Monster Movie Monday: Jaws: The Revenge (1987)
Review Overview
Featured creature
6Ridiculous script
2Banana boat
7Matthew Turner | On 27, Jun 2022
Director: Joseph Sargent
Cast: Lorraine Gary, Lance Guest, Michael Caine, Mario Van Peebles, Karen Young
Certificate: 12
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Say what you like about the Jaws sequels, but they knew a good tagline when they saw one. As with Jaws 3D (“the third dimension is terror”), the best thing about Jaws: The Revenge is its utterly brilliant tagline: “This time it’s personal.” As for the film itself, well, at least it’s slightly better than its predecessor. Creature feature-wise, anyway.
Completely ignoring the events of Jaws 3D, Jaws: The Revenge is essentially a direct sequel to Jaws 2. Chief Martin Brody has unfortunately died of a heart attack (commemorated by a huge picture of Roy Scheider in the police station), leaving his widow, Ellen Brody (returning original cast member Lorraine Gary), understandably depressed. However, her problems are only just beginning, as her youngest son, Police Deputy Sean Brody (Mitchell Anderson), gets eaten by a Great White while trying to clear a log from a buoy in Amity harbour. That’s right – the shark finally bagged a Brody!
Traumatised, Ellen believes that the shark actually targeted her family – “It waited all this time and it came from him” – despite the fact that all the sharks died in the previous movies. Her marine biologist son, Michael (Lance Guest), persuades her to join him in the Bahamas, along with his wife, Carla (Karen Young), and young daughter, Thea (Judith Barsi). But they’re all in for a shock, as it turns out the shark really is seeking revenge against the Brody family and has followed them all to the Bahamas.
In fairness to Jaws: The Revenge, the creature effects are a severed head and shoulders above those of Jaws 3D. The shark looks decent in and out of the water, and it has both movement and bite, courtesy of a working jaw mechanism. That said, on some prints of the film (although not the version on Amazon Prime Video), some of the trolley mechanism is clearly visible. Still, at least it’s better than the dodgy CGI of Sharknado et al.
The third Jaws sequel also has a number of good-to-great sequences that make up for its failings elsewhere. The clear highlight is a shark attack on a banana boat, where the shark targets little Thea, but accidentally eats her friend’s mother instead. It’s nicely staged and framed – especially the near-miss – and there’s a terrific long shot of the shark chomping on its victim in the background.
The other attack scenes work well too – the initial kill is genuinely horrible, with the shark biting Sean’s arm off before going in for the fatal nibble – and the sequence with the shark chasing Michael through the ruins of a sunken boat is a lot of fun. Director Joseph Sargent even does a good job with jump scares and nightmare fake-out scenes.
The character work is also an improvement over the third movie, with a couple of clumsy-but-sweet attempts to connect with the original film (Thea imitating her dad just the way Sean used to imitate Martin). That focus on the characters leads to something of an over-compensation when it comes to depicting the details of Michael and Carla’s sex life, although it does give us the line “I’ve always wanted to make love to an angry welder”.
The performances are mostly good, considering the quality of the dialogue. Gary, Guest and Young all acquit themselves nicely and even Michael Caine somehow emerges with his dignity intact – his delivery of the line “OH, SHIT!” when the shark attacks is another highlight. However, Mario Van Peebles – as Michael’s marine biologist buddy, Jake – is embarrassingly terrible, not least because he has a Bahamian accent that’s so bad, it’s actually a relief when the shark attacks him.
Unfortunately, the film does still have its share of bad elements that justify its much maligned reputation. Chief among these is the fact that the shark frequently roars like a lion (sharks don’t roar), while the climax involves the defeated shark exploding for no reason at all. In fact, there was a reason, but that reason was down to test audiences and hasty reshoots and nobody thought to justify it in the script at any point.
Similarly, even if you’re prepared to accept the shark following the Brodys to the Bahamas (dramatic licence, etc), there are some unforgivable lapses in the plot and the filmmaking, such as the fact that Ellen experiences flashbacks to events she didn’t see (such as Sean’s death and the Jaws finale) and the fact that the supernatural element – Ellen apparently senses the attack on Michael – is completely ignored. It’s also hard to buy the film’s central dramatic conceit of Michael hiding his knowledge of the shark from his family because of his job, especially given everything the Brody family have been through over the years.
Finally, it’s worth noting that the original version of the film still exists (it occasionally airs on TV), without the shark explosion and with one of the main characters actually dying at the end. Sadly, Amazon Prime Video only has the version where he survives.