark bigger than any ever seen before. It is up to him to kill the shark, and keep local hysteria to a minimum at the same time; no easy task!

There's really nothing else to say about this film; its own infamy speaks for itself. Suffice to say that, no matter how hard horror and thriller films have tried in the past 25 years, nothing has even come close (including, sadly, the Jaws sequels). No matter what you think you know about suspense thrillers, if you haven't seen Jaws, you haven't seen anything yet.

The DVD : It's a good thing the film is a classic, because most of the bonus materials are quite disappointing! Deleted scenes, for example, are few and minor. On the one hand, an interrogation of the first girl's boyfriend is intriguing; you get to hear more of why the infamous, skinny-dipping, first victim in the film, was out there in the first place. However, other cut scenes are surprisingly dull. One deleted shot is of the local town sheriff and his wife feeding their dogs (yawn). Another shot is of the townsfolk in an armada of small fishing boats (trying to kill the shark), yet includes little more than them just puttering away in their rowboats, looking down into the ocean. In one particularly annoying deleted scene, Quint (Robert Shaw) mocks a young boy playing a flute, by loudly humming the notes. Bravo to deleting this scene from the final cut!

Outtakes (bloopers) are even more disappointing; there's only two of them! However, at least they're two amusing bloopers. First, Roy Scheider's gun gets jammed, over and over, in the exact same scene, before someone finally fixed the gun! The other outtake is of a failed attempt to shoot a death scene near the end of the film; the victim gets killed by the shark, and the fake blood accidentally gets into the actor's eye. Ouch!

The best addition, however, is a behind-the scenes featurette. This is very intriguing, and includes anecdotes of the cast and crew (Spielberg as well). Many of the comments made here I'd never heard before. It truly makes purchasing the Anniversary Edition worthwhile for fans of the film, although, I must admit, it's not exclusive to DVD...

Note to VHS fans : Most of the above bonuses are included in the Jaws 25th Anniversary, 2-tape VHS Edition! Tape 1 is the remastered film, while tape 2 has the deleted scenes, the behind the scenes featurette, and so on. Good news for VHS owners, though bad news for people who prefer such features "exclusive" to DVD owners!

DVD-exclusive bonus materials include storyboards of key sequences, the classic theater trailer, and the typical production and cast notes. A short-and-sweet, 12 question trivia game asks some of the more intriguing details mentioned in the film. Get all the questions right, and a picture is revealed. Oh well; it's still an amusing DVD idea, and the game can be played on any DVD system. As for DVD-ROM features, there's a few pics that can be used as wallpaper or as a slide-show screen saver, and an offer to get a DVD newsletter; that's about it.

	Final Rating : Deep Impact. Basically, the bonus materials are disappointing, and yet it was nice to see so many bonuses for a 25-year-old, classic, blockbuster film.
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